This weekend, I knew it would be impossible to write about Michael Jackson, as most everything has already been said, but that it would also be impossible not to write about Michael Jackson, as his death is dominating the news.
It would be a bit disingenuous of me to write a few pop culture pieces with a shadow like this looming overhead; at this point I'm sure everyone is tired of reading about Jackson, or perhaps just sad and burned out and needing to just walk away from the analysis and the fights regarding his personal life versus his professional contributions. But I think there is something to be said about the way the world seems to be handling this death, as opposed to the other high profile deaths we've seen over the past few years (and can continue to expect, as our "legends" continue aging up), and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that people who were old enough to remember Michael Jackson in his prime are also being faced, perhaps for the first time, with something that their parents have already been through: the weird aftermath of a childhood idol's death.
There is a generational gap in mourning, it seems: the younger you are, the less likely this is to affect you, as Jackson's reputation and musical career was already in decline by 1993, and many grew up only knowing the plastic-surgery obsessed Jackson who put out mediocre hits like "You Rock My World," while fighting off pretty damning child molestation charges. But if you were a child of the 80s, and you loved Michael Jackson as a kid, you really loved Michael Jackson.
For many of us, I think, Michael Jackson was the first person outside of our immediate families that we really fell in love with. Not in a sexual sense, mind you, but in the way you fall in love with a song, or a movie, or a poem, and you keep playing/watching/reading it over and over again. He seemed otherworldly at times, a Ziggy Stardust who never stepped out of character, walking around in sequined uniforms and red leather jackets and sparkling gloves. There was one summer in the late 80s where every kid on my street was lightly bruised from shoulder to ankle on one side of his or her body from trying desperately to replicate the "Smooth Criminal" lean. We loved him because he was so unlike anyone else. And when he suddenly became someone else, through the surgeries and the revelations about his personal life, we do what people always do when they lose an early love: we shut the door and said things like, "I was a kid, and that was a long time ago."
Now that he's gone, the debate over how he should be remembered will begin, and it will probably never, ever end. He is a divisive figure if only because those of us who are feeling sad over his death are the people who have been students of the school of Two Michael Jacksons: the "old" Michael and the "sad" Michael. Turns out you can't split a person's life in two and pretend that the pieces won't eventually have to be somehow placed back together: in mourning his death, we are also faced with the darker sides of his life, and both sides are just pretty damn sad. The internet has exploded with both tributes and harsh comments: if nothing else, his death has provided people a platform to say the things they've wanted to say for the past two decades, which is typically what happens when someone famous dies—suddenly everyone realizes that they have feelings about someone they've just assumed was going to be around forever. When a celebrity this big dies, it's a reminder that everyone dies. I've seen people writing things like, "I feel like my childhood died," which is, of course, code for: "I just realized that there really is no going back and I'm mortal just like everybody else."
If you're sick of the tributes and the tear-downs, you're in for a rough fucking ride over the next 40 years. We're running out of celebrities of Michael's stature (and he was arguably the biggest one we had), and the ones that are left are growing older, just as we are, and the grief, anger, and questioning over the love, adoration, and support we've given certain artists will be thrown out the second one of them leaves us. The world is a small and strange place: every so often, someone comes along with the talent to move from a town like Gary, Indiana to the record players, television sets, and brains of billions of people across the world, leaving a mark that invites both celebration and mockery. It could be argued that we will never see anyone burn quite as brightly as Michael Jackson in our lifetime, nor will we be as stunned when a light like that suddenly goes out. But talent and fame does not make anyone invincible, nor does it make anyone a perfect human being. Michael Jackson was sublimely gifted and terribly cursed, and the world is now left to deal with the legacy of both.
Thanks, Hortense. Now, I think I have something personal to add.
I was in 5th grade when I discovered Michael Jackson and began to really listen to music on my own instead of just what my parents were listening to. It was the year that Thriller was released. Watching Michael receive all those Grammys for his ground-breaking album is what got me listening to the radio. My parents bought me my very first "jam box." I decided I just had to have the Thriller album. I had been saving up my own money to buy it, but I was little short. I asked my parents if they would help me buy it, but they refused. I threw a little bit of a fit, because I had caught the Michael Jackson fever and it wasn't going away. Well, I managed to get my hands on a cassette tape. It would become my most prized possession. I recall I built some sort of shrine around it. It was the only thing I listened to for the longest time. I loved to watch Michael dance. He was slick. He had an infectious smile. His music made me want to dance and filled me with cheer. What was so bad about that? My parents had their own issues with it. They sat me down for a talk one day when I came home from school. My parents assumed that since I was so crazy about Michael Jackson, that I would of course decide that I would be dating African-American boys when I was old enough. They had a real problem with that. I got the speech about how it had almost ruined my aunt's life when she married a black man. They acted like it had made her untouchable. I knew my uncles hated her and had nothing to do with her. What it all boiled down to was racism and that is what I called it. They said, "Oh, no, Anne. We are not racist. We just know that it would make your life hard." I told them that we wouldn't be having this conversation if they were not racist. Well, my parents were not getting the results they wanted, so they got nasty. They said that if I "ever brought home a black boy [I] would be disowned." I don't think I've had ever been so heartbroken and disappointed in two people. These were my parents. How rotten and hateful could two people get? Hang on...I have to insert this rant here: (Unfortunately, that little bit of hatefulness was not all I ever got from my mother. She hated everything. She had a problem with everything. She was terribly opinionated. If you were not doing what she thought you should be doing, everyone would hear about it. Dad was there in the background going along with whatever she said, because he didn't know what else to do. I'm glad I took more after my father, even though he just sucked it up. He would have enough sometimes. That's when a fight would erupt, which was often. Well, this isn't all about my parents, but what they said to me was the point. It hurt me. I was ashamed of the hatred.) I continued to marvel over Michael Jackson whether they liked it or not. I had posters and magazines all devoted to him, but I kept them hidden to keep my mom off my back. Time would pass. I would move on to other music. I would hear rumors about Michael. I would see the scandals unfold. I would distance myself from the devotion I had for him, but I still appreciated his talent and enjoyed his music even if it did become rather mediocre.
So, years later, June 25, 2009, I'm fixing my kids dinner after coming home from swimming I hear on the radio that someone very important has gone into cardiac arrest and coma. I stop to focus on who it was the person on the radio was talking about. It was repeated that it was Michael Jackson. I took a deep breath. I felt shocked. Seconds later the radio announcer blurts out that Michael Jackson is dead. I couldn't help it. My eyes welled up with tears. As we ate dinner, we watched the crowds build up around UCLA Medical Center and around his home near there on CNN. The next morning my dad called. He made some small talk. He then said, "Ummmm..." He sounded like he was trying to bring something up he was uncomfortable talking about. He said, "You probably already know that he died." It was the same kind of sorrow in his voice I heard before when he had called to tell me a close family member had died. It was kind of surreal. He then apologized for being hard on me years ago. He said he wished no one had to die. He said he felt bad for Michael, because he knew he had no childhood and that along with the imprisonment of critical fame had made the rest of his life difficult to live.
I told Dad I never believed he had molested any children. It was never proved that he had done such. If it had, he would have been sent to prison. However, the judge did rule against him in the civil suit, which was what this was all about. These people who had a pretty good idea that if not just one person but at least two accused him of the crime, it would be sure to be believed by enough people. Michael paid these people off to get them off his back. He defended his innocence the best he could, but the accusations destroyed him. He was not a bad person. He was just a guy who lost out on his childhood due to fame and wanted to try to get it back, relive the one he didn't have. That was the mistake he made. He was a grown man who built himself his own amusement park and surrounded himself with children. He even had pajama parties. It was all too easy for someone to send their children in there with a plan to ruin Michael's name and extort a fortune from him. These people did fine job in getting away with it. It wall all downhill from there.
I am pretty sure we all have better things to do than posting nasty things about someone they didn't even know on the internet. I didn't know him either, but I have read about his childhood and learned enough about his life that I can't judge him as a criminal. I would have liked to have known him.
