This should interest culture studies people. When Elvis kicked the bucket in 1977, people were confused and a spate of Elvis sightings were reported that continues on to the 21st century. The scientific explanation for this is that Elvis impersonators flourish everywhere. In the Philippines, you just have to see RJ in Makati! Here Jacko is rightly or wrongly compared to the King or Rock and Roll. But we have had a few reports of Jacko post-mortem sightings. One hospital janitor is convinced that he saw Jacko slip out of the UCLA Medical Center ER dressed as a nun! The latest to storm cyberspace is about his ghost that seems to be moonwalking in a CNN video about Neverland. My students sent me the YouTube link.
Elvis and Jacko are American cultural phenomena. But Elvis kicked the bucket in a time when the fastest way to get news was through satellite broadcast (in the Philippines it was mainly by microwave) or if by print through TELEX (If you are from generation Z you will ask “What is that?”). Fax machines I believe had been invented but weren’t in commercial use.
Looking at the history of Elvis sightings, very few have claimed to see his ghost, but the real Elvis.
Wacko Jacko kicked the bucket in the age of 1) Internet, 2) Facebook, 3) Twitter, 4) SMS and my mom (who’s turning 80) got the SMS less than 5 minutes after the death was announced. Imagine being greeted at breakfast “Michael Jackson is dead!” In other words, we got the news almost instantly.
Which leaves us a question, why do people now see his ghost? Do ghosts come out of the Internet via YouTube?
In the Medieval ages, people saw ghosts since they were 1) hungry, 2) have eaten ergot, 3) scared by the Church, or 4) drunk. In this post-modern but still secular age, we shouldn’t see ghosts.
Now cloning mammals has been a reality for more than 20 years. Success in cloning your dog and cat is no longer news. I did expect some wacko to suggest that we resurrect Jacko as a clone. Before this wackiness was limited to movies such as “Boys from Brazil” where Dr Mengele tried to clone the Fuhrer! Maybe the whole idea of cloning Jacko is extremely bizarre that fans won’t even contemplate it. I really did expect someone to steal his nose and clone this (oooooops that’s the plot of Woody Allen’s 1973 comedy “Sleeper”!) But still I wonder do the fans have a boundary they won’t cross? While Jacko fans won’t be thrilled by impersonators, they probably will be by the ghost!
The Medieval still lives. The Funk of 1000 years and every ghoul will seal your doom!
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on a recent “the daily show”, jon asked rhetorically, now that he’s dead, can we please stop calling him that awful nickname ‘jacko’?
yes, that would only be proper & polite. celebrities like Michael Jackson are human beings too with feelings that can get hurt or offended. it just so happen that they are public figures and their job is to entertain us, but that does not give us any right at all to hurt them in the same way that we do not have any right at all to hurt other fellow non-celebrity human being.
That’s the price of being famous!
Our age is the Age of Clones. You can clone your dog, your wife,
your husaband, your friends, your enemies, etc…Politicians can
even their political successors, themselves, or anybody else.
Soon you will hear news that Michael Jackson was sighted in Boracay
doing his moonwalk!
Speaking of ghosts,
what is the background of the elaborate Philippine superstitions
in this very Catholic surrounding?
Is it a native handmedown or is this more accurately a spooky jungle hideaway for all the spirits of antiquity?
My wife collects them, these superstitions,
thus we have these bullet good luck charms we and the kid wear when we travel,
I am not allowed to stack the plates, as that means something bad,
various assorted good luck charms hang about the home,
assorted herbal medicines supplement the vitamins we buy at no small price,
and amidst this,
she goes to church most weekends and says her prayers religiously every night.
The “white lady” inhabits the trees near the village where my Mindanao place resides,
and the villagers are truly spooked by her.
Me too.
Our house ended up haunted, though it was built in 2005,
so the poundings and rattlings ring loud whenever there was any angst in the vicinity.
I am inclined not to set aside the notion of some spiritual hauntings hereabouts, so,
why risk offending the ghost of Jacko or anyone else?
Joe
The “white lady” inhabits the trees near the village where my Mindanao place resides,
and the villagers are truly spooked by her.
Joe:
I’m from Northern Mindanao and it has been a while that people have referred to a place as a village. Unless one truly lives in a remote barrio or sitio in any of the provinces of Mindanao. Are you then maybe referring to villages as in the many gated subdivision villages in these parts? Also now referred to as townships?
Remote barrio, I dunno, which I call a fishing village. It is a barangay about 20 minutes removed from its parent town. Commercial establishments include maybe 5 sari sari stores and a pool room. About 50 fishing boats go out nightly.
It is as far from a gated subdivision, conceptwise, as it is possible to get.
Joe
I know what you are saying. We Filipinos have so many superstitions. These is still very much alive even today. What’s with whiteladies and other monsters.
Even the whole island of Siquijor was branded as haunted.
I also recalled that I was almost eaten by a monster known as “tiktik” when I was inside my Mom’s womb. I do not know if its true but my Mom and Dad believes that the attack occured.
In our village, there still tiktiks roaming at night.
Filipino superstitions for quite a lot of situations are aplenty Joe – from elves in small earth mounds (nuno sa punso) to giants in old trees (kapre), such as that the Philippines has it’s own cyclical genre of fright flicks woven around them.
There have been varied theories from the early Filipinos being ancestor and spirit worshippers to present day folk believing in mediums to talk to dead loved ones, including those who died in violent circumstance to point to their killers.
I once drove down a side road into the hills. I came up over this little knoll and stopped to look out over the hills. The creepiest feeling came over me. Truly surreal. I climbed into my car and headed quickly back to where I belonged. I found out later that this was the site of some of the most intense rebel/Japanese fighting toward the end of WWII. It is where the Japanese had fled to, nowhere else to go.
I fear they are still there.
Joe
Joe, you Americans are lucky. You have your exorcists and your ghostbusters.
We Pinoys make do with our mangkukulams who can double as an exorcist on the side. Of course we have also our reliable mangtatawas.
Now,I know ghostbusting is pretty easy, Joe. All you need are lots of money to buy the high tech equipments, and lots of guts…commodities Pinoys are in short of. Of rare Pinoys who has the potential of derringdo required of ghostbusters, for example, is Esperon, but he specialized in election matters and might not be interested in ghostbusting. Sayang.
And our government budget just enough for computerized-automated election.
Kaya, we are stuck with our mangtatawas to drive away the evil spirits and ghosts.
Bert,
Our chief ghostbuster is Bill Murray, so I don’t know that things are so much better off in the US.
Good to see you poking about here on FV.
Joe
Dear Mr. blackshama,
Sir, pls have the decency not to call Michael Jackson ‘Wacko Jacko’. Being called such has always been offending to him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pwinJ2__5Y
He’s already dead and it’s only but proper that people don’t call him that to show at least a modicum of respect. Pls have a heart.
Thank you.