PARIS - WHILE many French newspapers paid tribute Saturday to Michael Jackson, a number of columnists dug the daggers in deep, calling the pop icon a 'mutant' whose music was 'kitsch'.
Perhaps it was inevitable the king of pop was in for a rough ride from the cultural arbiters in a country so suspicious of globalisation, with one columnist calling Jackson 'the icon of our disturbing modernity'.
'Neither monster nor extraterrestrial,' Michael Jackson was a 'mutant' according to Gerard Lefort writing in Liberation.
For Herve Cannet of the La Nouvelle Republique Jackson was 'neither black nor white; neither old nor young; neither child nor adult; neither man nor woman' but rather a 'sort of androgynous imp'.
Philippe Waucampt wrote in the Rebulicain Lorraine that the 'little Afro-American became a sort of alien between white and black, between young and old, as unclassifiable, universal and kitsch as his music.'
For Francis Broche of Le Progres, Jackson may have been an icon, 'but an icon for our times, the head of planetary promotion.'
Another columnist, Dominique Garraud of La Charente Libre noted that Jackson's premature death Thursday in Los Angeles aged 50 'will be as juicy for his producers as the sellers of his records.' -- AFP
