But I still don’t get it. I understand the enormity of his talent and fame. I understand his unreal celebrity status and his too-ridiculous-to-be-true personal biography. I know about the seductive and hallucinogenic quality of celebrity disaster. But the reaction to MJ’s death just doesn’t add up. Wasn’t he already dead? I don’t mean to be crass here. I mean, didn’t the MJ that
And this is why I sighed a little at the news of his death. Not a sigh of boredom, but a sigh of relief. Not of personal relief, but relief on behalf of the man himself. Relief that the whole horror show of celebrity decay was over, and that the man can finally leave a world that really didn’t suite him. I had a vain and ultimately vanquished hope that after his death we could finally see him as a human being and put the whole tragedy in perspective.
Silly me, I should have known that his death would stir the same voyeuristic panting fandom that has plagued him during his life. And I can’t help from being more than disgusted by it.
When I was too young to fathom why or how, Kurt Cobain committed suicide. He was a huge celebrity to me, even though I was too young to identify fully with what he stood for. In time, he would become a mythical figure in my mind, the misunderstood musical rebel plagued by fame and his own personal pain. In even more time, I would have to come to terms with my (our) problematic mythology of the man. And now, I see the symbolic importance of his death: the end of the tragic rock and roll hero. It wasn’t a final, total end. Nor was he the last musician to die by his own hand. But I see his death as the end of the rockstar era, and for so many reasons that is an unequivocal good.
Nirvana famously knocked MJ off the top 40 charts he’d dominated for so long. It’s tempting to think this has some historical significance, a changing of the guard, a rock and roll coup, the end of an era. Rockists see it as a victory for gritty and authentic music over slick and sterile pop. I’m sure there’s another camp that saw this as a big downer, and a sign of the boring decade to come. (On a side note, I doubt Kurt had it in for Michael as much as he had it in for hair metal and G&R. And we should thank grunge for killing that genre). The issue for me isn’t who was the better star (MJ, no question), the better artist (debatable, probably MJ), or who was more fucked up (even split). The issue I have is our desire to turn people into spectacles. Kurt Cobain as alterna rock savior and Michael Jackson as pop deity are more than silly titles, they’re destructive expectations.
And so, yes, I feel really off about celebrating the musical career of a man who was coerced into the entertainment business by the threat of domestic violence. I see a great problem with wanting to gloss over his fall from grace to celebrate his years of greatness, because few are willing to admit that crazy MJ has anything to do/is the same man as the king of pop. He was brilliant, yes, incredibly brilliant. But I don’t want to hear the words god given talent. Why? Because his talent and the fame it brought him was no blessing. That talent was fostered and exploited by a maniacal father and a sanguinary entertainment industry. That fame allowed him to disappear into himself in a multimillion dollar fantasy world funded by you and I.
Well, ok, maybe that’s unfair. I’ll stop shorting of hanging all the blame on his fans. They really do adore him, and most want only to see the best in their idol. But that same impulse also pushes back all the dirty pain stuff, and I wonder if that’s why Michael himself never seemed to come to grips with reality. No one wanted him to be real.
I bring Kurt Cobain up for this reason. Kurt was plagued the opposite curse, the pain and suffering only curse. The same unfortunate situation Ian Curtis found himself in. When you make your name and reputation being the perpetual downer, you’re already painted into a corner. You’re not allowed to make fun music. And your fans only want to see and know the pain and suffering, they only want the martyr. Well, I’d rather have a living Kurt Cobain that faded away. That ultimately was his choice to make, but I think that was the stupidest decision he ever made. And you know what, I’d rather have had a human Michael Jackson, a man who could eventually look hard into his past and at least try to come to terms with it. From what I can tell, he did try. But eventually, it was just easier to disappear into a world where he couldn’t be touched.
And I’m back where I started. Listening to Barry Gordy mourn Michael Jackson and feeling sick to my stomach about it. Hearing the hitmaker wax elegiac about the greatness of a star, completely ignoring his humanity. And I’m hoping that the popstar era is dying with him, dying with the music industry as we know it, and hoping there isn’t a new generation of Joe Jacksons and Barry Gordys waiting and ready to exploit the talent of tomorrow.
I know it’s not true as I remind myself of the Disney channel celebrity making machine and the fucked up (but successful) kids it chews up and spits out. But maybe one of those kids is watching the coverage of Michael Jackson’s death and thinking long and hard about the price of a life lived in the spotlight. One can only hope.
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