The Celebrity Generation and the Death of a Legend

'People would trample over each other just to catch a glimpse of a legend'

When the "news" and images of celebrities in the media consist of stories about their lives in glossy magazines, you may just think that everyone in the public eye automatically start marrying goats, drinking their own urine, and throwing phones at paparazzi - only to go home and have cocaine shovelled up their noses by a trio of burlesque dancers.

Seeing a celebrity walking down the street obviously means they're going to meet Meg Ryan for lunch and not just going to the supermarket, and therefore it should make national news. The sky is falling down, Gordon Brown has just declared war on South Wales, and a nuclear power station has just exploded, but Helen Mirren has just bought some new earrings so that is what, of course, makes the News at 10.

We seem to be living in a celebrity-obsessed society where celebrities have a huge influence on people's lives.

A product that could turn saliva into gold would be dismissed as ludicrous unless it's endorsed in an advert with Jane Fonda and then it's flying off the shelves.

But for all the superficial celebrity attention, there's a rare time when one person, can have such a dramatic effect across the globe.

You know you've made your mark on society and on the world when the news channels show images of people of all ages coming together on the streets to sing your songs, people wear a single white exfoliating glove in the shower in tribute, and people all over the planet are trying to moonwalk from the dinner table to the kitchen sink - even if they look like a giraffe with a bowel complaint trying to wipe gum off the bottom of their feet.

The high activity of social networking websites and text messages at 400,000 per second last Thursday evening meant that the news of Michael Jackson was all over the world within hours of his death. Even faster than on the news channels. After the vast surge in text messages, the viewing figures for the Sky and BBC News rocketed as people rushed to confirm if the news was true.

Believing all information received in a text message could be a risk with so many people texting hoaxes like the statue of liberty has come alive and is in the process of terrorising New York or Gordon Brown has gone rabid and has bitten a chunk out of Harriet Harman's ear while dressed as a Nazi.

But either one of these rumours would have been less shocking than hearing that a music legend had died. By 10.30pm, last Thursday, with the news circulating the planet, the news channels still hadn't caught up. You would probably expect no mention of Michael Jackson on BBC News - they usually drag their feet and check the facts before they make any hasty announcements. You would have expected Sky News to be slightly bolder and have quoted the news of his death from another source under a Breaking News headline. And you would expect Fox News, being American, to have seen a rumour on Twitter, which was good enough for them, and to be already holding a live séance in the studio.

The following day, people awoke to the confirmed news that Michael Jackson had died and those at Glastonbury emerged from their tents looking like Worzel Gummidge to the sound of tracks from Thriller, the world's fastest ever selling album. All over the country, news rooms were interviewing people who were lining up to say that they had met Michael Jackson - who had been to his concerts, stood next to him in a lift or was once sneezed on by the man himself back in 1984.

It was in the up and coming days that the focus changed from that of shock to a lament of a lifelong tragedy.

When images of his transformation from a child star to the 50-year-old, unconventional man that he had become appeared all over the news and on entertainment programmes, the words "misfortune", "pity", and "sadness" cropped up - and they were words that were used to describe the life of Michael Jackson on so many levels.

With mass moonwalks taking place, live re-enactments of the Thriller routine, and thousands of people of all ages meeting in the street to sing his songs across the globe, Michael Jackson has cemented his place in history as the world's foremost pop star who had become a living legend when he was still only a child.

Despite some of the negative opinions of him - distorted by the medium that is the sensational speculation from the media that, ultimately, contributed to his downfall - the fact that people idolised his music, would trample over each other just to catch a glimpse of a legend, and the vast number of tributes all over the world shows that he meant something to a lot of people.

And yet, already, there have been people criticising him and even criticising his fans for their mass tributes as though all of the attention is exaggerated. But it's a rarity that someone's talent is celebrated on such a large, international scale - especially for a performer who, in life, was a troubled perfectionist who would never be satisfied with himself and who heavily criticised his own circumstances - even without the media doing that for him.

For anyone who is not a fan of Michael Jackson, the fact that his work is an inspiration to many people should not be condemned.

Michael Jackson; with his unique style, being the ultimate live performer that broke all music records, created his own genre, performing from the age of 4; gave his whole life to entertaining others and trying to instil happiness into many people's lives. He has developed into an idol, a cultural phenomenon in life and in death. His lyrics and dance moves have become globally renowned, and his songs have become a soundtrack to the lives of multiple generations of people, and will be remembered like anthems that immortalise parts of history in people's minds like the ghosts of a long-gone summer.