Thursday, July 2, 2009

Michael Jackson's Story As An Epic

The monster who creates himself


There has been no other time in this earth's history when humans have been able to manufacture their looks (and their bodies).

The news is replete with the plastic surgeries of very ordinary people, changing parts of their bodies to take on something they consider better.  

Michael Jackson's story is part of this, but it is also much bigger. It could have the makings of a compelling film, showing the weird, terribly sad, era that we'll living in. A modern morality tale, of sorts. Even biblical in its scope.

Every time I saw Jackson on T.V. or in a magazine, I would change the channel, or turn the page quickly. I wasn't disgusted or repelled, really. I just felt terribly sad.

I could not imagine a person making such drastic changes  to himself and living a modicum of a happy life. There must be internal agonies, if not every day, then at least in spurts of self-realization at the weirdness of it all.

But, I don't know. Maybe to Jackson, it was all something like a permanent make-up. After all, these were the changes he made himself, and he would have to justify to himself how great they are.

Justify to himself? That's just it. He must have had those moments of lucidity, and realized the creation he had made.

Surely, someone can come up with a semi-fictitious script for the Michael Jackson story, and add all these elements. A bit like the story of Frankenstein, except it is the monster who creates himself, and has no-one else to blame.