Pop goes 50

King of Pop Michael Jackson turns 50 today. A CD titled KING OF POP is being released – only in the UK, Australia and Hong Kong (strangely, not in the US) – to commemorate Jackson’s 50th birthday. Jackson, of course, along with his concert-promoter friend David Gest, has been busy recording Robert Burns’ poems to music, giving the 18th century Scottish poet’s lyrics a 21st century twist.

Queen of Pop Madonna turned 50 earlier this month on 16 August. She was, reportedly, partying in London and showing no signs of relinquishing her crown.

Media, meaning

A blog I was reading the other day described and commented on the amount of ‘trash’ dished out by the Indian media recently – specifically, the news in print and on TV. For an old-school media/news consumer like me, this observation was not only true, but also heartening to know as the blogger and those who commented on her post were young (I’m guessing, in their twenties) and concerned about the state of the media in India today.

This made me wonder. Doesn’t the news coverage (i.e. the content and its creation) by the media, its bias and its delivery reflect the state and nature of the society (and the culture) it represents and originates from? How, then, can we interpret and criticise the news in India today as trash? As media/news consumers, are we – at least, this small disenchanted group of people – radically different from mainstream consumers in some unique way(s)?

How, and why, are we unable to find meaning in today’s media/news when others around us are thriving in it? What distinguishes us from them? Are we, then, the ‘other’ in our own society and culture?

Acceptance

“Life becomes bearable only when one has come to terms with who one is, both in one’s own eyes and in the eyes of the world. We all of us must come to terms with what and who we are, and recognize that this wisdom is not going to earn us any praise, that life is not going to pin a medal on us for recognizing and enduring our own vanity or egoism or baldness or our potbelly. No, the secret is that there’s no reward and we have to endure our characters and our natures as best we can, because no amount of experience or insight is going to rectify our deficiencies, our self-regard, or our cupidity. We have to learn that our desires do not find any real echo in the world. We have to accept that the people we love do not love us, or not in the way we hope. We have to accept betrayal and disloyalty, and, hardest of all, that someone is finer than we are in character or intelligence.”

– The General, a character in Sándor Márai’s Embers (translated by Carol Brown Janeway)