There can be no question the the life of Michael Jackson was a sad one, that his story is one of tragedy. The general narrative is this: overbearing, abusive father drives kids, and particularly young, fragile Michael, to show business stardom. Great talent, great records, horrid home life. Awkward teen years, great solo record (Off the Wall), unbelievably greater follow-up (Thriller), capitalizes on new form of music video to become biggest star on planet, appears at height of fame on the Motown 25th anniversary special, kills there, does the moonwalk, thus convincing the world he can indeed bend physics and gravity to suit his whims. Co-writes "We Are the Word," feeds the hungry. Burns hair in Pepsi commercial... and... slowly, excruciatingly, it all goes bad from there (literally.)

Somehow he went from looking like this:


to looking like this:


He claims this was all resulting from various diseases; TV plastic surgeons have diagnosed him with dysmorphia, the syndrome that drives people to become "addicted" to plastic surgery. He also claims that his skin turned white from a rare skin disease, vitiligo; but others assume it was some sort of bleaching process. Hard to miss that the nose, the hair, the skin all ended up looking as "un-black" as possible.

Where I come out on MJ is that he is less a freak than a victim. Take a very troubled, disturbed, abused little boy, give him all the money and fame in the world, and get out of his way, and, well, watch out. He's going to live in an amusement park. he's going to buy a monkey. He's going to have a lot of sleep-over dates.

See, Michael has said numerous times that his father robbed him of his childhood. But I think he had that wrong. It looks to me like he had a 50-year childhood. What Joe robbed him of was adulthood. I believe something very bad happened to MJ in his early teen years, happened at the hand of his father, and that thing scarred him badly for life, essentially trapped him forever psychically as a 13- or 14-year-old. On some sad level, when he had boys over and they spent the night, in MJ's head it was a playdate among equals, not a man/boy thing. And definitely not a sex thing.

So I choose to remember him three ways: singing "I Want You Back" and "ABC" with his big brothers (the former may well be one of the 10 greatest recorded songs ever); spinning and gliding through the "Billy Jean" video; and moonwalking at the Motown anniversary show. The moments when the light shone through the darkness and filled us all with song. The rest is the tragedy, and I'm letting it fall away from memory.

Labels: The tunes; michael jackson

Labels: the kid