The King of Pop is dead. What killed him?
The first answer is that his pop killed him. Joe Jackson's to blame. He's at fault for the perversely abnormal childhood that Michael lived through and that led him to spend the rest of his life trying to have a childhood and made him unable to go through and past adolescence and have anything remotely like a normal sexual life.
Michael never could get that childhood back with all of its innocence, despite the amusement park for a home of Neverland, despite the toy buying sprees, despite surrounding himself, and sleeping, with boys, despite keeping his voice to the whispery falsetto of a child, despite emulating Peter Pan ("I am Peter Pan," he said in an interview), despite the hermaphroditic persona (prepubescent in nature, not that far from what Freud called the infant's "polymorphously perverse" sexuality) that he paid plastic surgeons to produce, despite the bleaching out of his natural skin color so that he effaced not only his gender but also his race.
(I shall never forget the strange sensation of watching him sing "It doesn't matter if you're black or white" while showing off his utterly white skin.)
His pop obviously killed him.
But Pop also killed Michael Jackson. The music, as infectious as it was and is, is also shallow, with very few exceptions, as all get out. The dance moves, as amazing as they were, are not meaningful in their thrusts. "I'm a lover, not a fighter" he sang, and it's true. Would that he had been a fighter.
The erasure of depth and substance that Pop music represents is mirrored in the King of Pop's life. What is the message that you want to get out there to people? Where's the content besides the glittery surface? Look at Britney's slide into bizarre behavior.
Fame for people who lack a primary group of people who knew them before they became famous and rich produces a terribly distorted life. He was, in this way, just like Elvis, who also lacked a primary group of people who could say "No" to the megastar.
No one could say no to Michael. And no one was there who Michael could trust and had to listen to.
Michael Jordan, as famous as Jackson, had (and as far as I know still has) a group of guys he plays cards with who knew him before he became famous. And they could keep him grounded. To them, he's just Michael.
But unfortunately for Michael Jackson, this was not in the cards. So he became addicted to painkillers and surrounded himself with doctors and others who'd give him what he wanted.
So popping pills also played a role, possibly an immediately proximal role, in his death, with the final blow an injection of Demerol (to kill the pain) from a somewhat shady physician.
Pop went the sound of his account as his profligate spending exploded far beyond his actual income, forcing him to launch himself into a 50 date concert tour that he was in no physical shape to even rehearse for, missing reportedly 43 out of 45 rehearsals, let alone actually perform.
The pressure of knowing that he was nearly $500 million in debt and of handling the grueling tour designed to help rescue him from that debt became unsustainable for him. And no one was there to tell him no, you can't do this Michael, and able to get him to listen. The intense contradictions that were Michael's life and that he mirrored in concentrated form from the larger culture and times finally annihilated him.
Michael never wanted to grow up and he got his wish.
RIP Michael.
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Comments
A life lived without limits, without consideration of others most particularly, is a death sentence. Wasn't Scrooge the richest man in town? The man no one could stand up to? He got a second chance to see himself as others saw him, as he was. It's a shame Michael Jackson never got that lucky. Never had a friend, never had a ghost of a chance.
I used to listen popular music during the time when progressive pop was popular. Mahavishnu Orchestra, King Crimson, Pink Floyd.
My good friend once said 'The development of the rock was stopped when Jimi Hendrix died'. He might have been right. All the later pieces after Hendrix have sounded to me just clones of the earlier ones. I don't know which ones were made by Michael Jackson. I wouldn't have known him if I saw him, I don't know any of his pieces. The name I have heard, I didn't know if he was male or female.
There have been so many deaths of famous popular musicians that it is clear that the problems have much to do with the industry. In my life memory it started with Brian Jones from Rolling Stones, but the best I remember John Lennon's death, who died differently, not so much related to the popular music industry's problems.
Padraig: Good of you to comment. Always good to see your face and words!
Jeremiah and DCV: yes, the accolades and love of the masses doesn't make up for the absence of a primary group in someone's life. In fact, the more famous you are the weirder you can get in the absence of a close knit group of friends and/or family.
Hannu: I think you may be right about the decline in pop music.
Rated.
Hey, Blue sweet comment, had me rolling, LMAO!
2Drake: Michael was the youngest and therefore the most impressionable. The older sibs didn't also become stars at such a tender age.
We never truly know the life of another unless we live with that person, and even then, the unseen persists. This is magnified a hundred fold in the case of a celebrity. Conjecture about the origin of MJ's troubles feels old and worn, even as it is rising to a feverish crescendo.
What I will carry forward about him is the joy of dancing he inspired, the pure pleasure of his artistry. I don't need depth of lyric to know that my body resonates with a beat that takes me out of my head--the most overused anatomical part often in need of a break.
It is likely we will never know the breadth of what was true in his life, but we do have his music, and for that I am grateful.
Seriously, that is when he supposedly started taking meds for pain. Yes, I've always thought it was sad that he didn't have a childhood.
Good post, rated
I appreciate your point about his music's impact on you. My comment about his music's underlying meaning - or relative lack thereof - still stands tho.
Bluesky: You raise an interesting point. The Pepsi commercial when his hair caught fire did in fact lead to his using painkillers which eventually, it looks like, did him in. I don't know if this is what O'Really had in mind in her comment...
We worship their celebrity, then watch them self-destruct with their own crowns.
I'm not sure that your blanket statement about Michael's fans killing him is at all true. First, I think it's overly general (granted it's a really short statement on your part, not intended to be a fully developed treatment of the question). The problem with its generality is that it doesn't take into account the different dimensions to his death. The family aspect of this, for example, and the psychodynamics of it can't be overlooked as a major factor in MJ's case. I say in his case because we're talking about a peculiar childhood and a particularly perverse promiscuous father combined with a Jehovah's Witness mother.
Second, I think that the world of music fame in the realm of Pop specifically and his own approach to this are being overlooked by your assertion that his fans killed him. The fans, for example, didn't insist that MJ change his skin color and didn't demand that he reduce his nose to a cipher and so on. The fans didn't insist that he become addicted to painkillers. They didn't insist that he spend $20-30 million/year over his income.
Is it true that tabloids and the paparazzi world tend to make heroes and then discard them? Yes. Is this the same thing as the fans? No. They aren't the same. There's some overlap, but they are distinquishable from each other.
Is there a reason that famous artists tend to develop problems with drugs and does this have something to do with the arena they work in and the fame itself? Yes, it does. But Springsteen's a hero too but he hasn't been destroyed by that fame. There are internal and external factors here for everyone. Some stars are slaves to their fame. Others are interested in something larger than that fame and those individuals do better overall under the scrutiny of the bright lights of fame.
Judy Garland was a victim of the studios who got her addicted to speed in the first place with the Wizard of Oz so that she could keep her weight down and look younger for her part.
My original point in the post about the role of Pop music and MJ's stance within it - if he'd been more of a fighter then he would have been able to weather these pressures better - still stands.