If there are key shifts in the pop culture landscape embedded in the whispery annals of rock trivia, this moment is surely one of them. The 1984 accident when Michael Jackson, filming a commercial for a Pepsi, was accidentally set on fire, suffering second degree burns to his scalp and face, in front of 3,000 fans. The rehabiltation process that followed began his ordeal with painkillers and plastic surgery (although by this time he had already had two operations on his nose) which would last the rest of his life.
So they say. What's impossible to grasp with any story on Michael Jackson is that there was an actual living shell of a man under the hyperbole, circus dancing, chimpanzees, child abuse allegations and general fucking insanity about the cartoon character he'd become. It's unfathomable to imagine the human amongst the deitrus left in his wake, and even then, we're just not programmed to have a modicum of understanding about the kind of experience his life had become.
But after seeing the newly released footage (twenty five years after the accident but of course, only weeks after his death) in all its carnage - because it is pretty harrowing watching a mans head on fire for a good 10 seconds or so before anyone realises, himself included - I wish I hadn't. But perhaps one can more clearly ruminate on the kind of forces that send a man off his axis. This isn't a lick of flame and a slap on the back of the head. As Jackson rises from the scrum that's fallen whilst trying to snuff out the fire engulfing him, one can clearly see a bloody, scalded pink mess where the crown of his head should be. It's horrific.
And it's the full stop we wanted. Awfully. To see him burn. This isn't any weepy funeral, this isn't a star-studded tribute, speculation on his love life or rake through his bank balances. This is the moment that changed Jackson's psyche irrevocably, and ultimately, the way media consumes and hacks at celebrity culture. This is it's full circle moment.
It's horrible, for as much as what happens on screen as what it suggests will. Mmm. Go find it yourself.