Michael Jackson - In Memoriam

I can’t say I was shocked when I heard that Michael Jackson had died suddenly. With his erratic behavior, frail constitution, and seemingly endless personal difficulties, it was hard to see how he was going to make it over the long haul. Anyway, could you picture the mercurial, surgically enhanced Peter Pan as an old man? God no. But while his end seemed perfectly in tune with his bizarre, troubled life, it was the tragedy of his story which really hit home for me.

There was something Shakespearean, or perhaps Nixonian, about the decline and fall of a man with such prodigious talents and instincts. We all know, or think we know, that something went wrong very early in this man’s life that drove him to extraordinary heights while ensuring his downfall; a Faustian bargain of which he was no party to. At least that’s what people will keep telling themselves, just to make sense out if it all. The puzzle pieces always need to fit together in our minds, but it’s wise, I think, to withhold judgment or declare any kind of conclusive summation to his story. We should have learned full well when O.J. hacked off his wife’s head that we simply do not and can not know these people, no matter how much we think we do. We are at a loss to explain the actions of our lovers and best friends at times, so how can we ever presume to write the final line in Michael’s tale.

For those of us who watched him at his heights, the tragedy is palpable; different from the tragedy of John Lennon’s assassination for white Americans such as myself, but still hitting close to home. I never really bought into the propaganda (which he helped push along) regarding the significance of his breaking down the barriers on whites-only MTV in 1983, staking a claim as an historical figure on par with Martin Luther King. Who gives a shit about the success of a network dedicated solely to broadcasting commercials for mostly shitty music? It’s lasting impact has been mostly negative, as we have seen. No, I suspect that Michael meant more to the African-Americans growing up when he did, seeing him with his brothers on all the tv shows singing ABC, watching the cartoons (as I did) and taking pride in a young man of such undeniably extraordinary talent. No matter how much a racist America would have liked to pigeonhole his abilities as a kind of modern singin’, dancin’ pickaninny (they all can do that can’t they?), Michael was clearly on a whole other level, winning everyone over and transcending callow categories. I’m sure deep in the heart of the community wronged by so much in this country’s history there was the prideful rejoinder, “take that whitey - let’s see you top this!”

For people like me, totally uninterested in dance music then as now, there was simply the appearance on Motown’s 25^th anniversary of the newly minted Jackson, someone we tried to ignore as disco treacle after Off The Wall, strutting his way through Billy Jean with such gusto and grace that it made us wilt in admiration. Christ, here I was, a teenager obsessed with the Beatles and everything ‘60’s’, trying to moonwalk on the shag carpet in my rec room!

I now see his attempt to make himself something for everyone (man, woman, child, black, white, asian, he made himself a little bit of each), more cynically than I used to, but there is no denying that for a while there he pulled it off in grand style. The songs are still great and the moves are still unmatched. Before it became absurd and ridiculous, he was able to funnel the rage that must have boiled inside him into pure fire onstage, something his imitators (Usher, JT, etc.) are completely lacking. His eagerness to please must have been accompanied by a resentment of historic proportions that fueled his performances and at his best it froze us in our seats before it made us get up and dance.

The worldwide phenomenon he generated was trivial in its hugeness and it would be difficult to say that anything lasting and good really came out of it. He was the ultimate distraction and moneymaker in the age of distraction and money. But strip all that away and just listen to the songs and watch him go. Face it, he can still stop you in your tracks.