Main focus of Monday, June 29, 2009

The world mourns Michael Jackson

The surprising death of Michael Jackson last Thursday has stirred the world. While the circumstances of his death remain unexplained, the European press comments the worldwide sorrow and the cult surrounding the pop star. Jackson only lived to be 50, but his music moved an entire generation.

Lapin Kansa - Finland

The daily Lapin Kansa shows understanding for the hype around Michael Jackson's death: "The news of his death sped around the world, and people were quick to commemorate the talented artist wherever they were. Just a few minutes after the message reached [the northern Finnish city] Rovaniemi, Jackson's music was playing in the city's nichtclubs. People are saying Michael Jackson's sudden death has shocked the entertainment world as much as the death of Beatle John Lennon in 1980. ... Jackson was famous not only for his music, but also for his colourful life, full of dramas and tragedies. Everyone was talking about his plastic surgery, the accusations of paedophilia and his financial worries. .. Jackson was a major star, and the sorrow all over the world is understandable. Not surprisingly, however, many are questioning whether his death is so important that the world must halt in its tracks. But collective mourning is a phenomenon of our times, and there's no harm in it." (29/06/2009)

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Trouw - Netherlands

In the daily Trouw columnist Rob Schouten explores why the whole world is mourning the death of Michael Jackson, pointing out that after all he was not a musical genius of the calibre of Johann Sebastian Bach, for example: "Perhaps the fame and grief that Michael Jackson is now provoking are justified. He certainly had the right ingredients for being a darling of the public. In the beginning he was handsome and famous, then he become a tragic figure and a failure. What appeals to us about icons is their rise but then above all their fall. Elvis, Princess Diana. You can take delight in their lives and then see how miserably it all ended despite everything. The memento mori of our times. The inconceivable virus that apparently goes hand in hand with global appeal. … I believe that part of the mass mourning is also a sense of relief that we ourselves don't have to be that way. That in the end fame and fortune don't really count, but that we nonetheless must now return to our search for a new king who can teach us this." (29/06/2009)

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Kathimerini - Greece

In the daily I Kathimerini Maria Katsounaki writes on Michael Jackson the man: "It's very easy to talk about a great but deeply disturbed talent. But it's also true in part. However if we look back at the history of the star cult and the music industry, it's very difficult to find an idol without 'oddities'. Jackson personified showbiz in it's most extreme form. He reflected the absolute problem of experiencing the adventure of showbiz without losing himself in the process. In his delusion he attacked his face, his external appearance. Too weak to master the turbulence within him, he made changing his appearance part of an ongoing pop spectacle. A believer in supernatural gifts, he retreated into Neverland. And he lost, because he wasn't Peter Pan. He simply didn't want to grow up." (28/06/2009)

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La Vanguardia - Spain

Commenting on the unexpected death of Michael Jackson the Spanish daily La Vanguardia writes: "A true genius is someone who shapes an era. He who through his work establishes a before and after in artistic endeavour. Following Michael Jackson's meteoric rise in the 1970s and 1980s nothing was ever the same again in pop music. … While someone is still living it is difficult for us to extricate one's attention from their personal misfortunes and recognise the genius in its full transcendence. Now what remains is the legend. The music and the spectacle which thanks to him made one of those huge leaps forward that are so rare in the course of history." (27/06/2009)

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