The idea of Michael Jackson as a mythological figure isn’t anything new. No one gets as universally famous as he did without attaining something close to demigod status. The many eccentricities that he personally confirmed only fed rumors of other, weirder eccentricities that may or may not have been real–and his unwillingness to definitively address them led the public to consider every tale equally true. In turn that made Jackson seem all the more mythological.
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The first person I thought about after I accepted the news was this Michael Jackson impersonator I remember performing every weekend in this one little alleyway in downtown Ann Arbor. He didn’t really do the costume thing too seriously–no sequined military jacket or anything–but he had obviously studied Michael’s movements so deeply and practiced them for so many unimaginable hours that every one of his moves, even simple gestures, was uncannily Michael-like. You could watch him for hours, literally. He was there all day–every Sunday, I think it was.
