Michael Jackson, Televison, Baudrillard...An Incomplete Thought

After years of living disconnected from cable companies, detached from a pop culture life line in effect, I have bowed my head and accepted as fate the presence of television in my life. As part of my acclimation I’ve spent a few hours in the evenings slack-jawed and unresponsive, absorbing the schizophrenic light flashing before my eyes. I feel a part of a larger world as movie trailers give hope for an entertaining future, prescription pills assure me that as I age a full range of opportunities to alter my consciousness will still be available, and that the events of the day occurred with real people in real places rather than in an imaginative sphere created by grave voices broadcast over the radio.

After so much watching I began to wonder about what IT was before my eyes. My meager conclusion stands as such: there seem to be two types of situation one finds when spending time with the television; first that you are being spoken to directly, such as with news programs, certain portions of talk shows, sales networks and documentaries while in the second case you are allowed to over hear or participate in an event as if you were a fly on the wall. The second situation includes sitcoms, reality television, movies etcetera. A relatively innocuous observation, until I realized that in each case I was being subjected to a frighteningly perverse simulation of intimacy.

Regarding simulation a man of contemplative depth (see title) stated that, “to simulate is to feign what one hasn’t,” and since he mentions this in an effort to notify readers of the demise of reality and truth, it seems fitting to include it in my thoughts on television. I would like to keep this quote in mind as I proceed to the point of this post which is the disturbingly over publicized death and memorial of Michael Jackson.

In terms of the perversion of intimacy this event spanned both types of situation I had identified. There were the somber intonations of news anchors reflecting with mechanized empathy the loss of one who seemed to become much more significant once we found he was dead. While the “King of Pop” epithet has been around for years, the insisted grief pushed by individuals in the news and the constant repetition of just how influential and how significant his contribution to not only music, but to popular culture, became stultifying, and rather than a mere monarch he seemed to enjoy worship reserved for the gods. I should note that I am in no way joyous at his demise; a death, regardless of how popular you’ve become, is always a time for reflection and some level of sadness (depending on your belief in exactly what death means) and should be revered, for it is the end we all shall meet. It is the insistence that as a culture-loving populace that we should mourn harder, mourn more deeply and allow the bastions of televised information to supplant issues of import with retrospective slide shows and video clips that disturbs me. It is as if the world stopped turning for just a moment and we were asked to mark the time and place we were when we learned of Michael Jackson’s death, to recount to our children and grandchildren in the future.

Jaded, angry, unfair, insensitive. I may be all these things, but the entire fiasco was a testament to the latching-on, spewing-forth nature of what we’ve determined legitimate news in our country, only the elements that touch us as humans and to which news latches on are always digested for us before landing in front of our faces. Add the full coverage of his Staples Center service, the repeated retrospecitves of his career and life available on nearly any channel preferred, and it began to feel as if, all at once, a full picture of life was presented which justified the lump in the throat, the tear gently rolling down the cheek. Have we forgotten that emotional response is not merely an indulgent luxury?

To bring us back to the idea that “to simulate is to feign what one hasn’t,” it seemed as if the spectacle of Michael Jackson’s death and memorial had reached the level of hyper-reality, a grandiose parade of archetypal cues to elicit emotional response void of the potential for reflective growth. Rolling out in his solid gold casket, in a venue symbolic of the commercial aggrandizement of entertainers we bore witness to the simulation of a death of a modern day god. Jackson had enough fame and resources to feign significance as he passed, and by virtue of his fame and resources entertainment outlets feigned expressions of grief normally reserved for intimate off-air occasions, and as spectators most of us feigned interest. And instead of allowing for the family to have time to themselves we demanded more, gave ratings to shows that trailed mourning Jacksons and yearned to see and learn intimate details hid away during Michael’s life. Propriety is lost when reality is lost; in simulation we are allowed to demand like wild jackals our insatiable hunger be satisfied.

Once comfort is found in simulation, interest in reality wanes. This is the price of spending too much time in front of the television, since all of what comes before us on our flicker boxes is simulation. The recent coverage of Michael Jackson’s death stole a bit of our reality, and there is no turning back. It was large enough to commandeer the majority of basic cable stations, supplant issues of import, and to blur the lines between the reality of human response in times of grief and suffering, and entertainment.