Michael Jackson, 10 years later...

June 2019. Somewhere in Absurdia, time to review

With the end of June comes the time of assessment...

With the 10th anniversary of Michael's death, it's doubly time to assess... And in my head, it sounds like a reminder. As long as we haven't pressed the button to stop it…

These last days, inevitably, some media, too few, too hurried, very hastily, woke up to take stock of "what is left" of Michael Jackson's "legacy", of the way he is still "perceived" or "loved" by the/its "public".

I had the opportunity to express myself a little, but this little, doubled sometimes by cuts, in the great lengths, leaves me a taste of insufficiency.

So let's make this assessment here. I will go back a little on the remarks I was able to make - during long minutes, which, put together, are well over an hour - and of which you will only have had a few snippets, sometimes titled with a few good words, and even more when they are taken out of context. Let's complete here by adding what was not retained, retranscribed, for questions of efficiency (commercial or auratic) or because it did not fit in the editorial line and the thought, already prefabricated, that had to be confirmed.

Michael Jackson, 10 years later, is not only still there, but, in my opinion, he is beginning his reign. The one that no one will be able to dispute, since his throne is now inscribed in the flow of History, with a capital H, and sits in a pantheon of great minds and creators. Detractors who have long since stopped reasoning, and whose rebellion is only echoed by the walls of pride behind which they hide, so as not to have to start thinking and daring to think differently than they ever did. For laziness and pride are, according to the Bible, the two greatest faults of human beings, the most damaging ones as well, and it is in this kind of circumstances that we can measure it only too well... A laziness which is worth to too many media outlets to rehash only the same scandalous and juicy pseudo-themes... Certainly, the questioning, or at least the temporization, would be so much less promising and longer to elaborate than the unpolished spectacle of a man, however dead, that we dig up, stone and then lynch, as in the good old days, leaving him to dry up in the collective memory, under the vengeful or amused eye of small self-proclaimed judges, screwed to their living room, caged in front of their multiple screens, drooling at the corner of their mouths, their lips curled up by the same blind hatred that they are proud to denounce in their neighbor, their eyes yellowed by the mist of a disinformation as invisible as a spider never seen, and always forgotten, above their heads but which doesn't prevent them, on the other hand, from getting up on Sundays to go and vote for real detractors, proven and proud of it... unless these censors are themselves hiding some real and heavy family secrets that the false scandals, in others, and a fortiori in distant stars, allow to sublimate or to expiate by proxy.

There is so much to say about Michael Jackson's artistic and human legacy that one would have to be very blind, very deaf (or both), or really very lazy not to make positive use of some of the values he carried: his fight against racism; his willingness to assume an image that suited him, whatever the price to pay or the debate aroused (surgery, part of femininity); his courage in the face of illness; his empathy; his humility; his vulnerability; his boundless creativity; his ability to believe in the impossible and make it happen; his role as a single father etc... So many debates that animate, however, the minds and programs, but which, when it comes to him, are not transposed. Why not?

Michael Jackson's legacy is artistic. Is it necessary to remind it? A sonic and musical work that could have stood on its own, to which he superimposed an innovative visual dimension that irrigated all the music afterwards, the whole varnished by an iconic artistic image and an extraordinary human being. Commercial product, you said? Precisely not, and that is its strength. Michael Jackson is central to all his work. He is the source and the filter, directly and indirectly. We couldn't do without Michael Jackson. We can't do without him. Just look at the posthumous "production", which should not ethically bear his name, or do so only indirectly.

His public? It is always there, and always renewed. His music is always, if not even more so this year, listened to. No, the new generations don't need their artists of the moment (because few last and even less will be perennial) to quote him as a reference to know who he is and what he did. Don't get me wrong, they are not looking for a Michael Jackson. This is just an industrial creation. And they won't find one, because, in addition to the proven individuality and uniqueness of each human being, Michael Jackson is not a recipe that can be copied. CQFD.

That Americans are racist and continue to be so is one thing. That Europe should take these settlements at face value, without thinking, is another. For it is indeed through the media and moral treatment that all this is transcribed and poured out. No European standards. No crash tests, no precautions taken at the borders. We import wars, fights, we celebrate peace on the one hand, while contributing, on the other hand, to perpetuate the conflicts by supporting them more or less consciously.

But... Michael Jackson used the press. And the press has no boundaries. And the press did and continues to do so. As I was able to say on the phone to several journalists of written press as well as radio, the press has a heavy and immense responsibility in this thoughtless relay, which has only interest in its lucrative and profitable character. A heavy responsibility towards the spirits of which it is in charge, towards the ethics and the collective morals. To inform means, from an etymological point of view, to give form to ideas and, by extension, to form minds. The science of information, since it is a science, should not be practiced without a minimum of ethics and disinterest in immediacy an