July 6, 2009
The Michael Jackson Death Show
As an industry town preparing for a memorial service the likes L.A. has never seen (hello Larry! Anderson! Charles! Katie!), it’s hard to consider this giddy and buzzing city as anything but a parody of itself.
These wry and simple wire photos intentionally play-off the escalating intensity of tomorrow’s mass-scale, Laker-championship-emulating public memorial service at Staples Arena preceded by an expected news helicopter-gawking, freeway-arresting mobile procession/slow-motion media cavalcade (potentially, yes, one-part unspoken O.J. reminder mixed with a dash of the RFK train) from the cemetery to downtown.
As the MJ passing “pushes into its second week,” the first image offers up members of the media — looking like acting extras themselves — converting Forest Lawn into the likes of a movie set four-full-days before the anticipated memorial service. (And, it’s the Fourth of July, no less.)
Here, the taped outline for a TV truck just beyond the mortuary gates seems to evoke a burial plot or the markings at a crime scene.
Perhaps celebrity culture is what’s also killing us.
(Revised: 8:26 am PST)
(image 1: Robyn Beck/Getty Images. Forest Lawn cemetery. Los Angeles. July 4, 2009. Although details of the July 7 memorial service for music legend Michael Jackson have yet to be released, some reports say Jackson’s family may hold a service at the Forest Lawn Mortuary then motorcade to Staples Center. image 2: Eric Thayer/Reuters. A Forest Lawn cemetery. Los Angeles July 3, 2009. caption: Although details of Tuesday’s memorial service have yet to be unveiled, Los Angeles media said Michael Jackson’s family may hold a service at the Forest Lawn Mortuary then motorcade to Staples Center.)
