Michael

The news of Michael Jackson’s death has made me sadder than I would have thought it would, had I ever allowed myself to consider such a thing.  Which I didn’t.  Who did?  When you thought Michael Jackson, you never thought “dead,” you thought, “weird.”  Because, let’s be honest, that’s what Michael was, what Michael seemed to most enjoy being, what we liked about him best.

Michael made a career out of being everybody’s crazy old elderberry wine-drinking aunt with a favorite window seat, or that scary/lovable uncle who liberated Auschwitz and now lives in the basement/attic, who the kids are taught not to ask him about “you-know-what,” whatever “it” is, to his face.  Totally whackadoodle, but family.

Even after allegations arose of him being a child abuser, parents continued to allow him access to their children; introducing them to his music, taking them to his concerts, applauding their clumsy efforts to imitate his dance steps.  Some even took their kids to his home and dropped them off, even knowing that he saw nothing wrong with them sharing his bed.

Perhaps because of his endearing, soft spoken nature, we were comfortable with the idea that he was an innocent soul, exploited and victimized for our benefit, robbed of his childhood and so determined to perpetuate it into infinity and beyond.  In order to bring his talent to us, he had been abused, so we allowed ourselves to think, making us equally determined to protect and indulge his illusion of innocence.  Of course a poor guy like that would sleep in a bariactic chamber and tote a chimpanzee around, wearing one glove, high-water pants, sparkly socks and ill-fitting jackets with loud colored bow ties, when he wasn’t adorned in fake medal festooned toy soldier outfits with his greasy hair and plastic face.

He was Michael.

He loved the children; he was one of them.  Shy, reluctant to perform, only doing so after being goaded and encouraged by well-meaning adults proudly dazzled by his obvious talent.  So, we indulged his numerous “eccentricities,” and overlooked the equally obvious signals and symptoms of whatever deeper, darker problems he might have had.

He was our Michael, and we loved him, anyway.

Any kid growing up in Chicago in the sixties knew who the Jackson 5 were long before the rest of the country did.  In fact, we resented outsiders claiming to “discover” our local heroes years after they had charted on our radio stations with their now hard to find hit, “Big Boy,” and had performed on the undercard of numerous professional “stage shows,” even those presented at our landmark Regal Theater. The Regal was our very own Apollo Theater in New York, or Ford Theater in Detroit, a showplace for all the major African American  artists of the day.  From the Motown Revue to James Brown and everybody in between, anybody who was, or wanted to be, anybody, played the Regal.  So, when the local group of brothers with the little lead singer who could dance like Jackie Wilson and sing a love song like Smokey Robinson was “discovered” by Diana Ross and thrust onto the national stage, they were already stars to us.

When they scored hit after hit, got their own Saturday morning cartoon, appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, had their own TV special, and even moved to Hollywood, we were proud.  Here was a family we could relate to, a steelworker and his wife and the 9 kids they had raised in a two-bedroom house validated us in a way no other celebrity could.  They had transcended their inner-city roots and made it big on the world stage, whether you, as a kid, wanted to be a singer yourself, or a rocket scientist, the Jackson 5 were living proof that if you had talent and worked hard, the world would embrace you, too.

So, we followed their career, cheered their triumphs, agonized over their setbacks, speculated incessantly about their lives behind the scenes on the big stage, and cheered and applauded as they grew, whether we really liked their music or not.  Fortunately, their danceable, catchy bubblegum tunes were easy to love, but in a way, the music was kind of beside the point.  They were us, they were good, and they were making it.  Big.

As they grew into adulthood and morphed from a single group into a franchise, we grew up, too.  They had problems with their growing pains, so did we.  But, on the whole, we, like them, managed to thrive.  When Michael branched out, we followed along, the Jackson 5 was always around in one form or another, with new Jacksons seeming to crawl out of the woodwork and onto the record charts day by day.  Marlon, Randy, Janet, Rebe, La Toya, and a gazillion other Jacksons all had hits, and, we were deliriously proud of those, like Janet, who showed real talent, and stubbornly indulgent of those who, well…didn’t.  But, Michael was always special.  Michael was always Michael.

So he carved up his face and bleached his skin, who wouldn’t?  Who would want to retain the family resemblance to the man who made him and his brothers, sisters, cousins and pets gazillionaires?  Didn’t Joe, his father, take a belt to his backside and make him sing and dance when he didn’t feel like it?  Did it matter to us who were his same age, from a similar background, that in our day, corporal punishment for disobedience was the norm, in fact, was evidence of a strong family background with committed, dedicated parents, even while excessive force was still considered wrong?  Nope, we had adopted the new “all spanking is abuse” model, and Joe Jackson was a child abuser, exploiting children like us for his own benefit.  Leave Michael alone, you bully.

So, we coddled and indulged Michael to make up for his suffering.  Child stars, no matter how rich, famous and successful, are always victims, and only others like Elizabeth Taylor, McCauley Caulkin, and Emanuel Lewis could ever truly understand him.  Even his own family couldn’t, though having grown up with the same parents, nobody ever bothered to figure out why that would be true, except to say maybe because they were never going to be nearly as successful as he, their jealousy precluded them from empathy, as if that makes any sense at all.  When whatever family squabbles drove a wedge between Michael and his family, we took Michael’s side and completely understood.  We wouldn’t talk to Jermaine, either, if we were lucky enough to be as tortured a soul as Michael.

We never stopped to consider that if we loved Michael like a brother, willing to indulge him and forgive just about anything he did, that perhaps his own flesh and blood family might feel the same way, no matter who they married, or how many shows he did with them.  Nope, throughout his life he was ours to protect and love, and shame on anyone who tried to stop us.

Michael Jackson was an extremely talented, complex man.  Others will chronicle his philanthropy, his discography, his quirky eccentricity, his possible criminality, his androgyny, and all the other aspects of his rollercoaster life.  I choose to remember the little kid from around the way who made good with his family, who always managed to bounce back and dazzle us with his footwork, who ended a self-imposed exile by allowing Oprah, and us, into his home so he could show us just how “normal” he was, (not) whose talent transcended his own attempts to sabotage himself and rob us of it, the wickedly weird guy who could maintain a Peter Pan, possible pedophile, complex into his fifties and still be mourned by millions worldwide in spite of it.  A boy/man who managed to transcend himself somehow, and maintain his place somewhere in our hearts, whether we liked him or not.

Michael.

May God rest your soul, and may you eternally rest in peace.

For the record, Michael Jackson did not invent the Moonwalk, it was pretty common knowledge at the time that he had learned if from watching Soul Train.