‘THE importance of the individual against the massified and the collective is actually one of the most important lessons to have been imparted by the 20th century.” The statement comes from Vanity Fair: The Portraits—A Century of Iconic Images. The statement might as well be a tribute to Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, two personalities whose faces and gestures will always be definitive of the eras they inhabited.

Michael and Farrah were icons in the sense of being oddly individuals in periods that were noted for homogenization. Farrah Fawcett reminded us that, indeed, hair can be magical. She was part of the TV series called Charlie’s Angels, but she stood out in that impossibly lovely company of Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith with a hairdo that did not have any provenance except the ’70s and ’80s. It had no aesthetic ancestors. It had its roots in curlers that were necessary to create those seemingly permanent waves. If one looks at the photographs of our aunts and girlfriends and actresses and even gay beauty queens in the ’70s and ’80s, we would find the same long tresses that seemed to reach the end of rainbows. The secret of that hair was not merely in the curls and the waves that floated inward and flew outward, but in how one carried it.

For reference, there is that photo of Farrah Fawcett in a red swimsuit. The body is lithe, the legs, although not fully shown, threatening to travel miles and miles where blonde beauties dare not go. The mouth is the widest, long before Julia Roberts made that generosity of smile morally acceptable; the teeth white and uniform. Her face is tilted to the left and she appears to address all the girls and, perhaps, all the young lesbians who were in love with her, and all the young boys who thought they were in love with her, but were actually dreaming to be like her. But that’s not all, for there is that hair, original, yellow and brown and tossed, with a biography of its own. That poster went on to become one of the bestselling posters of that generation.

That hair—and the poster—made all the covers of the top magazines and was covered—as in music—by all human beings capable of growing their hair long and transformable. That hair made many a beauty parlor sustainable and, long after the fashion went away, and she went away, the poster remained in some salons in the province, eternal, waiting almost for the votive candles to light it for posterity.

Farraw Fawcett did not really go away. She just went on to do plays and films that mattered. One off-Broadway play was called Extremities, where she played the role of a would-be rape victim. The fact that she was considered and went on to replace the compelling Susan Sarandon in that play was a testament to how she had moved away from being a poster girl with impossible hair to become an actor. She then did the movie adaptation of Extremities (1986) and was nominated in the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture-Drama.

The nomination was no fluke. Later, she would win more nominations and even gathering enough gravitas to act with forbidding thespians like Colleen Dewhurst.

And yet, no one will remember this aspect of Farrah Fawcett. She was always that girl with the hair blown by the unseen wind, or by the numerous hair blowers trained her way. Like Betty Grable, who all young boys sent to death and instant maturity in the last World War remembered forever as looking over her shoulder while a gloriously shaped pair of legs spell Victory Joe, Farrah Fawcett was minted in our collective consciousness because of that hair and that insouciance and an eroticism that was accommodating as an off-the-counter commodity. 

There was no angst in that smile even if the ’70s were to a poet the angry decade. AIDS and terrorism had not yet descended upon us. The turbulence of the late ’80s and the insecurities of the ’90s were far off. She was our innocence before our lives experienced the plunder. For that, we remember and thank Farrah Fawcett and even mistake her as the angel that we would perhaps never see on a poster.

Michael Jackson, despite the overwhelming popularity, lived a thankless life. His celebrity could not be discussed (for some reason, we do not merely talk about Michael Jackson) without the topic meandering into his alleged pedophilia. He built a Neverland, but it is not the image of Peter Pan that lingers in our memory but that of a person who refuses to grow up because he liked them young.

He befriended personalities like Diana Ross, Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minnelli and many other celebrities who shared with him the evil nature of fame, and that is more fame. There was surplus in the life of Michael Jackson: surplus sales of his music, surplus size of his property. Everything was massive about him: his concerts and his causes. And his downfall was no less a fall from the Highest Grace. He was accused in courts and he settled mightily out of courts.

Before his death, there were no good releases about Michael Jackson. In fact, before the planned London concert was announced, one was apt to think that there were no more Michael Jackson fans. All one could hear were MJ jokes, the wacko Jacko. He became fodder for any standup comic search for laugh.

Now, in death, everyone is surfacing to defend him, to explain his life for him, and, most of all, to love him. Even the most controversial part of his person, the face-lifts, is now generating more understanding than scorn and laughter. Every time his life is flashed on TV and he is shown as a bubbly kid with the sweetest boy soprano worthy of any gospel song, we mourn for the death of that part of him. Some critics look and look again at his Negroid features and find in them something lovely, something exotically appealing.

His CDs and old records are now flying off the shelves and display racks of stores worldwide. His “Moonwalk” is a much-imitated movement again. When he is shown in that latest incarnation that is all white and all sculpted, he is getting an attention that borders on respect and, at worse, pity.  The jeers are gone.

Michael Jackson reminds me so much of Billie Holiday (in contrast) and Judy Garland (in comparison). When the autopsy is released and when the long tributes are completed, what will remain of Jackson are his works and his music. Unlike Billie Holiday, Michael Jackson’s music will be seen as emanating from his person and not from any chemicals or any kind of drug addiction. Like Judy Garland, his songs will be heard for the heartbreak and his dancing appreciated for its search for that happiness and hope—in great rhythm—at the end of the rainbow.