Mourning the 1980s
A mere hours after we all heard the news, Linda Holmes over at NPR had already put her finger on it. I was a young kid when Michael Jackson became popular, and honestly "Thriller" and "Billie Jean" would have escaped unnoticed if not for my mother. She had a big dancer crush on Michael Jackson, although she'll probably deny it now.* She played "Billie Jean" for us, bobbing her head and snapping her fingers, which even at that age I thought was so embarrassing. When I whined, "Ohhhh Mooommm," she gave me a lecture about Jackson's talents, particularly his dancing skills. (I should probably add that my mother was a dancer for most of her life up until that point, so this was one time when she actually knew what she was talking about.) I remember her calling me over to the television to watch "Thriller," and even if I didn't think my mom was particularly cool, that video was. It was the first music video I had ever seen, and it was awesome.
But the moonwalk! Oh, man. I don't know a kid of my generation who didn't spend hours in sock feet attempting to moonwalk across the kitchen floor. For years. Maybe our moonwalking phase was shorter than I remember, but it was like an obsession that seemed to last for most of the 1980s. We all wanted to do it, and it still kind of bugs me that I never got the hang of it.**
And so despite all the crazy Michael Jackson antics of the last several years, I think the thing most of us will remember is probably that glorious time in the mid-1980s. The moonwalk. Dancing zombies. Billie Jean. As Linda Holmes says in her article, "To a lot of people, he was everything terrible about celebrity, but to a lot of other people — or perhaps to many of the same people — he was everything good about the summer of 1983."
*Mom'll also probably deny her dancer crush on Patrick Swayze, but she had one of those as well. And, well, maybe I had one too. I've also had a life-long dancer crush on Mikhail Baryshnikov, but then who hasn't?
**I've also always been bothered by the fact that I never learned to breakdance.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
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5 comments:
Gack. I might be the same age as your mom. But I liked him when he was one of the Jackson 5. And I am one of those people for whom the creepifying, nutso Jackson blots out the light that was the star.
Let's just say I was born in the decade following the one you once said you were born in. At least I think so. But it's all in the mind, isn't it? (Please tell me it's all in the mind!)
Don't get me wrong, he was definitely creepy. I think I'm disappointed because as long as he was alive, I could kind of hope he'd de-creepify himself at some point. There was still time for redemption. Now he's just dead.
No one, male or female, gay or straight, dancer or hopeless clutz, who has seen Dirty Dancing could possibly fail to have a crush on Patrick Swayze.
I had a crush on Patrick Swayze in Road House, for God's sake, which has to be one of the worst movies every committed to film.
Road House! I love that one, too! Man, um...what does that say about me?
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