Cultural Review

Emelie Erlandson

Cultural Review

11-14-09



Moonwalking across our hearts, Michael Jackson has always been in the lime light, though not always positively. It seems that Jackson was always in the news for some reason or another. Since his death, there seems to be a dramatic switch in attitude towards the king of pop.

His album sales in the U.S. hit 2.3 million during the next three weeks after his death. There is also a new T.V. series about the Jackson family being made. This shows the desire of the American public to hear and learn more about the Jackson family. Finally, there is the new This is It concert movie that is currently in theatres. I saw this with my boyfriend and his aunt. When we went, the theatre was about half full. The movie basically gives a “behind the scenes” look at what the new Jackson tour would have consisted of. The video goes through each song, and what special effects were going to take place. We are also introduced to the backup dancers that would be accompanying Jackson on the stage, and the process that they went through to learn how to become an “extension of Michael.” What I liked about this movie, was the fact that it gave its audience a look at how different people and elements come together to make a show. There are even parts in concert where we see Michael correcting the musicians, and where we see him “feeling the song,” so that he can come up with his own correography for it. The movie was one hour and 51 minutes, and in this time, there was not a moment when I thought to myself “is this almost done?”.

This was after the movie had been in the movie theatre for about a week. My boyfriend has never been a Michael Jackson fan. He says that he “never really hated him, but I just never got interested in his music.” The reaction from his aunt was similar, who said that she didn’t “hate him or love him.” The three of us decided that was Michael Jackson still alive, we would probably not take the time to go see the movie. His death created a new interest in us to find out about the “man behind the glove.”

Last Saturday, I stood at the Tinsteletown movie theatre in Erie. I asked ten people why they had gone to see the movie. Two people said that LOVED Michael Jackson, and that they genuinely wanted to see the video. The husband of one of those two people said that their wife made them go because they love this idol. The remaining seven all said that they had fairly neutral feelings about Michael Jackson. They said that it just looked like an interesting movie, and that they wanted to see what he had been planning to do. When I asked them if they thought that they would go see This Is It if Jackson was still alive, they said probably not. One man said that “drama creates excitement, and most people probably saw it because there was the drama of his death surrounding it. This statement summed up all of my findings in, what I felt, was a brilliant way.