Why resurrecting dead celebrities with technology is not the best way of honoring their legacy.
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How long before we let Micheal Jackson rest in peace? Not until the last money has been made from his corpse, apparently.
Commerce dictates that as long as there is any demand for Jackson, in any form, that the estate continues to keep him in the public eye.
That’s what I thought as I watched a hologram of Jackson “perform” Slave To The Rhythm, a previously unreleased song “contemporized” for his new album Xscape, on the Billboard Music Awards Sunday night.
Yes, there was at first an undeniable thrill to seeing Jackson, even if it was a hologram, dance across the floor again in those moves that we all grew up with, that we know by heart (performed by a “Dangerous”-era Jackson before his looks totally got scary). It’s just human nature to yearn for what we miss. There was also awe at the technology that made the very life-like hologram possible (it seems like tremendous advances have been made even since the Tupac hologram appeared at Coachella two years ago).
But then a certain creepiness set in. With every close up, it was clear that, of course, it was not really Michael Jackson. It was a Michael Jackson created in a laboratory and, like a clone, as close as it seemed to the real thing, it was, in actuality, very far from it.
As the Jacko-gram danced with real flesh and blood dancers, the disparity became even greater, but it almost feels like it’s too late to put the hologram back in the bottle.
How long before the Jackson estate and Sony announce that Jacko-gram is going on tour? Or that the Jacko-gram is being added into Cirque du Soleil’s Jackson salute, “Immortal?” As the technology advances to make holograms more lifelike, the demand for them will grow, just as our nostalgia does with each year following Jackson’s 2009 passing.
Friday night, a friend of mine asked if I thought it was exploitative for Epic to release Xscape. He brought up this piece by Savage Garden’s Darren Hayes, who expressed his dismay over the album and that, although he loved Jackson, he wouldn’t be buying Xscape. In fact, his love for Jackson was exactly why he couldn’t support the new effort because there was no way of knowing if Jackson would have approved of his unfinished work being released, not only in this manner, but released at all.
He has a point. The eight songs on Xscape were written as far back as 30 years ago, and for whatever reason, Jackson decided not to put them on the album, leaving all of them unfinished. That means at some point, for whatever reason, Jackson chose to focus on other material that he felt was better and more appropriate for the current project of the time. The versions that we hear on Xscape aren’t his vision for the songs, they are someone else’s guess at how Jackson would have completed the song.
To be sure, there have been other cases where previously unreleased material by a deceased artist comes out— again, Tupac comes to mind here. But for someone as much of a perfectionist as Jackson, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that maybe these songs were put aside for a reason and maybe they should have been left that way, despite whatever enjoyment we may get from hearing them unearthed.
Hayes went so far as to alter his will so that after he dies, his half-finished material will not be released (he writes this with total humility and in no way is ever comparing himself to Jackson).
Are we at the point where every artist with any commercial value needs to decide how his/her image/music can be used after death…and somehow figure out a way to include technologies that we can’t even dream of yet?
The answer is yes, especially when there’s money to be made. The Jackson Family’s failed suit against AEG, even though there may have been some validity, felt more like a money grab than a case of true wrongful death.
So five years after his death, as Jackson’s Xscape most likely bows at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and the Billboard Jacko-gram ignites endless possibilities, I can’t help but think that Jackson is spinning in his grave, wishing that for all the work he had his lawyers do for him, they’d addressed this issue.
-modified photo Jakkrit Nooklaew/ Flickr Creative Commons
About the Author: Melinda Newman is the former West Coast Bureau Chief for Billboard Magazine with more than 15 years of music industry experience. She also covers entertainment for The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Variety, MSN, AOL and other outlets.
Why should a pedophile rest in peace?
How ignorant can you be? If you want to be enlightened on that whole rape accusation fallacy look here >> http://its-slander.tumblr.com/
It disgusts my that people are still oblivious to the truth, writing such uneducated comments. Your comment made me cringe.
ANd why cant you respect MJ and NOT call him Jacko. That was a name he though was insulting.