The Boy Wonder lived his life under the glare of thousands of tabloid cameras and he died that way as well.
        The Media Circus is now fully underway. Mourning and mockery are both on display.  At the end, which came so tragically too soon, his being seemed unrecognizable from the chubby-cheeked boy who burst onto the national scene, outshining the rest of his family and catapulting him to world wide fame. 
       In theatre, sometimes, a performer will wear a mask in order to reveal hidden depths of character. Jackson’s face, in recent years,  seemed almost masklike — a kabuki like surface that both seemed to obliterate the child he had been, but also seemed to be etched in pain.  His final face seemed almost feminine, delicate, the eyes were fawn-like. He had an almost girlish beauty, a kind of innocence.  Maybe he created it to shield the sensitive artist and child who suffered a trauma he was never able to get beyond. Maybe the pain of the Man Behind the Mask overran the Man Behind the Mask. 

      The King of Pop is Dead. The Artist Remains.