Michael Jackson, R.I.P (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009)
(τζακσονικη τομογραφια)
Volumes will be written about Jackson in the years to come, as long as humans are around to opine. It seems like everyone alive who has ever written anything anywhere has had something to say about the sad event. This is the first superstar ‘death as event’ of the media and internet age.
He will remembered as one of the most remarkable performers of the 20th century and one of its most tragic figures. His talent was unique and his influence on popular music and dance is immeasurable. People all over the world are mourning for his passing and celebrating his life and achievements.
Michael Jackson was a product of the age of the image and one of its great innovators. He was also a product of the age of excess, and its biggest martyr yet. People made money off of him ever since he was a child. And after he became a bonafide superstar, with 1982’s ‘Thriller’, business people always took a bigger cut when his name was involved. Suits in the music business refer to artsists like him as cash cows. They milked him for every last dime. Mammon is insatiable like that. I think Michael sensed this.
His first taste of fame came with his family group, Jackson 5 (later The Jacksons). He went on to become the biggest selling solo artist of the 80s with his ‘Thriller’ album, which remains the biggest selling album of all time, and will likely remain so given the state of music sales today. But Jackson attained too much fame for his own good. Where do you go after creating the most successful album of all time at the age of 23? ‘Thriller’ was never going to be bettered artistically or commercially and one can imagined that this weighed heavy on the young artist.
After ‘Thriller’ I think he got caught up in his own myth making. He seemed to like the public’s extreme attention and invited it. At the same time he seemed to have a childlike innocence and insecurity about him, an impossible prince who had never had a proper childhood. This was a wound that scarred him to his end, especially after he was accused of abusing young friends visiting his Neverland ranch. He seeked solace in medication to which he became addicted. The way he used pharmaceuticals and the way he embraced plastic surgery indicate a child who understood little about limits. By transcending limits, he wrote his own tragedy…
The first obvious sign that he’d had more than he could handle came with ‘Bad’. In the album’s videos Jackson began sporting his angry face. With ‘Dangerous’ his grimaces would devolve into contortions of hate and disgust. In directors’ cuts of some of his later phase videos, like ‘Black or White’ and ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ Jackson could be found breaking things, tearing his clothes, howling in desperation. Maybe he was begging for some kind of salvation, mercy, help…
Jackson became increasingly frustrated with media attention. If ‘Leave Me Alone’ was a first plea, later tracks like ‘Scream’, ‘Tabloid Junkie’ and ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ expressed both defiance and disillusionment.
Post Thriller videos were ‘dark’ affairs, that I think expressed much inner conflict. Promotional efforts hinted at megalomania, while his self image may have at times bordered on ‘messianic’. In the years to come people will look a bit closer at the uniforms, the military dress, the warrior depictions, the armies lined up, the statues of himself, the fascist aesthetic, all so very Riefenstahlian …along with the angry facial expressions, tell tale signs of a warped vision and a disturbed personality. As his career developed his dance and demeanour became less jovial and increasingly angular.
The titles of his albums in a way read like chapter titles of a lonely deluded descent:
Off the Wall
Thriller
Bad
Dangerous,
HIStory
Blood on the Dancefloor
Invincible
Still, I think that Jackson was always deeply divided. I find his more humanitarian songs and videos sincere and convincing. We Are The World, Earth Song, Heal The World, Will You Be There are songs from an other, gentler, more benign part of his psyche.
Michael Jackson’s death is so disturbing and so phenomenal because so many people alive were acqauinted with his amazing artistic achievements, his song and his dance. His image has been there all along the way. His exchanges with the fame and money machine were somehow, bizarrely, predestined to end up this way. He was aware of this. In the years to come he will be commercialized like few ever before by industries which he boosted and which sucked him dry, a merciless money machine which will make millions from his sudden departure in its usual, limitless fashion. He was a major talent exploited from the cradle to the grave and I truly hope he finds some kind of peace in some kind of afterlife.
I’d like to remember that this tortured individual loved one thing more than anything else in his brief life in the limelight. The music. And he served his art as best as he knew how and as best as he could under the extenuating circumstances. And his music will play on.
Rest In Peace
