Iconic passages

Just when I’m getting riled up over politicians cheating on their wives and families and reality TV couples announcing divorce, in one day we hear that two big entertainment stars (OK, one big, the other BIG) have died. I’m actually feeling more emotional over the first two events, which I’ll write about later. But considering the impact that Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson had as celebrities, I give them tribute. In short, however, given the passage of time, their importance has been reduced to a poster, a haircut and a film performance, and an album and a video, respectively.

Here are my brief tributes to what both of these people meant to me. Keep in mind – and context here does matter – that when Farrah was big I was a college student. When Michael Jackson was big, it’s 8 to 10 years later and I’m in my late 20s/early 30s.

For those of you who didn’t know Farrah Fawcett’s impact, let me tell you: that poster and her haircut were HUGE in the mid to late 1970s. Every guy I knew had that poster of her in the red swimsuit (it paralleled Rita Hayworth, Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe and Raquel Welch’s in the pantheon of pin up girl posters). Every girl I knew tried to have her angel wing haircut. Personally I could never pull it off. Not enough styling gel. That haircut was frankly, revolutionary. It was long and sexy and wavy. Until then most of us sported long and straight and boring. That poster (and the Charlie’s Angels show) returned public attention to women as sex objects after years of our demanding to be considered otherwise. Sure they were strong, tough and in Kate Jackson’s case, smart-ish. But still they were sexy first and they followed the orders of a man. As young women, we wanted Farrah’s hair but the likes of her didn’t do much to help us resolve the formation of our new identities as independent women.

Then just as we began to forget about her, she used her celebrity status for good. Farrah resurfaced in 1984 as a legitimate actress. She made a TV film called “The Burning Bed.” It was about a woman who killed her husband after years of abuse. More than that, it contextualized the woman’s suffering, showing us the forces that led her to stay with a man who was so cruel to her, and that contributed to her eventual action. It was really powerful film And you know what? Farrah could act. This single performance redeemed her to me then, and elevated her value as an entertainer.

But that was it. I don’t remember her being more than a celebrity after that. Passing between Lee Majors and Ryan O’Neal, but no body of serious acting work. Still, for the icon she was to us (even if it stalled women’s fight for equality) and for bringing the issue of domestic abuse to public attention, here’s to you, Farrah Fawcett.

I have fewer words for Michael Jackson. Don’t get me wrong, I liked and very much value his work. And certainly, as an entertainment icon, the guy will be up there with Elvis, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe. The news of his death was to me as to the rest of the world, shocking.

But to me, Michael Jackson was the Thriller album and video and a best selling artist.

And that was it. Meaning I embraced his talent for about a decade,  exercised to his music at aerobic classes in my 30s, and revisit the greatness of his songs on the album (which lives in the CD holder of my car as I write this) and his overall talents as an entertainer on the video of Thriller. But I am not into music enough to appreciate all that be brought to our world, musically. As a white person, I can’t appreciate what his presence meant for African Americans at that time in history, not in the same way I’ve come to understand about Sidney Poitier as an actor in the early 1960s, for instance. After Thriller and Jackson’s musical presence into the early 1990s, how he was represented to us was just sad and odd. More parallels with Elvis.

I’m sure with the passage of time, the richness of his life will be told in many ways by many people. And we’ll understand the many dimensions of this man. And I hope I learn the good that he did with his fame and power, because now we hear only of his record of pedophilia and idiosynchrasies. When Elvis died, we heard only about his addiction to drugs, his weight and his unusual nightclub appearances. As the years have passed, we’ve learned more about his contribution to music and the road that took him to celebrity and sadness. Because I know so little about him, I hope Michael Jackson’s legacy gives him an appropriate place in our culture.

~ by modelmom on June 26, 2009.