Michael Jackson died a lonely death on June 25. Since then, there has been a near continuous outpouring of grief by millions of fans around the world.
Jackson sold the greatest number of records of any recording artist and genuinely advanced modern entertainment forms like video and stage performance. But the strangeness and misery of his life and death sadly exposes much of modern life.
This is definitely not the first time a celebrity's death has stirred the world. Rudolph Valentino's death in 1926 was met by his fans' mass hysteria and at least one grief-stricken suicide. More recently, Elvis Presley's death in 1977 — like Jackson, drug addled and a grotesque caricature — has become a cult of fantasy.
Princess Diana's 1997 death sparked a huge and spontaneous memorial movement all over Britain. A milder version of this occurred in Sydney in 1995 when popular ABC radio presenter Andrew Olle suddenly died from a brain tumour.
What is it about modern capitalism that produces such mass identification with celebrities?
Part of it is that music energises parts of the brain below the conscious mind. We all know the annoying ads that stick in your mind like glue; they are examples of musical power.
When power is joined with sexuality, something Jackson and Presley certainly projected in their work, it is a powerful mix that strikes deep into every human psyche.
Obviously huge profits can be made out of this. The Recording Industry Association of America reports the industry rakes in some $40 billion a year.
But the music industry plays another insidious role: it manipulates our responses to unpalatable life under capitalism.
When Tina Turner sang, "Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken", everyone knew what she was talking about. Music, and other popular entertainment, speaks to our own emotional experiences.
However, we live in a world in which, for capitalists, as Marx explained in 1844, "every real and possible need is a weakness which will lead the fly to the glue pot", the glue pot of consumerism. Even love and heartbreak can be turned into profit.
Along with the rest of the entertainment industry, the huge growth of the music industry has been an important part of manufacturing alienation and distraction on a mass scale, which helps us deal with contradictory experiences and escape internal conflict. For example, it enables people to love their own children while tolerating wars that slaughter other people's children.
Before WWII, the majority of people produced their own musical entertainment. People sang in community gatherings and families gathered around the piano. Now most people passively consume music.
Capitalists take our emotions and desires, and our alienation, turn them into commodities, and sell them back to us. In the process they also insert ideological messages about how we should relate to each other and even what our emotions should be. It's no surprise a lot of popular culture is riddled with negative values, such as sexism.
Along with the commodification of music has been the commodification of the lives of those who produce it, creating the cult of "celebrity". A huge proportion of the "news" and "information" media is devoted to telling us every detail of their lives.
This tsunami of stories about celebrities' lives plays the same role as a lot of the music, films and TV shows they produce (as well as allowing the "news" media to avoid having too much real news).
Some of it is upbeat fantasies: fairytale romance and dream weddings, and lives of glamour and excitement. But our own alienation means that sordid tales of self-abuse, abusive interactions and personal meltdowns sell more product. The strange and lonely twilight years of Michael Jackson are a case in point.
Human solidarity is the path out of alienation. The mass outpourings of grief over dead celebrities show the possibility human solidarity. However, even this is something that capitalism will attempt to manipulate and commodify.