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Edited on Wed Jul-08-09 10:45 AM by SidneyCarton
As I watched the raging arguments yesterday about Michael Jackson's memorial and read the descriptions of the actual ceremony, my mind was drawn back to my the practice among the Romans or deifying their dead Emperors. During the days of the Empire, certain well-beloved, or extremely influential Emperors (Julius Caesar, Augustus, Claudius, Titus, etc…) were made Gods in the Roman pantheon upon their deaths, and worshiped much as the Romans worshiped Jupiter, Mars, Venus and others.
It seems to me that Western Civilization is nowhere near as monotheistic or rational as we would like ourselves to believe. One needs merely to look back on some of the most recent funerals for the famous dead. Whether it was the multi-day funerary rites for former President Ronald Reagan, (who now has a heroic-sized statue in the Capitol rotunda, our “temple of democracy” all we now lack is the daily sacrifice of goats or something to make his cult complete) to the massive outpouring of grief at the passing of Princess Diana, or the ongoing and extremely robust cult of the long-dead Elvis Presley. If we are becoming a “post-Christian” nation, I don’t think atheists should start celebrating just yet, for in the place of the God of the Abrahamic religions we seem to be adopting any number of lesser beings, whom we “deify” through popular acclamation.
We see these “new Gods” every day, they are all over the supermarket checkout stands. There’s Brad (Pitt) the beguiled and Angelina (Jolie) the beguiler, Jen (Aniston) the perpetually wronged, Jon & Kate the greedy with their innumerable spawn, who are only rivaled by the “Octomom” and her even more ridiculously larger brood, for the title of bizarre fertility deities. We have our goddesses of sex in Megan (Fox), Paris (Hilton), Britney (Spears), and Jessica (Simpson), our domestic goddesses in Martha (Stewart) and Rachel (Ray), and somewhere in this mess we manage to fit in Oprah, (whose title would probably be so broad and complex to defy specification). Our Gods are divided between the celebrity sex gods of George (Clooney), Brad (Pitt), Orlando (Bloom), Johnny (Depp) (doubtless, I could go on…) and political gods and goddesses (Barack, Sarah (Palin), the Bills (O’Reilly and Clinton) and of course, Hillary). Then there are our fallen deities, desperately seeking redemption in the public eye. This sad collection includes both those who have fallen through their own ineptitude (John Edwards, Lindsay Lohan, Chris Brown) as well as those who have been victims of circumstance and our own unrealistic expectations of the mortals who we have deified (Kristie Alley comes to mind here, with her ongoing weight battles) these poor creatures act as the new morality plays, showing us the social consequences of “sin” (Infidelity, substance abuse, domestic abuse, obesity) and yet, as celebrity “gods” these souls also are reserved an opportunity for forgiveness that the rest of us are seemingly denied, they may be redeemed of their public misconduct (adultery, DUI’s etc…) with far greater facility and frequency than any of us mere “mortals.”
Such behavior is mildly facinating to me, particularly in the case of the recently departed Mr. Jackson. In his later life Michael Jackson was a rather grotesque joke, a man who seemed to frozen in a perpetual and bizarre childhood. His strange and inexplicable antics seemed to confirm the worst rumors surrounding his character and the alleged abuses that he had been accused, and yet acquitted of in earlier situations. And yet, upon his death men and women who would have chuckled or sniped at the mention of his name a mere day eariler had seemingly descended into a paroxysm of agonized, worshipful frenzy at his passing. It is as if, in the proverbial “twinkling of an eye,” Michael Jackson has been entirely transfigured from the byword for celebrity gone horribly awry, to the mourned elder statesman of pop, whose loss leaves an irreparable void in our society. To hear the accolades being heaped upon him, one would assume that his entire life in from the mid-90’s to the present had never been, and that his achievements of the 80’s had been the last chapter in a life that had gone from triumph to triumph. Thus a man dies and a myth is born, Michael Jackson did not die yesterday, he ascended into Celebrity Valhalla.
The ongoing arguments on this subject, are akin to the arguments in the R/T forum between believers and Atheists. Those who do not share in the adoration of Mr. Jackson, find this outpouring of reverential commemoration bizarre and slightly farcical, prompting the most irreverent of them to mockery. On the other hand, those who hold a special place in their hearts for him, see such mockery as rank disrespect, and respond as one whose beliefs and worldview have been scorned. What we really have here is a case of denominational differences, one we are unlikely to see the end of anytime soon.
Edited for Spelling
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