Michael Jackson’s death and funeral has turned into one of the biggest media events of all time. I’m not sure what to make of it. I just watched the movie The Unbearable Lightness of Being and the ideas presented in that movie are reflected in Michael Jackson’s life. The balance between the lightness of life and the heaviness of life and how it’s never clear how much weight to give any single event of life experience, or life itself. Michael Jackson was a great entertainer but also a child molester. He sold more records than anyone in history and yet he was miserable.
And what about the world’s reaction? The frenzy. Should we take it as a spectacle to be enjoyed and appreciated or should we be morally appalled that a single individual’s death is being consumed by media vultures?
My reaction to things like this is to usually just soak in the spectacle, because moral outrage does no good. So, I will indeed be interested to see if Michael Jackson’s Funeral will break live online video records or not.