“Billie Jean” and the Michael Jackson Freak Show

When I was a kid, Michael Jackson was big. Kids today just don’t understand that, prior to all the whispers about why he was spending so much time with little boys, Jacko was not whacko at all. He was bigger than the Beatles, who were bigger than Jesus. Therefore, Michael Jackson was bigger than Jesus. And in the end, that’s what destroyed him.

I can remember when people still had record players, because we had records, big black discs that scratched up when you placed the needle on them. Records had sleeves, into which you placed them when you were done or you held up to your face to look at as you listened to the record. When I went through my pretentious-music-snob phase (lots of Joy Division and Smiths vinyl that I found at used record stores and various other dives of ill-repute), I sought out the post-punk that I had become entranced with during my brief stint at that school with the chicken for a mascot, but back when I was a kid my album collection (which was really my grandparents’ record collection, which they bought for my uncle and aunt who were close in age to me) was whatever was popular on the radio, and we often opted for the singles rather than the whole album package (though we did have a very funny Bill Cosby comedy record from the early Eighties, because Cosby was king). It never occurred to me that there was such a thing as “alternative” music, and while R.E.M. was just a stone’s throw away down in Athens, I would never have known it prior to “Losing My Religion.”

Michael Jackson was already an old hand at being a star by the time I became conscious of him, thanks largely to Joe Jackson’s unbending desire to live his musical dreams through his kids (he was the forerunner to all those horrible parents on “Toddlers & Tiaras”). The Jackson Five were a distant memory, and Michael was on his own, dominating the charts and opening the door to MTV showing black artists on their channel (ironic when you consider the lengths to which he allegedly went to alter his appearance to not look black. Allegedly). Sure, he had Bubbles the chimp, and a weird desire to be Peter Pan, but when you were a kid in the Eighties, you wanted a pet monkey just as much and you were catered to with an ever-increasing number of sugar-powered cartoons promising that if you bought the tie-in products, you could buy happiness. Michael Jackson like to play with toys? I like to play with toys, too. Nevermind that Michael was in his twenties; he was living the dream, right?

Turns out he was living a nightmare; having survived Joe Jackson’s Gestapo-approved methods for turning your children into cash-cows, he ended up a frustrated adolescent, and if he wasn’t guilty of molesting kids, he was guilty of letting himself get into situations where parents who might have been just as opportunistic as his father take advantage of his generosity. In court, he was never found guilty, but in the public he was convicted before either of his trials, simply because of how odd he was. Part of it was the endless celebrity desire not to be forgotten, the Ozymandias Syndrome as I like to call it (“look upon my might works, and tremble”). But part of it was his genuine strangeness, his otherness because first of his fame, then because of his ever-changing appearance and bizarre coterie of celebrity friends (who hangs out with Elizabeth Taylor *and* Liza Minelli?), and the allegations against him for something as heinous as child molesting.

When “Glee” devoted an entire hour to his music, it was predictable but sad at the same time; the kids of today don’t know Michael the way that I know Michael, but I don’t know him the way that people who remember the cute baby-faced singer backed by his brothers know him, or think they know him. Michael was a wounded soul, whatever his misdeeds, and I guess that explains why he’s still held in reverence despite what we know, or think we know. True artistry is said to be born of suffering, and while Michael’s early solo work does betray some pain behind it, it’s hard to see much worth in anything he did after the first wave of allegations against him became public. When I think about him, I try not to think about the mugshot where he looks like Johnny Depp in “Edward Scissorhands,” or the marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, or the many noses and poor children born of a test-tube who have to grow up as “Michael’s heirs” (because I’m guessing Joe Jackson is already planning to exploit them somehow). I prefer to think of the young man in the “Billie Jean” video, the one who could light up whatever he stepped on (a trick that looks old now, but was revolutionary at the time). That was the Michael I knew, whenever we put the record on and his voice floated through the room.

That guy was pretty big when I was a kid. I don’t know what happened, I guess we all had to grow up at some point. Michael never did, though.