XSp.

Was thinking of writing something yesterday, but a fever got the best of me… yeah, it was pretty bad, but I eventually beat it. 😛

This post goes to Michael Jackson, may he finally rest in peace!

I don’t wanna make a generic post here, so I’ll speak a little about who was Michael Jackson to me.
When I was still young, I remember my dad had these Michael Jackson LPs.
He wasn’t one of those maniac fans, but he did have Thriller on a cassete tape… and I can say that much of my admiration towards music videoclips that still goes on nowadays comes from that.

Guessing I’m not alone on that, as seen on some previous posts I made…

Thrill the World, awesome contest of most people dancing Michael Jackson’s Thriller at the same time… which is impressive considering it’s not that simple a dance.

And in Prison Dance, it was the Thriller dance that got the world’s attention to this prison in Phillipines where inmates gathered together to dance.

Being a long time out of the spotlights, I forgot about Michael Jackson when I grew up… but he was such an influence that he was always remembered in some way.
I remember, for instance, playing Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker with my cousin tons of time… can’t remember if we got to the end, but it was like, we really played it A LOT.

Guess it’s a classic to tons of gamers out there.
And then, there are the Weird Al Yankovic parody clips…

Michael Jackson’s Bad became

Weird Al’s Fat and

Michael Jackson’s Beat it became

Weird Al’s Eat it

A friend and I would always repeat that line from “Fat” – “Yo, ding dong man, ding dong, ding dong yo!” 😛

Anyways, back to Michael… I also remember that I only started liking a brazilian humor show named “Casseta e Planeta Urgente” when they made this parody with Michael Jackson’s Black or White, the last one I remember before his career went down and all the rumors about his looks started.
But nevermind the joke, this clip also shows one of the great aspects of Michael Jackson… the fight against racism, prejudice, and how he was able to conquer a worldwide public in a way few bands and artists did, specially back when thriller came out.

I guess he really was one of the last remaining worldwide pop representatives.

Now, about the part that I have no doubts will come out once everything good has already been said about him: The later years.

This might sound a little condescending… I still, to this day, don’t know who to trust on those cases of reported child abuses and stuff. Seems it’s pretty known by now that, if those ever really happened, the MAIN reason it became public was really to exploit Michael Jackson… trying to rip off some of his money.

Because if the abuse cases in his Neverland Ranch ever happened, seems it was with consent of the kids’ parents… and it’s one of those cases that some parents decided to sue Michael, then suddenly several others, some of them noticing there was money to get from the whole case, decided to follow the trend.

Regardless of the reasons and results, as I see it, Michael Jackson was also a victim of fame and fortune at a young age… something that also ruined the lives of several other artists.
I wrote something about it on a Journalism report some weeks ago, talking about child labour, on why using kids as actors/actresses is not considered child labor, and how these young artists life’s get affected by those early careers.

We have several living examples here. Macaulay Culkin (which also ended up involved with the Neverland Ranch scandal), Drew Barrymore and more recently, Britney Spears.

As we all know, if you have fame and fortune you end up being able to do everything you want, loosing perspective and boundaries of what is right or wrong. There’s also all the pressure of the fans judgements on your personal life, the lack of a normal childhood, and finally people seeing and treating these persons as gods, or at least treating in a different way as “just another human being”.

I think the worst thing that happened in Michael’s case, was not admiting he indeed had a problem (not only himself, but everyone around him), and that he needed treatment. And I always imagine how legendary his career would still be today if he had proper care.
Unfortunately, he ended up not resisting to what would be his last attempt of a comeback… which would no doubt be really stressful.

With this, I end this post, and repeat what I say waaay up -> May he finally rest in peace!