The King is Dead: June 26, 2009

The King is Dead: June 26, 2009

by Lorette C. Luzajic

It doesn’t feel real. I can’t stop crying.

Few in my generation can imagine life without Michael Jackson, no matter what we thought of him. Now we will have to: the King of Pop was not invincible after all. I’d never ever thought about Michael Jackson dying, except for a panic that he might commit suicide during the infamous trials. Not long after hearing the news, I realize I am woefully unprepared for this. It doesn’t matter that I’ve never even met the man: I am experiencing intense grief, and I will go through a full-fledged mourning process, along with millions of others. I’m barely over Princess Di’s departure, for crying out loud- just so not ready for this

Michael Jackson was a tragedy and a comedy played out before our eyes, laid out before us in sacrificial theatre that for him was all too real. He was one of the first child stars, one of the first megastars, and as a megastar the King of Pop has no peers but the King. Rivals Britney, Madonna are really his heirs- as is hip-hop, and an endless array of other entertainment and creativity.

MJ is an enigma we will never know and always try to: he is one of the most eccentric figures of all time. While the celebrity world is not exactly devoid of anorexia or plastic surgery or sexual ambiguity, the extremism of Michael’s bizarre obsessions will forever remain puzzling. That he transformed himself from a lithe, feline, hot as hell black man into a horror-film configuration showed just how much difficulty he had being human.

He’s black, he’s white, he’s human, he’s alien, he’s gay, he’s straight, he’s bisexual, he’s asexual, he’s male, he’s female- Michael’s extremist disconnection to every aspect of his body was peculiar, considering how pivotal it was in his entertainment. The dancer’s impossible choreography became the foundation for everything after in pop video and beyond. Could anyone even dance if he hadn’t shown us how? And yet the power that changed the world was clearly something he was dissociated from. He literally melted before our eyes, tore himself into alien angles with an angry scalpel, while hiding behind ma Queen Elizabeth’s skirts. At first we wondered if the surgeon had been an unfortunate choice, but as the years went by, we realized that he obviously wanted to look like a fucking freak. We were embarrassed for him, repulsed. And yet, many of us could never hate him. I always loved him, and I’m so not alone. I just can’t stop loving you- even as you unravel.

From his days as a child entertainer, the pressures that surrounded Michael were extraordinary- and he has in common with other child megastars some of the crushing fragility and inabilities to become wholly realized adults. His idol poor Judy Garland was hooked on speed by the time she was ten- thanks to Mommie Dearest who wanted to assure Judy could don’t-stop-til-they-got-enough without getting tired. Later, Brit-Brit would crash and burn and take her children hostage more or less on national television, her identity both validated and vanishing before a thousand cameras. There is no end to the desperate neediness, vanity, the excess, the addiction, the cheap shots at love that cyclone through Hollywood and her cousins.

But only one celebrity ever made it into the furthest wing of Neverland’s lunatic asylum, where he’s roamed the grounds in his bizarre military getup and bandages, accompanied by man’s best friends- his llamas and his monkeys. Here, in this out-of-this-world world that no one else resided in, he was a strange disciplinarian who denied his body proper nourishment his whole life, at first covering his asceticism by the usual guise: vegetarian apologetics. Light as a feather, the bag of bones grilled himself through endless routines and repetitions, working harder than anyone in showbiz, except perhaps, Madonna, who eats. And though he denied his flesh its most basic necessities, he lavished luxurious longevity fantasies on himself with weird oxygen machines and reported cryogenics.

In this storybook nightmare world of roller coasters and purged peas, he could never have a regular stab at family life.During the umpteen trials, courts heard tapes of Michael discussing how he was a virgin until 32 years old. Instead, he briefly married Elvis’s daughter and fathered three children with an ordinary woman and an unknown one, none of whom are in the picture. The King named them all Prince Michael, except the daughter, Paris Michael.

Despite the increasing disappearance of his face and body, Michael’s massive entertainment persona still meant millions of women throwing themselves at his feet. And millions of gay men had helped make him a superstar, sprinkling Michael’s fairy dust, glittering magazine pages and runways and stages the world over. Michael could have had anyone he wanted- and some say he did.

I’ve always been Team Innocent simply because it’s obvious Michael’s an easy target for every scam artist alive. He had no defenses, his money was a joke, he had no idea what the fuck was going on and very little ability to function in the real world. His detractors always mumble “crazy” “freak” “nut job” “insane” and all I can say is “exactly.”

A fragile recluse, totally delusional- I mean, freaks come out tonight. You may as well just step up and ask him for a few million and save your kiddies having to remember their speeches in court. Indeed, the first time around, kid’s dad was famed for his promises to get a few million out of Michael, who had turned down some of his entertainment ideas.

I do know that anyone at all could be a child molester, and yet I’ve always thought it’s way too easy to blame Weird Michael than to blame the much more likely unsuspected man in bed beside you.

Michael’s fumbling adolescent sexuality and helpless self-hatred didn’t make him a poster child for pederasty in my eyes, not nearly as much as those secretive, angry men who were never a hit with the ladies, men with a sense of entitlement, men with too much testosterone spilling in every direction. Yet regardless of what will come out of this closet postmortem, anyone can see that Mikey was weirdly obsessed with his missing childhood, trying desperately to fix for every other kid what he himself lacked. Heroically or otherwise, to go along with all those cheeseball Heal the World and Have You Seen My Childhood lyrics, MJ’s philanthropy to kiddie cancer wards and other children’s charity is unsurpassed. Though most of his life he refused interviews altogether, letting scandal ooze up every which way through the cracks in his fragile psyche, he spoke loud and clear to his accusers in a 2003 interview with Ed Bradley.

“It’s people with a dirty mind that think like that. I don’t think that way. That’s not me,” he said. “I wanted to have a place that I could create everything that I never had as a child. So you see rides, you see animals, there’s a movie theater. I was always on tour traveling, you know, and I never got a chance to do those things. So I compensated for the loss… we have busloads of kids who don’t get to see those kids, they come up, sick children, and enjoy it.”

It may have been Mikey’s razor sharp lawyers who got him acquitted over and over. But then again, on dozens of charges, verdicts of innocent, innocent, innocent, innocent, innocent, innocent- I started to see a pattern. All I could see was flimsy evidence. There was the unquestionably inappropriate practice of slumber parties, yes, with a gaggle of underage boys. But it’s also probably true that Michael himself was sexually underage, despite his dog years, and absolutely clueless about decorum. I confess that I camp out by the fireplace with my nephews and niece at holiday time, and if anyone thought Auntsie Ret was up to no good, I would think they were truly disturbed. But there’s nothing for greedy parents to cling to with me- what, sue me for a bunch of used books and a few rhinestone belts?

Some things, by the way, were skimmed over by the bloodthirsty press- the maid who saw him showering with young boys admitted she’d been paid to say so- and the first child to accuse him steadfastly refused to do so until his parents drugged him with a powerful hypnotic drug. This case may have paved the way for later accusations, seeing ‘easy money’ written all over a dead man walking.

Interestingly, Jordy Chandler allegedly sued his own father a few years ago for physical and psychological abuse. Now in his late 20s, accusing MJ on Dad’s greedy behalf has ruined his life.

(Mary A. Fisher’s in-depth GQ Magazine story in 1994, Was Michael Jackson Framed? was sadly glossed over, yet remains a luminary piece of reporting. It’s reprinted here: http://www.allmichaeljackson.com/wasmichaeljacksonframed.html)

Though thousands of child molesters will never be brought to justice, there are also countless cases of false accusations and fake recovered memories that have ruined the lives of innocent men. Many have been driven to suicide. It may well be that our relentless thirst for blood, flogging this fragile entertainer endlessly over the years, was the final nail in his coffin. It may not be guilt that drove him to sleeping pill and narcotics addiction, to increasingly weird ailments and appearances, to more dramatic starvation, to delusions and further slicings and dicings. It takes an incredibly strong man to deal with even a small community’s condemnation of kiddie diddling. But this man, not a strong one, was known as a child molester in front of the whole wide world. His semblance of reality was so frail, in fact, that he wore his pajamas to court during his 2005 trial, and performed outside of the courthouse for the masses, dancing atop of his car.

And then, the final indignity- on the eve of MJ’s giant, sold-out, megatriumph show-you-all comeback, he dies instead, leaving some speechless and others, like me and Madonna, sobbing. He’s dead, and my childhood is flashing before my eyes. Japey and I listening to Thriller in the laundry room where my parents couldn’t hear us (in our fundie family we couldn’t listen to rock’n’roll.) And year after year, no matter how far Billie Jean faded into the past, it was the one song that could get everyone onto the dance floor, a DJs standard lure if the crowd was unresponsive.

Then there were those underrated moments, sadly lost in the pathetically simpering lyrics of a defenseless child defending himself- too many songs about them not caring, I’m invincible, you can’t get to me, they destroyed me- moments no one noticed amid the trial hysteria, moments buried in Invincible- where silky R and B made luminous his gorgeous falsetto. We’ll always love the disco, and we’ll always love Beat It and now the motorcycle jacket from the video will go for zillions on eBay and I’ll kick myself for losing mine in the early ‘90s.

But somehow most of the world missed out on one of his most brilliant moments, a surprisingly mature and dark Give In To Me. And the sick, sweaty sex in the Billie Jean mash-up with Biggie- that Billie Jean rhythm layered behind “Fingers in your mouth, open up your blouse, pull your g-string down south, wow,” can’t help getting me all hot and bothered, bringing MJ into adulthood for a brief moment, even though Biggie’s light has also gone out. And the unparalleled gospel anthem Man in the Mirror would be perfect for the Mississippi Mass Choir- or the Soweto choir, maybe, to perform at his funeral. And as if Adam Lambert stealing the Rolling Stone cover from the actual idol winner Kris Allen weren’t enough, his cover of Black or White I predict will be a megaseller.

But then there were those other moments of music, like In The Closet, where it seemed MJ had no idea of the double entendre that had been the story of his life- and so he played the fool for us yet again.

The media circus was unleashed yesterday, and I’m a part of it, too. We all are- it is the age we live in. It’s not all bad, either- it allows us to mourn together, and to celebrate lavishly the larger than life life of one of the greatest entertainers of all time, now and forever. Once again, the day after, his albums are again in the top spots of the charts. We will be fortunate enough to share in the memorials, too, and to hear unreleased songs, to find out what Britney and Simon Cowell have to say, and hopefully even Obama- who could play Thriller-era Michael in a movie. His music will blast from every store and many churches and from music television and iTunes, surrounding the world with We Are the World. Shrines will spring up in every nook and cranny of the planet.

But the media will also, as always, dance with the devil, who writes her paycheque- and that devil is us. Michael Jackson has joined Marilyn and Kurt and Judy and Jim and Diana in a vast pantheon of human sacrifice. Was he sick? Did Michael overdose? Was he a drug addict? Did he die of a broken heart? Was it heart failure? Did he starve to death? Did we do it? Did he do it to himself? Was it suicide? And the answer is one we all know: yes.