BY ERIN SCHUTTE
On June 25th, 2009, I was in Fez, Morocco studying in a summer Arabic program. But, it wasn’t until June 26th that I was finally able to connect to the sketchy internet in my villa residence and read the message my mom had sent me. “Did you hear that Michael Jackson died?” read the email, the same as millions of other emails and texts that were written on that unforgettable day. What motivates someone to feel the need to personally spread public news to others? And why did this news ignite so much passion amongst Americans and the rest of the world?
I was shocked to see the extension of coverage and attention this headline was generating in the developing country of Morocco. I spent seven weeks in Morocco, and the longer I resided there the more and more differences I observed between this culture and that of my own American upbringing. Women are still prohibited to sit outside at a café, as men gather in groups and freely sip their café crème while noticeably starring at any female passerby who strikes interest, shops are closed every afternoon to avoid the heat. But I noticed one thing that has significantly transformed Moroccan culture: television.
In the past few years, television has connected Morocco and North Africa to America and the Western World. I was a guest in many homes of Moroccan families, and never once did I see the household TV turned off. I was shocked to learn that TV continued to be on while eating meals, something that is strictly prohibited and seen as a disruption to family time in my own American household. Whether the station was set to Al-Jazeera, international soccer, or American soap operas, television is the central, and maybe only, source of information from outside what Moroccan are traditionally exposed to in real life.
As a result of this, the news of Michael Jackson’s death was a considerably big deal in Morocco. The press coverage was often in Arabic, and sometimes in English from an American station with Arabic subtitles. Moroccan friends constantly spoke of vigils for the pop star in Casablanca, and I watched as posters of Michael Jackson were sold on the street by young, barefoot children. Feeling more sorry for them than the lost legacy of the pop star, I pulled out a few spare coins, and exchanged them for my own RIP MJ poster.
Erin Schutte is an editorial associate for Global21. She is currently a sophomore at Yale University and is originally from Minnesota.
[...] original here: Michael in Morocco Tags: Michael Jackson Died, michael-in-morocco, michael-jackson, newsPosted in Michael Jackson [...]
Michael is the most famous person in the world and he has a large number of fans here in morocco,especially in casablanca (Am one of em ). hehe you really chear me up while u were talking about the tv things..well that’s the televesion is a part of us lol.
by the way rabat is the capital city of morocco, not Casablanca
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