los mejores adiós a MJ

Ya era portada en 1971.

Otras veces he escrito aquí sobre mi entusiasmo por los obituarios como subgénero periodístico, y esta semana ha sido un total deleite, no sólo para leer estupenda prosa post-mortem sobre un símbolo cultural cuya dimensión probablemente no vuelva a tener símil, sino para observar con asombro cómo un mismo hecho puede disparar en tiempo récord ante nuestros ojos y de modo simultáneo al peor y el mejor periodismo. Siempre había lamentado no poder recordar bien la cobertura que en su momento tuvieron las muertes de John Lennon y Elvis Presley, pero estos días he estado pagada con creces: el morbo a rienda suelta, el análisis sociológico más punzante, la vitalidad de algunos blogs y su agilísima observación, y la irremediable insularidad de nuestros lamentables diarios (en La Tercera, se le encargaron los obituarios ¡a un crítico de cine y un panelista político!); todo aquello confirmado con cientos de ejemplos, como para encerrarse a leer sin parar en un continuo de opiniones que, peor o mejor expresadas, dicen mucho más de nuestros medios y la relación que establecemos con ellos que, por supuesto, del pobre de Michael (que al fin descansa en paz, lejos de su abominable padre y sus horribles hermanos).

Enjoy:

Según ascendía a las alturas enrarecidas del reconocimiento planetario, desaparecía la posibilidad de recibir consejos ¡o advertencias! Imposible contar con su familia, dependiente económicamente de su buena voluntad y lastrada por añejas miserias. Sus representantes y gestores se mostraban mudos: dado que Michael fue motor de los años gloriosos de la industria musical, era mezquino plantear un futuro en que se secara la fuente. Nadie chistaba cuando se lanzaba a un frenesí de compras, nadie le hacía ver que su método para grabar música no tenía sentido económico… ni artístico.

⎯Diego Manrique, en El País.

Van a llover ríos por la muerte de esta cosa preciosa que se llamaba Michael Jackson. Ríos de tinta y ríos de lágrimas, y también ríos de mentiras. La verdad en cambio se sujeta sola y no se va a mover de donde estaba.

⎯Ray Loriga, en El País.

If he did anything wrong in his life, and part of me doesn’t ever want to know if he did, he certainly also did more good than any of us can ever conceive of. He was easily the greatest dancer of the past three decades, probably the greatest singer, and quite possibly the greatest songwriter. Which adds up the greatest entertainer, period. ‘I can guarantee you one thing, we will never agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis,’ Lester Bangs wrote in his obit 32 years ago, only a couple years before Michael Jackson definitively proved him wrong, emerging full-blown into adulthood as the world’s most popular musician by presaging generations of young people who would celebrate their adulthood by refusing to grow up. And he emerged, of course, with some of the most celebratory music anybody from those generations will ever hear. But always, in the middle of that celebration, and not always submerged, there was dread. If anybody deserves to finally rest in peace, it’s him.

—Chuck Eddy, citado en All Music Guide.

There are plenty of upsides to the new unfiltered, multiple-choice pop culture of 2009. We get to decide what we want to listen to and watch, and we can listen and watch whenever we want [...]. But there is something sad about our infinite menu of options. It could very well mean the end of true superstardom and with it, the end the collective experience on display Thursday night in Union Square.

Everyone there knew Michael Jackson. Everyone there had watched him, sang with him, tried to dance with him and, yes, everyone was collectively aghast by much of his recent behavior. But he was ours. If nothing else, his passing reminds us of how little in pop culture we currently share.

⎯David Segal en el New York Times.

He was no good to us alive, falling apart physically and mentally, making repeated attempts to repair his image and reputation, reminding us again and again that the neurotic energy, dangerous perfectionism and desperate ambition he’d turned into dazzling, video-age show business had eventually turned back on him and started to eat him up. [...] The media had become as bizarre in its obsessions and anxieties as Jackson himself. The cultural stars were in alignment. Even as he lost ultimate control he somehow took absolute control of the coverage of his life and death, disappearing behind hundreds of versions of himself, now always in our lives whether we liked the idea or not. He had been disgraced as a living legend, but death had given him back, one way or another, the kind of grace he craved. The grace that comes when your fame, and your name, cannot be taken away.

⎯Paul Morley, en The Guardian.

Mr. Jackson built his stardom on paradox. As a child star he was precocious; as an adult he was childlike. His only competition was himself. Within the razzle-dazzle of his songs, he sang about fears and uncertainties in that high, vulnerable voice.

⎯Jon Pareles ,en el New York Times.

Smokey Robinson, otro de los más grandes cantantes y compositores que surgieron de Motown, recuerda en sus memorias que ese Michael era “un chico extraño y adorable. Yo siempre lo vi como un alma vieja en el cuerpo de un chico… sentías que había vivido otras vidas, parecía demasiado grande para ser tan joven”. Quizá sea precisamente la inversión de esa ecuación la que Jackson no pudo soportar. Aun después de pasar toda su vida en el negocio del espectáculo, la perspectiva de vivir con el alma de un chico en el cuerpo de un viejo estaba más allá de lo que podía soportar.

⎯Claudio Kleiman, en Página 12.

Thursday night in New York was hot—after weeks of rain, it was one of the first real summer nights of the year. Car windows were open all over the city, and just about every station on the radio dial had switched to an all-Michael Jackson format; for the first (and, for all we know, the last) time, it felt as if absolutely everyone was listening to the same songs. Later that night, at least one bar in Brooklyn continued the celebration into the early hours of Friday. If you lived above it, you may have found yourself awake at 3 A.M., listening to a song you knew by heart: that familiar thump, that familiar chant. As Jackson and Dibango and millions of listeners discovered, you can’t escape “Thriller.” But, then, why would you want to?

⎯Kelefa Sanneh, en The New Yorker.

It comes down to the fact that Michael Jackson gave. Whether he chose to or did it because it was all he knew, he sacrificed himself in the name of his art. Jackson gave almost his entire life on this planet to singing, to dancing, to recording, to performing. He practiced, he watched James Brown and Jackie Wilson and Diana Ross and he watched his brothers. He bent, when he had to, to the will of those who could have done better by him.

⎯Danyel Smith, en CNN.

Judging by the way that Google almost broke yesterday under the strain I think it’s fair to say that Michael Jackson’s was the first death of a massive star in the internet age. TV and radio suddenly look and sound very quaint, huffing and puffing in the wake of the story, trying to assemble talking heads to say anything meaningful; even as they are talking people are coming up with new angles and implications. What happens to the kids? Where does this leave the London shows? Are his mother and father speaking to each other? Do you think these shows will actually happen in some strange animatronic form? How long will Sony leave it before the TV ads start? Bet they’re glad they didn’t auction the personal effects a month or two back. Does McCartney get the ATV catalogue back? I hear the funeral is going to be Muslim. What religion was he? Will Neverland be reopened to the public? How many people are working on one-shots right now? And so on.

⎯David Hepworth, en The Word.

Pero la muerte hace brillar la esencia y, al margen de que a Jackson se le considerara el loco de atar que agitaba bebés por la ventana, se sometía a operaciones quirúrgicas que desfiguraban su rostro y vivía en un parque de atracciones, hay algo que cualquier estadounidense respeta, sea del Medio Oeste, de California o de esta ciudad única que es Nueva York: el ritmo. El ritmo es un don al que se rinde el músico, el presidente y el hombre de la calle. América es el ritmo. Y Jackson estaba sobrado de él.

⎯Elvira Lindo, en El País.

His art had been fuelled by the vernacular culture of the streets but it was many years since he had been able to run with the kids on the block. As his imagination faltered and grew dim, the fending off of maturity became desperate, demented and pointless. The struggle against ageing turned into self-harming and self-mutilation.

Ever since Dionysos danced ahead of his horde of bloody-footed maenads across the rocky highlands of prehistoric Greece, dance and song have been the province of boys. Like Orpheus, Jackson was destroyed by his fans, whose adulation and adoration prevented his living in any kind of normal society. The creativity ebbed away day by day. He became a parody of himself. It is time now to forget all that and salute the miraculous boy who will triumph over death as Dionysos did, becoming immortal through his art.

⎯Germaine Greer, en The Guardian.

If a death from a cardiac arrest seems too small and sudden a death for Michael Jackson, the biggest superstar in the world, it’s because no death would seem appropriate for the self-proclaimed King of Pop. At his best and at his worst, Michael Jackson never quite seemed to belong to this world -his talent too enormous to comprehend, his self-imposed fantastical seclusion too odd to understand – so envisioning an end never quite seemed possible, although in many ways the final chapter in his tragic rise and fall was written years ago.

⎯Stephen Thomas Erlewine, en All Music Guide.

Eres el primer ídolo verdadero que se nos muere, porque como cabros chicos chilenos no crecimos escuchando las cuecas de Eduardo Parra sino que tus canciones en un noventero “Más Música”.

⎯Equipo Gugulson.