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Death + Popular Culture

Body (We Are the) Worlds: Michael Jackson to Be Plastinated

Michael Jackson Set to Be Embalmed at the O2 Centre after Missing the Deadline for Cryogenic Freezing
Mail on Sunday (June 26, 2009)

It looks like Michael Jackson might get his world tour after all — or at least a perpetual stream of curious fans trotting past his moonwalking corpse. The day following the singer’s sudden death, Gunther von Hagens, the macabre but brilliant mind behind the controversial Body Worlds, announced a months-ago made agreement with the Jackson family to plastinate MJ’s body.

We can’t say we’re surprised — yet we can’t yet put a finger on what it all means, still surrounding by the thundering pulse of celebrity death tributes and tears. Is this a fitting, never-ending end for a bizarre life and (as of yet) mysterious death? An ensured, eternal spotlight for the consummate showman? A monster, as some would have him, made all the more horrific? The last and lasting exploitation of a fragile man full of ghosts? The list goes on, and oh, how the masses shall writhe with shock and delight…

Stay tuned.

2 replies on “Body (We Are the) Worlds: Michael Jackson to Be Plastinated”

Interesting… it appears that von Hagens’ claim on MJ’s body, like so much of the swirling celebrity death glut going on, may have been a rumor, overstatement, um, lie, wishful thinking or whatever else noisefully insidious for the sake of its own splash. Reports now suggest that Michael will be interred at Forest Lawn cemetery in the Hollywood Hills.

We have our eyes peeled for the more interesting facets of this Most Fantastic Death, as it were / won’t stop being, but we’ll spare you the play by play. Nonetheless, RIP, MJ. I suspect that will be easier done buried in the ground than eviscerated and on display.

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