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Baby Boomers Lose Two Icons on One Sad Day
If, like me, you grew up in the 1960s and 70s, the soundtrack of your life included the Jackson Five and Charlie's Angels was must-see TV. So today is a sad day for a generation -- even for those who found Michael Jackson's lifestyle distasteful and Farrah Fawcett bland. They helped define a generation of Baby Boomers who were too young to claim Elvis and too old to boast about Jennifer Aniston.
It's odd to lose two key representatives of my youth on the same day. I know my parents are used to it. When you reach the seventh and eighth decades of life, there is a certain resignation to hearing about the death of your peers. The obituary page begins to read like a high school yearbook, with a daily relief that your name isn't listed there. But at 52 I'm still shocked by the death of those close to my age, or anyone whose childhood photos are all in color.
Among other things, we tend to define ourselves by the roadmap of celebrities, TV shows and music that we follow throughout our lives. As with certain smells from the past, a song or a TV clip can be almost painfully evocative. So what happens when those icons whose lives ran parallel to our own begin to disappear? We search for answers: How do you get anal cancer? How could someone like Michael Jackson die suddenly of cardiac arrest? Was he abusing drugs? In the answers we look for reassurance that the death had less to do with human frailty than with something that can be prevented.
But in the end, it is all a part of the process of letting go. There's no guarantee that the celebrities we admire in our youth will grow old alongside us. And sometimes the celebrities appear to grow younger in direct contrast to our own aging. Farrah Fawcett left us with an iconic poster, even more iconic hair and a haunting documentary about her own impending death. Michael Jackson left us so suddenly, but the music and the dancing remain. At the end of a sad day, a generation of men and women in our late 40s and early 50s are reminded of our own mortality and the increasing losses that lie ahead.
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You're all Jonesers.
http://generationjones.com/2009latest.html
Signed,
Twifty Jones
I'm a boomer. If these two were "icons" of our generation then it speaks poorly of our values and worth.
speaking as a Gen X'er i think jimi hendrix and joplin were more fitting of icons your generation lost and felt deeply. kurt kobain and michael jackson belong to gen x. while jackson technically was a boomer, and he may have been loved by boomers, to my generation, for a few short years, he was practically a superhero.
Cobain and Jackson are appropriate iconic representations for GenX.
Read into that what you will.
;-)
I dont see how a nice hairstyle and popular poster makes one an icon.I did not see it but that documentary sounded a cheap way of getting last minute publicity.Her friends and Ryan O'Neal should be ashamed.A truly great performer would never do that.(Thank you Mr Newman for always having such dignity).
Michael Jackson was a talented genius with a lasting influence on pop music and celebrated in every country in the world.
And MJ also paid for a few self-produced and self-edited faux documentaries in an attempt to sway public opinion at a time when he also wanted more favorable press coverage. So, I guess he and his handlers should also be ashamed, according to your logic.
Thanks for playing.
Tamar,
Do you mix warm milk with your pablum, or swallow it whole?
Citizens of Iran are dying by the score on a daily basis fighting for the right to 'evole' their country's government to the point where the best they have to offer are posters of a starlet's nipples or a boy/man singing while walking backwards.
Our own country is witnessing a near Great Depression.
And you're waxing nostalgic over "Charlie's Angels" and "Beat It."
Tsk, tsk.
See Tamar Abrams's Profile
Well Rip, it's interesting that almost every one of your comments on HuffPo is about an issue related to celebrities. I have written about the Supreme Court, abortion, President Obama and events in Kenya previously. But you never weighed in on any of those blogs. So in this wonderful country in which we live you are entitled to castigate me over my sense of loss for two celebrities who colored my teen years and I am entitled to spend a few moments reminiscing. Are we lucky or what?
well i think michael jackson was more of an icon to Generation X. we were the music video generation. i think MTV was the only channel i watched as a teenager in the 80s, and a new michael jackson video was always an event to behold and talk about the next day at school. i was more into alternative music like depeche mode, rem, and joy diivision but no matter your musical tastes whenever an mtv played a jackson video you stopped what you were doing and just marvelled at this guys overwhelming talent.
Good point. Michael Jackson was a boomer -- not an icon to boomers, who were too old to view him as an icon. Same with Farrah Fawcett.
Thanks for the article - indeed a very sad day that at 48 and male, I can't tell you when I cried the last time. It was a tear for innocence lost and mortality winning. Now, more life to experience . . .
At least Farrah and MJ lasted longer than Janis Joplin and Jimi Henrix. They both died in 1970, just a month apart, when I was in tenth grade. I thought the world never would be the same. Of course, it wasn't.
I'm 3 months older than Michael Jackson; I was there from the beginning in 1968. A big part of my childhood went with him today. I remember Farrah from her commercials before Charlie's Angels. She was stunning.
I was never a Jackson fan and Charlie's Angels wasn't a TV show I HAD to see every week...but these two individuals were always "around", weren't they. One would bopp along to a Jackson tune or check out Farrah's hair or smile on the cover of a magazine...
and memory is an interesting thing....one triggers another and some of the stuff I remembered yesterday had nothing much to do with either pop icon...just cool stuff I did when I was younger.
I've been reading various comments about why do people get all worked up...the media...the media...blah..blah....but yesterday alot of us got just a little bit older. That's not a bad thing but it is a little sobering.
Sorry, I'm 48 years old and I've never considered myself a baby boomer!!!
I believe a baby boomer is considered to be anyone born between 1945 and 1962... looks like you made it by a year my friend!
Again, sorry, but baby boomer birth years (1946-1964) don't make you a "baby boomer." Those of us born in the early 60s were exposed to a completely different culture than those boomers born in the mid 40s and 50s. That is why I have never liked being classified a baby boomer or a member of Generation Y. Both My Mom and I fall into those birth years and she did not grow up with Michael Jackson or Charlie's Angels. I also don't remember anyone calling Barack Obama, who was also born in 1961, a baby boomer.
Oops... I meant Generation X! Sorry! I guess this all seems sort of petty anyway... it's just my pet peeve. We all have one or two don't we?
I'm 43, and I consider myself a first-wave GenXer. I was born in 65, and I have very, VERY little in common with Boomers.
I agree. I'm 47 and I've never really considered myself part of that generation. I was 5 years old during the "Summer of Love" and 7 when Woodstock happened.
Too young to be a true boomer and too old to be Gen X.
I called my buddy and we said the same thing you wrote. Man this makes you think back. I remember a friend who had the Farrah poster on the back of his door. I remember all the Jackson 5 songs from growing up, and the Micheal Jackson songs from "Off the Wall and Thriller". Wow. But I will be rocking the songs and save a screen shot of that awesome poster.
RIP Farrah & Michael
i am 61-i watched charlies angels and saw the burning bed. i watched david carradine and ed mcmahon. i danced to michael jackson and a friend of mine made a tape (before cds were invented) of the thriller album. it is very weird for the generation that was never going to get old to do just that.
what's the quote...time and tide wait for no one......I guess things like this are just a reminder of how true that is....
So did Gen-Xers--esp those of us over 35.
Great points...
Thanks for making me feel even older.
See Tamar Abrams's Profile
Sorry. But I hear the Monkees are all relatively healthy!
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died the same day. So did Billy Wilder, Milton Berle and Dudley Moore.
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