The Funk of Forty Thousand Years

As some of you in the know may have discovered – and I hope this isn’t a shock to you – Michael Jackson is dead.

Throughout this weekend, may people have struggled to know how to react to the passing of a controversial, talented, freakish and probably pedorasting figure, but there has been one reaction that has been wonderfully uncomplicated: his music, especially the “Thriller” album, have been played everywhere, all the time, and people are dancing their asses off.

It’s hard to think of a better memorial than people around the world started spontaneously singing and dancing joyously to the deceased work. It’s been amazing and I hope it keeps up. It struck me today: we have “Thriller”-era Michael Jackson back.

In life, for the past few decades it’s been impossible to unconditionally love Michael Jackson the figure unconditionally, the great things he did were in the past, and his present was occupied by the ghoulish freak he’d become, an acid-trip Batman villian who was widely believed to molest children. Now the is no “present” for Michael Jackson; both the Guy Who Made Thriller and Wacko Jacko are in the past. We can view both at greater remove and seperate the two from each other now that they no longer share a living body. This sounds totally macabre and in some ways it is, but on the other hand, 80s Michael Jackson is a massive presence in our lives again; he is freed from his older creepier doppelganger; a legend who bought joy to people around the world is back, and in no way can that be a bad thing.