FEAR - The Slow Murder of Michael Jackson

[~Souza~]

By Polar Levine | musicdish.com | 2004-01-06

Fear and the Sexiness of the Undead

John Ashcroft’s thirst for capital punishment aside, America’s thirst for death as catharsis and entertainment still hasn’t gotten around to FOX’s inserting live executions into its reality TV lineup. For the moment we’ll have to be satisfied with the much slower Jacko hunt. I believe the media is chasing a very unbalanced and vulnerable man to suicide to be followed by a year-long explosion of Michael Jackson tributes, posthumous music releases, bioPix, merchandise and — when all has been said and sold — soul-searching questions about our own culpability in our victim’s demise. I’ll be amazed if Jackson reaches his fiftieth birthday.

I’d say, “go get him” if I were aware of any serious evidence of child molestation. As a dad of a young kid, I take a hard stand on pedophilia. But as far as I’m concerned a 45-year-old man sleeping in the same bed with a child, adult or any other mammal is not the same as having sex. Like having a Bud is not the same as being an alcoholic. Like being a Muslim is not the same as being a terrorist. No specific evidence of sex with children has been publicly disclosed. For that matter, I’m not sure Michael Jackson has a history of sex with any human, animal or vegetable. His true crime is being weird. More specifically, his true crime is being weird in precisely the same way that our pop culture is weird — but he’s a few years ahead of the curve.

Alleged pedophilia aside, let’s look at his weird activity. His obsession with his looks coupled with his surgical alterations reflect the same obsessions and alterations found in much of our mainstream youth-worshipping society. Compulsive shopping sprees reflect America’s extreme style of consumerism where buying unnecessary stuff is a mode of entertainment and shopping ourselves into debt has become not just a mundane activity, but our patriotic duty. His over-the-top new age Hallmark rhetoric reflects our own taste for draping doilies in the form of kitsch and sentimentality over our anxiety and terror.

Michael Jackson has lived an extreme life and he acts out his culturally-derived fears and anxieties in an extreme version of the way millions of Americans act out. We’re living in a hothouse of media-projected fear. The entertainment/infotainment industry derives much of its cash flow from the violence it amuses us with in movies, video games, tv dramas and the news. The nightly perpwalk has been a staple of local news broadcasts for decades and the droning headlines and newsmag features on serial killers, pedophiles, terrorists, muggers, scam artists, epidemics and countless possibilities for injuries are as regular as cornflakes. Michael Moore’s ‘Bowling For Columbine’ brings this fear factor chillingly to light.

No study seems to conclusively link this steady diet of violence to a violent society, so it’s hard for people to consciously attempt a movement to put on the brakes. I believe we’ve been focusing all these studies on the wrong question. People may not be more likely to kill as a result of this diet of non-stop media violence but it certainly leads to a pervasive culture of free-floating fear.

This unconscious blanket of fear gets played out in a variety of ways, often in rituals adopted by different subcultures. When fear is free-floating, as opposed to based on a specific real threat, we feel compelled to detach from life to some degree to ease the pressure. Drugs are the most obvious escape. But there are other equally destructive roads out of reality. Entertainment binging is epidemic: watching tv, playing computer and video games, recreational shopping. The comforting certainty of fundamentalism — theological, political or philosophical — has a powerful attraction. The cult of beauty and sexiness, like money, is the requisite currency of happiness. It attracts love, riches and the eternal happy ending. The hipster set has discovered the reality-buffering qualities of extreme irony as though wrapping our fears in graphic dark humor punctuated by a blasé “whatever” will say “BOO!!” and make all those scary issues of mortality, non prettiness and decrepitude flee from consciousness. Every day we receive information and instructions from prerecorded voices — the chit chat of the “undead.”

Our fear and loathing of Michael Jackson is the fear and loathing of our own attraction to the road he’s taken. We’re predisposed by instinct to recoil at the recognition of our own death trip. Jackson is being crucified for the sins of our cult of artifice and detachment.

Michael Jackson has been living in public since he was ten. He’s the prototype for ‘The Truman Show.’ Imagine going through puberty and adolescence in front of a fleet of cameras. The world gets to see, hear and comment on our sexual awakening and cluelessness, on our bodies going bonkers: zits, voice changing (a singer’s voice), too fat, too skinny, nose too big, not nice enough, not down enough, too politically conscious for Young America, too soft for the streets, too black, too white. Too much responsibility. Not enough fun.

The Jackson 5 hit the charts during the chaos of the anti-war movement and the militant phase of the civil rights movement. Michael was too young and too driven by the commercial demands of his family and his mentor/employer Berry Gordy to tap into the political/philosophical side of youth culture — a rare sliver of time when young people had goals deeper than fun and status. His major breakthrough occurred in the 80’s as a solo artist during the Reagan era when our lingering humiliation over Watergate and America’s first military defeat sought relief in nostalgia for the certainties of the 50’s. Coupled with the birth of MTV, materialism replaced social consciousness as the reigning aesthetic of youth culture. Artiface and acquisition, vogueing and coke, polyester motorcycle jackets and business suits. Fashion models became superstars just because they were pretty, corporate CEOs because they were rich, and Robin Leach because he publicly swooned over the rich and pretty for our amusement. Jackson was the most famous rich pretty person on earth.

The pressure to stay young and pretty, coupled with the onset of his alleged skin condition (vitiligo, which causes irregularly shaped white blotches on the skin), must have put this hopelessly exposed and fragile man-child into an ongoing dull roar of panic. The extreme nature of his fame, visibility and the pressure to maintain the winning formula in a formula-bound youth culture must have been crushing to a person who had known nothing but pop music success.

The call to surgically derived youth had been answered long before Michael Jackson got to it. But Jackson, unlike his nipped and tucked predecessors, was introduced to the scalpel at a time when the technology of virtual youth offered transformative potential that would have given Mary Shelly the creeps. And few humans of any age had Michael Jackson’s enormous wealth with which to indulge surgery to such monstrous ends. Only in horror stories of the “undead” were these transformations previously contemplated: ‘Frankenstein,’ ‘The Island Of Dr. Moreau’ and zombie flicks like ‘Dawn of The Dead.’

The enormity of his talents has only been surpassed by the depths of his preventive isolation. His pathological drive to stay young for his adolescent market and his lack of intellectual curiosity and maturity precluded evolving into a “mature” artist like Al Green, Sting, Mick Jagger and Robert Plant, whose records are no longer guaranteed to sell multi-platinum but allow for longterm creative careers. The audience that grew up with Michael Jackson would certainly forgive him for aging along with them. He could have let the teeny boppers serve the teeny boppers. Instead he chose the reality-defying strategy of being a teenager for life. Steven Tyler proved that a popstar could remain a teenager in the head for life. Committing one’s body to this goal is a hard wall to bang and Jackson is a banged up old guy for trying.

Fear is a soul-twisting thing; but no fear is as distorting as a generalized fear of reality. The cult of fear and its antidote — artifice — leads to a dead end. Artiface is a facsimile of life — the aesthetic of the “undead.” Death metal, fashion models posed and lit to look starved and devoid of consciousness, serial face-lifting that renders a person’s face a cadaverous mask, the Tarrantino fetish of graphic violence as comedy.

I have no aesthetic or principled objection with a bit of nip and tuck and bucket of hair paint. But taken too far, the effect becomes self-defeating. A person who’s had a dozen face lifts looks more dead than vital. A face that’s been marinated in Botox looks more like a wax museum replica of a young person than a living one. The fact that we identify these deathly faces with youth and sexiness rather then sickness says much about our growing confusion over reality and artiface. The eroticism of deadness is everywhere. The punk era popularized the black lipstick and mascara look of a cadaver. A woman’s face with so much makeup as to obscure emotional expressiveness is generally associated with sexiness as is the dissipated manequin-chic that typifies so much fashion modeling. The exquisiteness of design and the fact that much of this aesthetic has a nudge-nudge-wink-wink aspect doesn’t lighten its weight in the overall cultural lexicon, particularly as it filters down to younger generations who are unaware of the original ironic allusions.

If all of us could afford the excesses of Michael Jackson, how abnormal would he then be? Could I go that far and not know it? That’s the scary question we ask ourselves when we rubberneck our tv every time he appears. It’s our own cult of necrophilia that causes the air to vibrate when we see that face and hear that voice recite the Peter Pan platitudes in a woozy soprano. We’re terrified but can’t look away. His music is now merely an asterisk on his resuméé. Removing him is the only way out of our discomforting addiction to sensational coverage his ever-evolving creepiness. And pedophilia is the silver bullet.

Last year I watched the BBC documentary on Jackson. It was a truly repellant experience. The only thing more horrifying was the parade of coverage and commentary that revealed a bizarre giddiness in its malice. Whom did he murder? Whose life savings did he scam? Whose job did he outsource?

Why are so many people so sure he’s a pedophile despite the absence of any reported clear evidence? Would we so readily believe Oprah or Derek Jeter to be guilty of pedophilia? We believe what we’re comfortable believing. And we want to believe Michael Jackson is guilty. We want to believe that it’s impossible for an adult to lie in bed with a child or adolescent without any sexual activity or motivations.

Is it possible that a young kid with cancer who’s been told by the medical authorities that he’ll soon die has moments of sheer terror? That he’s had his youth stolen from him and is alone in the world while other people float outside in a festival of normalcy? Could he have wanted his sympathetic famous benefactor to lie next to him and maybe even rock him to sleep? Is it possible that Michael Jackson knows exactly who this kid is and wants to give him some peace?

I have no way of knowing what Jackson did or didn’t do. I do know that our slow collective public murder of this man is one of the ugliest non-military media spectacles I’ve ever witnessed. If we’re not ashamed, then we truly are the undead.

Source: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

[i[MISS]my[KING]]

amen to that.

[alovesmichael]

First paragraph made me go OMG! So many predictions and look what happened, look what they did! i.e. if Michael is indeed gone but to many people he is...

I have no way of knowing what Jackson did or didn’t do. I do know that our slow collective public murder of this man is one of the ugliest non-military media spectacles I’ve ever witnessed. If we’re not ashamed, then we truly are the undead.

And this bit made me cry  :cry: Yeah I'm super sensitive i know but it's so true and so sad... I wish more people were this insightful.

[mjjveritas]

The writer of this piece does encapsulate a view of MJ which to a wide degree I agree with. I would take issue with the use of the word "weird" and substitute it for "eccentricities". I know Wiki is just someone's opinion but some of the traits on the eccentric list could be applied to MJ. I think this word "eccentric" is a kinder word to describe some of MJ's behavior. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login. One point I do not agree with is when the writer talks about MJ's "lack of intellectual curiosity". This writer is in for a shock!

[tabloidburn]

my[KING]"]amen to that.

yup.

[elenamjgirl]

A very interesting post... I'd like to comment on the last paragraph even though i believe that it includes the sad truth itself..

I do know that our slow collective public murder of this man is one of the ugliest non-military media spectacles I’ve ever witnessed. If we’re not ashamed, then we truly are the undead.

 :cry: i feel really bad about the way media mistreated Mike, they still do and they'll keep doing. It's time that we open our eyes and restore...we have to stop paying attention to the trash we are being fed by the mass media.  They want us to be blind but it's time we find the light and be consious...Thanks Souza.. It was sadly awakening..[/color][/b]

[voiceforthesilent]

The writer of this piece does encapsulate a view of MJ which to a wide degree I agree with. I would take issue with the use of the word "weird" and substitute it for "eccentricities". I know Wiki is just someone's opinion but some of the traits on the eccentric list could be applied to MJ. I think this word "eccentric" is a kinder word to describe some of MJ's behavior. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login. One point I do not agree with is when the writer talks about MJ's "lack of intellectual curiosity". This writer is in for a shock!

I couldn't agree more. The Michael I have grown to know through research hardly lacked intellectual curiosity or maturity. He just knew how to tap into the child that most of us think we need to abandon when we reach puberty. And I'm still trying to figure out what makes Michael weird.  We can all be looked at as weird to someone. But, are we? Blessings.

[teerockjelli]

:cry:

[MJLover1990]

my[KING]"]amen to that.

Absolutely agree!

[kingofmystery]

It is sad and cruel what happened to Michael.  But it is even sadder for "us" (mankind);  we encouraged it,  facilitated it, and allowed  it to happen in the first place.  So what does it say about "us"?  What has happened to Michael reflects what society has become, and that saddens me beyond words.

[mjboogie]

[/Yeah, this article brings my attention back to when Madonna hosted the VMA Awards remember. SHe gave a long speech of the person MJ and you could not hear a pin drop in that arena!! One thing of many that stuck out to me was when she said "He was a human being" The camera panned around to a few faces in that audience and they looked quite sad, kinda humble in a sense u know?  

It was kinda like Madonna was saying "Look what you have done to him, look what you have caused, this man was a human being who was ridiculed , mistreated, brings me to tears. :cry: I never treated MJ that way even though I never met him! The only reason I had not followed him as close was because it has been a while since he stopped performing. Honestly I thought MJ had decided to retire from this profession being that he had already given many years in the music industry, but I never ever in life thought that he was guilty of anything! He was just a sweet spirited man with a very humble spirit. :cry: ANd some of those very people out in that audience were VERY GUILTY of mistreating him, turning their backs on him... where were they when he was going through the trials? Honestly if you were MJ wouldn't you have became reclusive also? I mean to me it seems like MJ just dissappeared for a lonnng time and I had always felt that he was just in L.A> enjoying his kids, and that he had decided enough of performing! I did think that he gave up completley until  I saw that press conference AFTER June 25th !!! Then I was like DAMMMM! MJ was going to do some shows? WOW! NOt that he could not do it I just had not saw any promotional things.b]

[airieslady]

It is sad and cruel what happened to Michael.  But it is even sadder for "us" (mankind);  we encouraged it,  facilitated it, and allowed  it to happen in the first place.  So what does it say about "us"?  What has happened to Michael reflects what society has become, and that saddens me beyond words.

Agree about society... and so now is the time for US to make some kind of change... it is a BIG MISSION but must happen!  WOW, about the whole article!  I am sad but happy at the same time, knowing how Strong Michael Is throughout all of His Life and Continues On With His Mission.  L.O.V.E.

[Liberian Girl Heehee]

The first two paragraphs blew me away.  Then I cried through the rest of it.  :cry:  :cry:  :cry:  

The author said:  His true crime is being weird.

 But, it goes beyond that.  His true crime is that he is the most innocent, sweet, beautiful, soft, nurturing, humanitarian, different human being to walk this earth, with more talent and smarts that any other artist in our lifetime.  And people who didn't get it or didn't care about his message looked at him and called him weird and worse.  
Now, that's the real crime!! :evil:

Thank you Souza for posting this.

[Its her]

The writer of this piece does encapsulate a view of MJ which to a wide degree I agree with. I would take issue with the use of the word "weird" and substitute it for "eccentricities". I know Wiki is just someone's opinion but some of the traits on the eccentric list could be applied to MJ. I think this word "eccentric" is a kinder word to describe some of MJ's behavior. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login.

 One point I do not agree with is when the writer talks about MJ's "lack of intellectual curiosity". This writer is in for a shock!

:lol:  :lol:  

Yes! Talk about writing without researching your subject...MJ's  intellectual curiosity only pales in comparison with the pea brain audacity to dare say such a thing about a literal genius, who has made more of an impact on this globe just speaking of innovation in entertainment and social conscience, than practically anyone else so inclined on all continents, in our lifetime! I dare say, he's read more books than most degreed folks, in pure unquenchable thirst for the pleasure of knowledge, proactively independent of formal indoctrination and the politics of getting grades.

I was SO   blessed to know this about him, when I first found out---that he read so much! Reading is the poor man's travel.  8-) anyone may go ANY place---even to places  imagined in someone's mind---when they READ. It is almost like flying. How DARE anyone say he "lacked intellectual curiosity" :!:  :!:

But that just ticked me off after I had already decided to post about this:   "...Michael was too young and too driven by the commercial demands of his family and his mentor/employer Berry Gordy to tap into the political/philosophical side of youth culture — a rare sliver of time when young people had goals deeper than fun and status."        

I remember someone--maybe Mom, saying that they used to plan charity outreaches for underpriviledged and sick children, when he was still a boy. They'd both sit and cry over some tragic report on TV, as a regular thing, and he'd say, "Mom, I'M going to do something about this, when I grow up!".   MJ hosted kids at his parent's home long before he moved out to customize NeverLand for this. The only thing that changed in this scenario of deep seated compassion for hurting people, was that, when they realized he was no longer a kid, and he had grown into a man, some evil sharks, shamed by the pure goodness of it, now beheld that he was all alone, and moved in for the kill.

Heck, he didn't NEED to  :roll: "tap into"  :roll: any one else's consciousness raising goals, or catch that "cultural" wave---he invented his own!! or, maybe God put them on his heart. This is a guy who, YET went door to door,  talking to strangers about belief in God, when he was on the fast track to  being the most famous man in the world ! He was saying that things were changing about color ceasing to divide folk, when haters were still killing off the movers and shakers with the vision for it. How old was he when he and Randy(?) wrote "Can You  Feel It?" 14?

He had that gigantic humanitarian burden on his heart, when the ONLY people doing charity work were churches and missionaries. And---only adults. Not saying he was some kind of prophet or anything weird. The basic bible training and character development placed in his soul by his church and his mother, caused him to be more aware at a much earlier age, than any so -called social temperature taken by this author at any time.

Many people think celebrities are one dimensional beings, and resent it when they step out to affect change in government or whatever. But some of them are just simply awed and humbled by the gift of the sheer power of influence HANDED to them, and feel VERY responsible to make good with it, as long as it lasts. I know Michael Jackson felt humbled every day for such a tremendous gift as the favor and open doors his God-given talent afforded him. God knew he could trust him with it.

What a COMPLIMENT, Dude!

God LOVES everyone. But when He TRUSTS you, LOOK OUT!!!! I can't say He 'loves you MORE'    ---because you can't buy God's love. But things happen fast and furious, and He says He hops over thousands of people to bless someone obedient. We've ALL seen it, in MJ's extraordinary life!

I LOVE that about Michael Jackson. I think I love that  most; his humble, unadulterated heart.   8-)

That said, there is some real truth in the article, about society. Fear is DEADLY---it makes you wildly spend your money to try to calm yourself. It makes you sick. It drives you to do all kinds of stupid unhealthy and dangerous things to get some relief and comfort. If he thought this in 2004, I wonder what he thinks NOW? :shock: And I agree with the quote, above---WAIT TILL MJ REAPPEARS!!! :shock:  8-)  :lol:

Michael Jackson did NOT die, especially from fear and drugs! He said he wanted to live forever---people so focused on THAT don't kill themselves, and they don't involve themselves in self-destructive behaviours, no matter how much fear knocks at their door. Michael Jackson wasn't afraid of anything. Don't believe scary crap dumped in your ears.   :roll: Read around here, and get your bearings in the Truth.
 
ONE time, I expected to see fear in his eyes (in a picture at what was probably an arraignment) and I only saw incredulous disbelief, and a LION heart stare !

I still keep reading that he was afraid or timid or whatever about all kinds of situations and people, but I don't believe it! He only recoils from ONE thing, if you want to call it "fear"---I'd call it an aversion, something which he simply avoids like the black death, so it appears that he is afraid of it. Don't even give it a thought.  BTW, NONE of the crap people are saying is true! He is the most centered, internally directed,  self-ruled man I've ever hoped to hear of. He's not dead. He's not dead. HE'S NOT DEAD, at all. :!:  :roll:          8-)

[hesouttamylife]

This article is deep.  I have read it before, but this time it's penetrating my core.  Sadly, I have to agree on parts of it and it makes me sad.  Michael was hunted down and persecuted systematically like a common criminal; picked apart and examined like a specimen in a laboratory.  He was different because he had to be, but he wasn't an alien from another galaxy.  He was eccentric in ways, I agree; but those eccentricities are what made him special and wonderful.  It saddens me still when I see the pain in his eyes.  It was obvious that he was well aware of what was happening o him, even though he could not stop it.  I don't know what happened to Michael, but people who didn't like him REALLY didn't like him.  They hated him for no certain reasons.  They just did.  I don't understand it and can't even begin to imagine how perplexing it was to him being the object of it, especially when he was so kind.  He was dealt a bad hand in life.  He was cheated at the card table and no one who could have ever bothered to call anyone out. The deck was stacked against him.  That is why it is so important, would be so grand if and when Michael's reveal happens.  Many people have turned the other cheek, have taken the time to learn about the real Michael Jackson.  His integrity is being redeemed. His legacy shining brighter than it ever has. But what is more amazing is that people have come to realize that he, after all, is only human with the same desires,needs and wants of any other human being. And that includes the freedom to be not afraid.  I pray that he will come back to see a world that has healed and has softened its heart.  I want him to experience the world's awakening to him, feel the love that has resounded because of  him.  And I want him to know that now he is safe, he is free to walk through a room, a crowd of adoring fans and feel normal, that no one is going to hurt him.  I want to see Michael for once in his life be able to interact with the people who love him, to finally exhale.  It has to happen.  It is destiny.