THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU WRITES:

Regarding the “Michael Jackson Cult,” the religious impulse is constitutive of human nature and never goes away, but the same impulse has a context or it does not. In our contemporary situation, relentlessly secular and hostile to tradition, not least to religious tradition, the religious impulse simply has no context. It remains “unschooled.” The human tendency to seek transcendent reference, to orient itself hierarchically, therefore operates haphazardly. Anything conspicuous strikes the naïve or “neo-primitive” seeker as – let us say – the equivalent of transcendence. Because the grotesque is always conspicuous, grotesqueries become the focus of wayward religiosity. It is not only the late (and by me unlamented) Mr. Jackson, it is the entirety of entertainment culture, which combines the bizarrely reductive with exaggerated sexuality and narcissistic egomania.

The essence of all primitive gods is being, expressed as power or as charisma – which attracts attention and provokes the desire to imitate the divine model. Entertainers, by monopolizing public attention, appear to embody being; so they become models, icons, idols, and foci of a primitive type of worship. 

The “Michael Jackson Cult” tell us that we have descended culturally into a new primitive phase. Primitive cultures endure many agonies – and we are likely to endure many agonies, until we achieve maturity again.

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