Royal Purple

Issue date: 11/4/09 Section: Opinion

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Originality in music, and the world, is dying, but it's not buried yet.

After the final chronicled moments of Michael Jackson's life were seen by the world in the film "This Is It," it's become unsettlingly apparent what American culture has actually lost and perhaps will never regain.

Let it stand that we didn't lose a man who was pillaged by media for his exceptionally odd and somewhat disturbing personal life, and it wasn't a man whose face was transformed into a mangled prototype of plastic surgery gone awry.

The world lost a man who, both honorably and horrifyingly, sought perfection.

"I'm never pleased with anything," he said. "I'm a perfectionist. It's part of who I am."

But the King of Pop, the master of dance, and the inventor of the moon walk was representative of a breed of originality, rarity and genius that was very much real. As much as MJ hoped to attain the ideal, he failed at a life-long obsession that's the very antithesis of humanity.

What he did possess-and almost mastered-was this element of extreme hard work and originality. Jackson broke musical, artistic, and, not to mention, racial, barriers with his work, simply by stepping outside the norm.

"This Is It," with global ticket sales above $100 million worldwide for the first five days after it's release last Tuesday night, showed the world a Jackson it hadn't been exposed to since his painfully feeble attempt at a comeback album in 2001. Even then, Jackson's legal battles and controversies overshadowed his music career.

"This Is It" displayed the Jackson we all knew and loved. A 50-year-old legend remarkably hitting every single note and dance move and earnestly saying throughout the film, "It's about the love."

The film was undoubtedly created for the fans, but Jackson's an inspiration to anyone who, quite simply, dreams big.

For most college students, a future filled with the realities of a slow job market and a 40-hour work week lies ahead of them. But what's most often overlooked is we have to know the rules in order to purposefully break them, and Jackson's creative genius followed this mantra.

He defined the word original, and in the wake of his death, it became clear the world doesn't need another do-enough-to-get-by college grad. It needs innovation. It needs the spark of originality and the vibrancy of those who never quit and will not take no for an answer. Ask why something is the way it is instead of accepting a cultural tradition. This is a fire that desperately needs revitalization at our college.

Unarguably, there will never be another Michael Jackson. Nowadays, originality and diversity of thought, seemingly disincentive ambitions, take a back seat to get-rich-quick imitators. These scarce characteristics aren't dead, they'll just be a distantly familiar rarity when someone finally breaks the cultural mold and moonwalks his or her way to a revolution.

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