Really, when you get down to it, I probably have no business even bothering. I mean, what can I say that probably hasn't been pointed out by one person or another ad nauseum for the the media blitz that surrounded Michael Jackson's death before he was even declared such a week ago? With news interviews, tabloid headlines, rumours around TMZ, and the blogosphere practically choking to death on the matter, what really is there for me to add?
Maybe that's fitting the situation around Michael Jackson's life and death in so many ways. If nothing else, when it came to the subject of Michael Jackson, it was a collection of ambivalent and contradictory sentiments, so my trepidation about even offering my thoughts...well, that fits the bill pretty fairly, doesn't it?
The reason you always wondered exactly how you should think of MJ is because he offered you so many complicated aspects to try to hash out. Jackson was nothing if not a complicated subject. It's probably why he was such a media magnet, especially for tabloid journalism. Because when someone collects such a mish-mash of feelings, you can spend page after page, minute by minute, trying to hash out just what you think you're supposed to think about the guy. His death proves the point.
You have Michael the tortured soul, Michael the icon, Michael the genius, Michael the weirdo eccentric, Michael the potential criminal. And you often have it all at once. From a cultural standpoint, he was impossible to ignore, even when he really wasn't doing anything. Michael the musician really hadn't been around for more than a decade, but his body of work really stands as one of the most monolithic in pop music and pop culture. His studio work, his live performances, his video collection; that stuph can't be overlooked. It's importance can't be overlooked. I wanted to twenty-odd years ago, being a staunch devotee to the importance of "real" music (which really meant something that skirted the pop zeitgeist more than Jackson ever would or could). But Jackson's work is really insurmountable. In retrospect, he really was the first truly world-wide pop phenomenon. Some could argue once about Elvis or the Beatles, but really, their saturation didn't extend beyond the Western world. Jackson on the other hand, pervaded the consciousness on a global scale. From Japan, China, Australia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe the Americas and Africa, probably even the middle east, there isn't anyone who didn't know who Michael Jackson was, or his body of work if even on a minimal scale.
Whether you liked his music all that much or not, probably each one hasn't lived through some moment where you found yourself humming the chorus to "Beat It". If you havn't, you've probably been living up in the mountains somewhere for the last thrity years (and you're definitely not reading this). I personally can't hear a song from Off the Wall without feeling seven years old again, and I mean that in a good way.
The fact that his unmitigated importance as an artist was so completely mitigated by his personal life makes remembering Michael Jackson all the more conflicting. He's not the first of that kind, but he may be the most extravagant example. As Jackson's professional career seemed to wane, his private peccadilloes took root in the mind more and more deeply, until you couldn't ignore the fact that this must be a bona fide whack-job.
How much of those eccentricities were legit or the result of just endless rumour mongering; that’s the real pain in the ass of the situation, isn’t it? We were always pretty sure his kids weren’t biologically his at all, but nobody would ever confirm. We always had our ideas about his finances in shambles, but it was always denied. Bubbles the chimp, the plastic surgery, the Elephant Man’s bones—this was and endless carnival.
No, I’m not forgetting the notions of child molestation. That’s a macguffin all its own, though. For years, I’ve vacillated on the topic of whether or not Michael Jackson was a pedophile. A lot of folx, upon hearing of Jackson’s demise filled cyberspace with either “oh, what a tragedy,” and “motherfucker didn’t die soon enuph!” Both have their place in our conscience, because, once again, we don’t (and probably won’t ever) really know the truth of that scenario. The fact of the matter is, a lot of what he did was the type of behaviour often seen in pedophiles. Filling his world and his activities with things to make children feel comfortable about and around you. The whole “drink some wine / don’t worry it’s Jesus Juice” thing was a really spooky example we took to offer possibility of sexual predation.
But the problem was, there was always a big “On the Other Hand” with the guy. A real pain in the ass one. What probably can’t be disputed is that Jackson had one seriously screwed up childhood, if it can be said he had much of a childhood at all. There isn’t a lot of denial on the subject that Michael’s father Joseph Jackson was an abusive son of a bitch. Enough of the Jackson children seem to be able to back up Michael’s allegations on that topic. That in itself can push you either way on the argument though. Childhood victims of abuse often turn around and become abusers. Some have argued that matter on the case of Jackson. But those who predate sexually have usually been the victim of such behaviour earlier in life. While Joe Jackson’s abusive activity hasn’t been argued with much, none have ever steered those allegations toward him being an abuser along sexual lines. His was more the haranguing, beating, strip you of your sense of self worth type of abuse.
What you see throughout Michael’s life, is in a sense a result of that kind of abuse. Micahel was a self-hater, always struggling with his self-image, his looks, his personality. He was insular and withdrawn, likely didn’t understand how and where the lines of childhood innocence and adulthood (always represented in his mind possibly as nothing short of monstrosity) were blurred or delineated. What it seems we had with Jackson was a grown man who wanted nothing more to retreat into an idealized framework of perpetual childhood. In some ways, he sought to construct a fantasy of childhood joy and innocence that he never really experienced or understood. That confusion only resulted in an even more confused and out of touch adulthood, perhaps incapable of genuine adult relationships. His solution: retreat even further. Insulate himself into the behaviour of a child even more. It was often given as a telling example the fact that Jackson named his home the Neverland Ranch, where Peter Pan and his Lost Boys never had to grow up.
Back in ’91, Jackson had befriended Macaulay Culkin, a child phenom in his own right. Looking back, it makes such perfect sense. Here was a kid who could probably really understand Michael. Both were thrust early in life into the cultural spotlight, both inherently robbed of their childhoods. Both had overbearing fathers responsible for robbing them of their innocence, if not robbing them of other things. Interesting to note, Culkin was one to step forward in later years to say he didn’t think Jackson was a pedophile (or at least, he never witnessed such behaviour during the time they had been friends).
It would also properly describe his apparent constant desire to defend children and children’s causes, in spite of the fact that so much of the world had so many misgivings about what his real motivations were.
In the end though, like so much…we just don’t know. We likely never will. The same could be the case of his death. His death from cardiac arrest at the age of 50 isn’t unheard of, especially if he had been struggling with health beforehand. Talk has been rampant that, in spite of his preparations for the 50 date string of performances in London, his health was a wreck. Much has been alleged about his addiction to pain killers: how pervasive had his addiction been, if it was something he still struggled with, etc.
The fact of the matter, again, is we don’t really know—at least for the time being. Even if he had largely overcome his addiction to prescription pain killers, the one thing I’ve learned over the years, especially from following the lives and deaths of numerous pro wrestlers, is that it can truly fuck your body up for years afterward. Heart conditions are not abnormal effects of years of such abuse, even if now in recovery.
So there it is, a conundrum of conflicting thoughts. The cynic in me tells me to just say “Well, glad that life is over with, since he hasn’t done anything creative in years, so at least the tabloid fodder can end.” The sentimental side of me says farewell to an icon that truly permeated the global mindset over the last thirty years, and that’s just a little bit like losing part of my own childhood, in a sense. The empathetic side mourns for a genuinely fucked up human being, who conquered the world in one sense, while all the while perhaps lived as a very vulnerable, self-loathing little boy, who just wanted to find love, but never really had a healthy sense of knowing how to find it.
But then, I may have no business even bringing it all up.
