George Orwell once said that a man has the face that he deserves at age 50. And while I’d agree with that sentiment as it relates to just about every single post 50-year-old walking the planet today — think Dick Cheney — I’d have to take exception with how that curse applied to Michael Jackson.
Dead at 50 and possessing a face with which no one should ever have to contend. Mike’s adult face was actually a mask. A direct creation of self-hatred, plain and simple. That and the way our own ghoulish fascination with his self-loathing spurred him on. An obsession that was prodded, secretly I think, by that part within each of us that dislikes parts of ourselves: wrinkles, sags, spots, dots; imperfection. Given unlimited wealth and time, Michael could nip, tuck, tweak and freak to his heart’s content. Only he could never get away from the self-loathing.
But enough bummer talk. Michael was a true blue puer aeternus … and no self-respecting puer, worth their essence in gold records, should ever live into his fifties. Michael was just taking leave on cue, true to his mythology. It makes perfect sense to me.
Michael Jackson delivered so much musical joy in my life I feel like I need to send a truck load of money — right now — over to Barry Gordy and Sony Records. Like those folks who can tell you exactly where they were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, I can tell you exactly where I was, what I was doing (and who I was doing) the day I picked up Michael’s Thriller album. I became the local hipster in one fell swoop, debuting the album for a gathering of friends that very night: Hawaii. Manoa Valley. Early December. And I was doing a handsome stud named Mark — meeting furtively down at our local graveyard no less because I was cheating on my boyfriend. Thriller indeed.
Michael also gave unlimited hours of meanspirited fun to Nightcharm’s editor, John Calendo, and me as we worked on different off-the-wall entries for this blog. To this day I can’t shake from my peabrain the evening when Michael was due to be sent up the river on child molestation charges, a news event narrated and overseen by CNN’s resident vulture Nancy Grace.
John and I were calling each other, frantically — Washington to New York — (this was before Twatter) every five minutes: “Can you believe what that bitch just said? Jackson is a cross between a man and a god!? LOVE IT!” We’d a contest going, pounding out the best one-liners on our keyboards and then posting to the site as fast as we could pop ‘em out. It was divine. To this day I can still reread our Birdwomen of Santa Barbara piece and bust a gut. That was the other kind of unintentional joy Michael stimulated. I mean, come on, he was a lightening rod for bizarreness — and you loved him for it!
And then there was John’s full-blown coverage of the 2003 Martin Bashir interview, Living With Michael Jackson. The screencaps of which got us into trouble as we dared to show the cancer kid’s face from the documentary, the very same boy that was, years later, dragging Michael to court. Well, his parents were doing the dragging. I’m sure the kid was clueless — a harmlessness indubitably tainted by adult graft and greed. And I knew Michael was innocent way before the verdict ever arrived. Jackson was a Virgo, for christ’s sake; his star sign being the only proof I needed.
But that’s all meaningless effluvia now. I mean, at least to me it is. The great stuff is Michael’s music and videos and dancing — especially when he was on his long legendary “roll”. Though he’d never top the mega-gonzo-blotto super reach of Thriller, there were still dozens of golden moments and songs to follow. I was watching his stellar Man in the Mirror performance on Youtube earlier tonight, from a 1988 Grammy Awards show (below). There are a couple of lines in the song that have always made me go soft, when I’d play the song in the past — like the way a sad poem fuzzes up your world for a moment. But tonight the words hit me doubly hard, the bit about: “A willow deeply scarred…Somebody’s broken heart…And a washed-out dream…They follow the pattern of the wind ya see…Cause they got no place to be…”
Who wouldn’t cry?
And then like everyone tonight (I think the internets almost broke at some point, right after Jackson’s death was made official) I haphazardly, randomly, clicked my way along a string of rather dullard Jackson reports until I landed on Mark Morford’s SF Gate column. Mark wrote it so well, in that pointed, occasionally ‘cosmic’ way that he can write. So I’ll close with his thoughts and simply add: “what he said.”
“How many millions rushed home on hearing the news of his sudden death and put on Off the Wall and cranked it full volume, and swam in the memories, and are still doing so, right this moment? They say pop culture is generally meaningless and transitory and has no lasting effect, lowers the bar of discourse and poisons the intellect, is the junk food of the human soul. All very true. Mostly.
Let us pose the impossible question: How do we measure what’s truly important? How do we parse and separate and decide? There is bloodshed and death and revolution happening, right now, in the streets of a fiery foreign country. More than one, actually. There is meltdown and oppression and disease and countless huge-hearted people working against impossible odds to improve the lives of others in immeasurably honest, profound ways.
And yet over here is someone like Michael Jackson, his music, his dancing, his genius, his odd persona, well, it’s like it’s some different realm entirely. Strip away the cheese and the tabloid and the bizarre, freakish spectacle of his rather tragic life, and what’s left?
Well, you might say it’s a kind of sheer happiness, a kind of freedom like you can’t even speak about because it’s not really an intellectual thing. It’s just a simple joy. It’s also fairly essential to our survival.”
Thanks David. Wow, too bad it took someone’s death to get you back on the site.
Great tribute! I knew one would show up here within a day.
That video is interesting. The song is soulful and deep – Michael Jackson is the most brilliant musician we know of, and if there is a such thing as Reincarnation I’d speculate that he is Mozart. He wrote for other artists and is the origin of far more than is famously attributed to him. Elvis Presley was a brilliant performer but not an artist, John Lennon was an amazing writer but made crowds go wild for his work rather than how he carried himself; Michael Jackson managed to be both, the likelihood of which is like two shooting stars hitting the same spot. Its hard to imagine how he, first chosen for fame simply because he was one of 5 brothers with great voices, ended up being such a brilliant writer. And a brilliant self-marketer, who invented the modern concept of “cool.”
But even then the creepyness was coming through. That video was 1988, so he was, what – 29? Already barely recognizable as the person from his childhood photos because of extensive plastic surgery. Skin beginning to artificially lighten, nose whittled to a point, face whithering away… Self-loathing is right. He was uncomfortable with his age, his race, and maybe even his gender, but went about trying to change those things in such an unhealthy way that one is left to wonder if his death was somehow a result of the way he modified and contorted his body.
RIP Michael Jackson. When it happened it was like an ex-president had died, hitting the media like a bomb. NPR was doing a 10-minute obituary on him within an hour – did they somehow have that set up in advance!? The only direct historic comparison I can make is to the breath of Princess Diana. This will certainly send its ripples around the world.
Matt P., I think the news of Elvis’ death was like this (only I wasn’t an Elvis fan), so I think Princess Diana’s death is a good analogy.
I’m trying not to watch too much television or put on my CD of Thriller, because I know it would just wreck me. I was in college when the whole MTV thing hit, and Michael Jackson took advantage of it, making it more than just three-minute videos. I even remember watching the Saturday morning cartoon of the Jackson 5ive. I’d like to think that I wasn’t that much of a fan, but I am.
I hope that Michael will be remembered for the music and dance and song and showmanship, and I think he will. Elvis had his demons, and folks remember that he died on the toilet, but his talent transcends that. (Even Liberace, who is fading away because the technology for capturing his performances is limited, might get a *snork!* because he was gay, but is far more remembered for his being a great entertainer, at least to the people of my folks’ generation.)
I will miss you, Michael. Even if you spent the last few years mostly out of the public eye, with your kids, it was good to know you were here with us. I hope that in the strangeness of your life, there were some genuinely good times for you and that you were happy.
I think it is hard for anyone to say that he or she doesn’t like Michael Jackson. I’m no fan, but there are plenty of his songs that I can bear listening to. His individual has made quite an impression on this world, negative and positive ones. Let’s just try to never forget the good things.
A VERY HONEST AND INSIGHTFUL PIECE. MICHAEL JACKSON WAS (IS) ONE OF THOSE RARE BURSTS OF BRILLIANT LIGHT THAT FLASHES ACROSS AND INTO OUR LIVES. OF HIS GENIUS NO ONE CAN DENY. HOW SAD HIS OBVIOUS “SELF LOATHING” OVERCAME HIM. A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG MAN, WHOSE FATHER TAUNTED AS “BIG NOSE”, WHEN IN REALITY HE WAS IN NO WAY FREAKISH AT ALL. HOW THIS SPEAKS TO SO MANY OF US WHO HAVE BEEN BLOWN OFF THE COURSE OF OUR LIVES BY SUCH REJECTION AND CONDEMNATION. HE WILL GROW LARGER IN DEATH THAN HE WAS IN LIFE, AND BE COUNTED AMONG THE OTHERS IN THE PANTHEON OF LIKE SPIRITS: ELVIS, JAMES DEAN, JAMES BROWN, JIMI, JANICE, AND THE LIST GOES ON….AS YOU HAVE STATED HERE, HE TOOK THE FINAL AND PERFECT CUE, AND EXITED JUST AS A LEGEND REQUIRES IN ORDER TO BEGIN!
Jackson was a talented nut-job, there, I said it. We’d all be happier not knowing all the eccentricities that accompanied his fame, so we could appreciate his music.
The media created Michael Jackson, destroyed him, and now seek to gain whatever they can from this pathetic man’s death. I was 22 when “Thriller” came out. The years 1983 through 1990 were his glory days on the “this celebrity is hot era.” His Music Videos created MTV. And it is this very MTV and VH1 that chortled and laughed at his admittedly erratic behavior through the “after” years.
June 26, 2009. These same stations are humbled…are mute. They play Mr. Jackson’s music in “marathons.” Have tributes…
Where where these people when Jackson was obviously struggling…both with his inner demons and his musical career? Of course, feed the fodder to the masses..he’s crazy, he’s becoming a woman, he’s a has been. They move on to the next hot upcoming “artist.”
Pure hypocrisy in their sudden interest and “marathons.”
AN American Tragedy that reveres celebrities when they are on the top of their game, tears them down at the slightest misstep or poor selling CD, then when the media machine has churned them through the wringer, why is it surprising the Man is a God again after his death?
I do not claim to be e fervid Michael Jackson fan. He deserved better for his philanthropic activities and his MOJO to start a new tour.
Rest in Peace Mr Jackson. The Media Carnival is over.
speaking of the bird lady… (link)
(fact 6) LOL
i can remember years ago, in Titos autobiography, a passage claiming that Micheal was given female hormones as a teenager because they were terrified of his voice breaking and the J5 gravy train slowing down – Peter Pan? Boy Child? Confused gender and sexuality. I do not think he was sexually attracted to 12 year old boys – he thought he still was one.
For David K and those interested in the esoteric (+critical French analysis) of MJJ, etc. http://www.astroinquiry.com/2009/07/michaels-mad-dream-a-pluto-maniacal-mutation/