Michael Jackson died yesterday. I wish I could say this came as a shock. Though I didn’t know anything about his health or recent condition, somehow I just found myself unsurprised. And profoundly sad.
In deciding to write this, I went through many thoughts on why I feel able to be sad about Michael’s death and to even say positive things about him when I would not extend the same charity to other flawed artists. For example, when Ike Turner died I was unwilling to allow his talent to overshadow my feelings about his history as an abuser. And if R. Kelly were to die today I would think it was a shame, but I would not mourn. In the former case I don’t have much opinion on the talent of the individual; in the latter, I do feel that the man has a lot of talent, but I can’t separate that from the disgust I feel at his sexual adventures with underage girls.
So why don’t I feel the same about Michael?
I can’t give you a good answer. Perhaps because I feel like, whatever Michael is alleged to have done, I can see how the damage done to him in life could have led to it. Doesn’t excuse it, certainly. But it allows me to personally look past it to the good things about him: his music.
The first music video I ever saw was Thriller and I was around 3 years old. My aunt was excited to have me watch it, my mother thought it was too scary for me. But in the end my aunt won and I tried to match those dance moves all night. Michael’s music has been in my ear since before I was born. And before I was five I could sing all the lyrics from every song on Thriller and a bunch from his Jackson 5 days, too.
I was too young at the time to understand the implications behind Michael being the first black artist on MTV. As an adult I still feel a sense of incredulity when I think about that. In the 80s there was still a need for someone’s talent to transcend their race. But Michael did and music (and television) is all the better for it.
The first record I bought with my own money was Bad. Dangerous and HIStory were the first CDs I ripped to MP3. I know that in my music-listening life there has rarely been a month that’s gone by without my listening to some of his music. It seemed like everything he set himself to do he did really well. The singing, the dancing, even the acting.
The videos! Oh goddess, the man pioneered music videos as cinema. Thriller did us all in, but as I sit here searching YouTube I’m reminded of so many more. Remember the Time, Black or White, Smooth Criminal (the long cut), Bad, Jam…
I saw him in concert once when he was touring after Bad came out. It was… amazing. He was a machine. Dancing, singing, never stopping for hours. He gave the crowd everything and then he went on to do it every night for everyone else. It increased my love for him ten-fold.
I think I mourned the MJ I adored many years ago. I had no expectation that he’d make a satisfactory comeback, though I would have been happy to be surprised. It all ended sometime after HIStory for me. Invincible didn’t impress, Blood on the Dance Floor didn’t even register. I felt bad for that. But Michael changed, and not in the way he was able to change before to keep up and transcend.
Still, today I am sad. Because the image of him I have in my head is that amazing entrance to the stage for the Dangerous tour. He exploded out of the stage in a spray of fireworks and then just stood there, silent and still, for a full five minutes, with the bearing of a god. He knew he was good. He knew that, in those moments, he was a rock god. And then the music would start, and he would move, and the concert began, and everything else melted away.
Rest in Peace, Michael Jackson. You and James Brown can spend eternity trading moves. Maybe you’ll teach him to moonwalk.
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That’s kind of my feeling, too. Michael Jackson was an immensely talented, totally broken human being. Being thrust into the limelight as a child, combined with the physical and emotional abuse he received from his father, just utterly destroyed his ability to function in this world. I hope he rests easy.
i’m having trouble mourning him. i’m at a conflicted place right now, and can’t seem to get out…
“I think I mourned the MJ I adored many years ago.”
This is exactly how I feel. With regard to the death of my respect and admiration for him, it was almost like having a friend die slowly of a terminal disease — one loss after another with his personal and artistic failures — even though his actual death seems to have come as a shock and as the result of a very sudden heart failure.
So why don’t I feel the same about Michael? I can’t give you a good answer. Perhaps because I feel like, whatever Michael is alleged to have done, I can see how the damage done to him in life could have led to it.
He was alleged to have sexually molested little boys. Is it significant that the two other abusers you mentioned as being unmournable hurt females, while MJ hurt males? I imagine that R. Kelly and Ike Turner have their own damages that led to their behaviors, too.
I’m finding it a little hard to credit the amount of love being poured out (not just here, everywhere) on a sexual criminal.
I don’t think there’s any need to be apologetic about it! Every great religion and philosophy in the world allows for forgiveness. Loving his music and mourning his passing — and even feeling compassion for him — is NOT the same thing as ratifying his sins. We can be progressive and not damn people to hell for violating our values.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me, the fact that MJ was an alleged sexual criminal, not a proven sexual criminal, has a lot to do with it, Robert. Although I don’t feel any special affection for Michael Jackson, I don’t find it unbelievable that he might have had a genuinely asexual love of children, which was expressed in ways that our society incorrectly assumed to be sexual.
(On the other hand, I know almost nothing about the case, and perhaps there actually is solid proof he was a “sexual criminal” that I’m not aware of.)
ABW, this comment rings true:
Michael Jackson’s personality quirks (in Chicago there’s only one MJ and he played basketball), his surgeries and whatever other medical treatments he went through and the various criminal allegations and court cases swallowed up his art a long time ago. It seems as though we’ve been mourning Michael Jackson for some time. This seems like the end of a long, drawn-out process.
It’s huge out here. It’s all that was on the news last night and all that’s on today. Gary, Indiana is so close that they get the Chicago broadcast TV stations. I’ve driven through it many times on the way to Michigan or the east coast. This is considered a local news story out here.
I mourn the passing of someone who had a great talent. He had a tremendous impact on the world for a while. I had no idea he was the first black person to be on MTV, but then I never watched it much. But I stopped looking for more music or art from him a long time ago.
R. Kelly also was acquitted of the charges against him, so that’s not really a useful line to draw between him and Jackson.
My own belief about Jackson is that he was correctly diagnosed as having a psychological regression to being 10 years old himself, and therefore acted in ways that would have been acceptable in another child but that are wrong for an adult. (For example, pre-adolescent children will engage in explorations of their own and others’ bodies, that are not sexual in the sense of being intended for physical gratification, but that may involve touching genitalia.) I think he probably did engage in child molestation in a legal sense — though not found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt — but I have trouble thinking of him as a pedophile in a moral sense because I’m not sure he understood himself to be an adult. Many of the behaviors that people regarded as “crazy” seem to have been manifestations of this regression to childhood.
For me it’s that my admiration of him waxed and waned before the sexual allegations. Michael-whose-music-I-loved and Michael-whose-behavior-revolted-me existed at two fairly discrete times, so I am feeling bad for the loss of the former, resigned about the death of the latter.
Amp, in what other case would “he was acquitted” really fly around here? And yeah, some of the child stars he hung out with have made public statements that make it pretty clear that he crossed the line – gave them alcohol and porn, for example, when they were 8 and 9.
Robert —
For me it’s not Jackson’s choice of target. I think he was likely guilty, and he probably should have been imprisoned at some point; indeed, I think it’s arguable that he should have been placed in a mental health facility for the protection of others. I do think he was dangerous to children, and I do think that steps should have been taken to protect them.
But I think the reason Jackson garners more sympathy than, say, Kelly, is that Jackson was so clearly mentally ill, in a way the others mentioned were not. Jackson was just not capable of functioning in society in the way we expect adults should, and for that reason I think we can have sympathy for him, even as we recognize the danger his behavior presented, and the punishment he likely escaped. I find it difficult to say, in the end, that in the end he escaped punishment. And as for hoping he rests easy — that’s something I hope for everyone. I don’t know if there’s an afterlife, but I know I don’t believe in Hell, even for the worst of the worst.
Elizabeth Anne, I didn’t say “he was acquitted.” (I didn’t even realize he had been charged!).
However, contrary to what you’re implying, there have been multiple cases where I’ve stated doubts about the guilt of people who were accused — the Duke case comes to mind.
That said, I’m obviously not familiar with all the evidence in this case, and I’m not willing or prepared to defend MJ. Giving porn and booze to 9 year olds is inappropriate and irresponsible, and deserves some punishment and legal sanction, although I don’t think it’s the same as child molestation.
I miss Michael Jackson, but as many have said, I have missed him for a long time. My sister and I used to joke that we liked him back when he was still black, before the aliens came and abducted him and put that horrible-looking robot in his place. (It’s really intended as a joke – no offense.) I think everyone agrees that Michael was a troubled person, and that music and performance were the areas he was in his element and where he shined amazingly.
Perhaps this is a lesson that people cannot be condemned completely without casting aside some very valuable things. If he becomes just an (alleged) child molester to you, then you miss the magic that many people experience thinking of his music and the impact on their childhoods. Not every good thing needs to be sullied by the faults of the person behind it.
I mourn Michael Jackson because of what he helped me discovery about myself, because each favorite song reminds me of a different time in my life, and because of his ability to express and inspire joy (and other strong emotions).
Ah, Amp, I misunderstood you, my apologies.
(I think you might be misunderstanding me too, though – I wasn’t trying to imply anything other than that a distinction is usually made here and at other feminist / ally sites that acquittal =/= innocence, and was confused as to why there seemed to be an exception in this case.)
Oh, I see! Sorry I misunderstood you, Elizabeth Anne.
See, I’ve heard this, and I at least partially understand the ideas behind this, and still I ask myself how a person literally unable to understand life beyond a 10-year-old outlook manages to work as hard as he did during his heyday (not many kids I know have “ass power” as Quincy Jones put it), or manages to act (in a professional sense) as well as he did in the short scenes he had in the short films.
I’m not an expert in arrested development, but I just find it hard to go as far as saying “he literally was behaving as a 10-year-old would, because that’s who he thought he was.”
The Michael Jackson that I’m mourning is the young musician, before the excesses, before the perpetually denied plastic surgeries, before the sexual abuse allegations, before everything that came to make him more an object of public derision than the musical genius that he truly was.
Of all the news that has come out, perhaps the comments by Lisa Marie Presley are the most insightful. So many stars die from prescription drug abuse, and I have to believe that we’ll find out in another month or two, that the people around him were busily pumping him full of drugs to keep him, and the gravy train many of them were riding, moving right along.
Everyone is forgetting this pretty song. (from 1972) I defy you not to cry when he sings “there’s so many things we haven’t done”… I think of the childhood he was deprived of, and how he tried to do those things later as a grown-up.
(((sobs again)))
We were less than year apart, and in so many ways, it’s like losing a family member, or a friend I grew up with….(and yes, my family was plenty fucked up too.)
I am with Auguste on this. In recent years, I have gotten used to thinking of him as a complete child in a grown man’s body. But the time I have spent last night and this morning watching all the videos and concert footage from his heyday has led me to conclude that the truth is not quite that simple. (I was particularly surprised at how well Jackson projected an adult sexuality in that video with Naomi Campbell.)
I think a lot simpler explanation is one that Macauly Caulkin seemed to imply in an interview during his last trial — how does someone who’s had his life relate to adults who haven’t, or who’ve exploited him, or would like to exploit him, or who can’t see “Him” because they are blinded by the entire “King of Pop” thing? A teenage boy with cancer or other issues probably doesn’t care Jackson was the “King of Pop”. He probably cared a lot more about having a good time.
Michael Jackson gave away a huge amount of money for poor children worldwide. Out of himself. His own decision.
Michael Jackson donated many millions of USD for charity.
http://www.healtheworld.us/members/htwf
I really did not like this strange guy, but he was never convicted for a crime.
He is dead now and his positive, generous side towards poor children also should be mentioned.
It seems like if you do enough good stuff–music, in this instance-then you get to be forgiven of other crimes.
Is that what people are saying? Because it certainly SEEMS that way, and, well, it sure as heck doesn’t match the usual party line here.
I mean what, for people who liked Ike better than MJ, then you’d have no trouble with the same mantra being applied to him?
Seems from afar (though I could well be wrong) that a lot of folks who have historically been pretty strict about this sort of thing are now becoming a bit more lenient because it’s a person they like. I’m curious as to whether this will hold true in the future.
I’m not aware that there is “a party line here” on this question, SM. Can you cite particular posts, in which this party line you’ve noticed has been expressed?
ABW certainly isn’t following (or breaking) any party line I’ve set down.
Rather than asking about a party line,
maybe you should consider thatlet’s consider ABW an individual, and ask if this post is inconsistent with what she’s written in the past.Speaking for myself, I generally don’t comment much when someone I disagree with dies, because I figure that, short of genuine monsters, it’s probably best to let the people who feel hurt because the person has died, have some space for their feelings.
I think there’s more to everyone than the worse things they’ve done. And if death isn’t an appropriate time to focus on the good done by someone, what is?
That said, I personally don’t care much about MJ either way, and would have no objection to people using the open thread to discuss criticism of MJ, if it’s felt that it’s inappropriate to use this thread.
–Perhaps this is a lesson that people cannot be condemned completely without casting aside some very valuable things.
I appreciate what Simple Truth has said. For me, I loved the Jackson Five stuff, and didn’t care so much about the stuff he made as an adult (just personal taste). The MJ whose work I loved (though this is largely because of James Jamerson, the classic bassist on that stuff) was the one who was not yet a criminal, but was still a kid himself.
If I had loved the later stuff, though, it would be tough–because the child molestation stuff is (let me go way out on a limb) detestable to me, as to the rest of you. In that case, I think there’d be two different questions:
1) Publicly: Do I publicly mourn or honor him for the good works, or do I concentrate on publicly deploring his bad aspects?
2) Privately: Do I privately enjoy his artistic work, or do I say, “this just gives me the creeps, because of the crime”?
On the second point, I think that we can’t just declare a boycott to our private feelings of liking or not liking someone’s work. There are times when my feeling that someone’s acted like a prick takes over, and God help me, I just can’t watch/listen to/enjoy their TV show/Movies/music/other art. There are other times when I think, “you know, I’m just not feeling put off, though it looks bad as far as the person maybe being guilty of something I detest; but I wasn’t there, and I don’t know.” Pete Townshend’s brush with the same issues hasn’t kept me from still loving the Who’s music sometimes. I am also of the opinion that, damn it all, no matter how bad it looks, we should not convict someone by TV. That’s what juries and judges are for. They really do see evidence we don’t (though I’m sure they also often fail to see evidence we do). And if we feel that miscarriages of justice are routinely occurring, then by all means, we should get into legal work or politics. But the question of whether to feel so privately disgusted that you boycott your enjoyment of the work is not only private; it’s made by your gut, not your head, I think.
On the first point, whether to honor the person publicly, it’s completely different. Those of us who feel like honoring the person should honor them for their good works; those who feel that there’s no damn good to the person, because of their crimes, should take heed of Simple Truth’s word about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. How can any of us declare that no-one should take positive things from the positive side of the man? Accentuate the positive, if possible. I am thankful that there are few enough people who are such monsters that that is impossible to do.
And for those of us (and I suspect that’s many?) who are of two minds, and in conflict with ourselves, perhaps there’s a solution too: that is, that we can calmly, instead of emotionally, celebrate the good things a person did, and without downplaying any damage the person may have done, neither should we get on a high horse when condemning the person. The most positive way of discussing someone’s negative aspects, I think, is to say, “well, whether or not the person says s/he didn’t do it, or whether a court convicted him or her, the only question that has any bearing on my life is, what then should I do about it?” And what I feel I should do about it is, if we have clearly identified some behaviour as destructive, well–don’t do it! That’s why we’re given lives of our own. This advice is even easy to follow, in MJ’s case: who among us, for God’s sake, would even want to imitate his alleged crimes?
Boy that post was long. Sorry, but hope it was clear, anyway.
To the people who keep it up with the “Criminal” meme, please watch this video at 0:27. It isn’t just Michael Jackson who is accused of sexually inappropriate conduct around children who aren’t there own, it’s pretty much any male who doesn’t have some “socially approved” reason to do so.
Those of you concerned my note that I did say in my post that I’ve been struggling with the fact that I feel I can look past MJ’s allegations to his music when I couldn’t do the same for others. The more I think about it, the more I come back to the fact that no one has ever proven that Michel molested children (though he was probably inappropriate with them according to our society’s ideas of how adults should act with children) and of the information that’s come my way, I have strong feelings about some of the parents involved. I do feel the children were victimized, but by whom is still up in the air for me. Perhaps not for you.
Tina wasn’t the only person to speak up about Ike Turner’s abuse, other folks who were around them at the time corroborated. R Kelly was married to a 15 or 16 year old girl and has been seen on tape having sexual relations with other young, teenage girls. Basically, it’s clear that Ike and R. Kelly did what they’ve been accused of. For me, it’s not clear that Michael did.
That’s a crucial point, isn’t it? It tallies with what I said above: I refuse to convict someone by TV. I understand feeling that your gut is just telling you someone’s guilty, but as far as us all weighing in with a public statement or expression, imagine how evil it is to say “I’ve decided so-and-so’s guilty, so the question’s decided,” if the person weren’t actually guilty.
I think the question can be resolved, as long as the wheels of justice have taken their course, by resolving to deplore and work against the ills of the criminal act in question, instead of focusing on vilifying the person that may or may not be guilty. With all respect to the mixed feelings that we may have, unless there’s some systemic problem of justice we want to address, like “hey, it looks as if only black defendants are being targeted in this region, or for this crime, and we need ordinary people to demonstrate about it,” or something like that, should we be the ones to pronounce about this? If it’s just “I think the world needs to know what I think about every single famous person’s trial,” I don’t think that adds anything to the public discourse. ?? What do you guys think?
I’d say, in this case, if we want to deplore something, deplore the acts themselves instead of the person, and mollify the damage from acts such as these, when we’re more certain of the case. I’m sure there are charities to help victims of child abuse, or other ways we can positively express our feelings about that. The person in this case, MJ, had his day in court, so maybe that should be that. I wasn’t there, I don’t know anything but what the tabloid TV told me, so how should I make myself out to be judge and jury, just because I’m a TV-watcher?
Auguste @ 17,
Jackson was trained from toddlerhood to be a hard-working, committed performer. If the only aspects of him that strike you as “adult” are the ones he exhibited as a member of the Jackson 5 (and remember that there were some mild sexual elements to the performances he did even as a child), I think that’s consistent with one professional’s evaluation that Jackson was still a 10-year-old psychologically.
This at least for me is an explanation that reconciles what seem like disparate facts: that Jackson behaved with children in a way that is wrong and illegal for adults to do, yet never seemed predatory toward them as an adult exercising greatly superior power would be.
PG,
Please. Jackson is CLAIMED to have behaved inappropriately with children, likely based in no small part on society’s discomfort with adult MALES have friendships with children. I’ve had young girls, not related to me by blood, marriage, or any kind of religious institution (like, being godchildren) spend days at my house. You cannot tell me that if I did the same thing and was male (I’ve been an adult male, so please don’t tell me I’m wrong) this behavior would be viewed the same — helping out a very close friend (their mother) and getting to spend some time with people I care deeply about (her children).
Besides poor judgment, after the first $22 million settlement (hmmm …), Jackson is guilty of being MALE. Men are expected to make money, not care about children in ways that women are allowed to care about children.
FCH,
If it were simply a matter of males’ interest in children being deemed automatically suspicious, how was it possible for Jackson to have all these sleepovers and other interactions with kids for years without anyone’s raising a stink about it? Jackson was praised for his generosity with children, and people casually stated that “his best friends are children and animals.” The concern arose only at the point that a kid claimed that Jackson had touched him inappropriately.
I agree that more credence was given to the accusation because Jackson is male than would have been given if he were a woman, but I disagree that everyone was always freaked out by Jackson’s interest in and relationships with kids. He was honored by the Boy Scouts in 1990, and his invitations to children to hang out at his home were routinely reported on as instances of his charitable virtue, not his pedophiliac vice.
PG,
Can you at least concede that the accusations gained traction, as well as grew into a life all their own, primarily because he was male?
FCH,
“I agree that more credence was given to the accusation because Jackson is male than would have been given if he were a woman” = “the accusations gained traction… primarily because he was male.”
I am not sure what you mean by “grew into a life all their own.”
PG,
“Fed on themselves” might be a better way of putting it?
Are you familiar with the circumstances of the 1993 and 2005 cases? The sort of misconduct in both cases needs something to keep driving it. We saw the same conduct here with the Duke rape case.
I’d strongly encourage you to go back and re-read the threads from the Duke rape case. I’m all for prosecuting sex abuse, but in both of Jackson’s cases, there is a lot of evidence of misconduct. And that’s the same thing we saw with the Duke rape case.
FCH,
I have some familiarity with both cases, though more with the 1993 case (I read a book that delved into it) than the 2005 case (at which point I had pretty much lost hope for and interest in Jackson). I am not aware of prosecutorial misconduct in the 1993 case nor the 2005 case. Could you explain what you’re referring to?
The misconduct in those cases seems to have been entirely on the part of the families of the accusers, who appear to have manipulated their children in order to obtain a cash settlement from Jackson. However, bad behavior by accusers is not really something I worry about; individual private citizens can be rotten sometimes. What’s frightening is to have misconduct by government officials, especially prosecutors, because it undermines the justice system.
The Duke prosecutorial misconduct was so serious that Mike Nifong was not just fired as DA, but disbarred for his breaches of ethics. The worst probably was his withholding evidence from the defense, which would have voided a conviction even if he’d gotten that far. I do not recall having heard of any similar misconduct by Jackson’s prosecutors.
Oh god, I know how old this post is but this is one of those times when I’m just itching to respond to something I’ve read even when the timing is inappropriate and likely nobody will read what I’m saying anyway. But…this:
“Giving porn and booze to 9 year olds is inappropriate and irresponsible, and deserves some punishment and legal sanction…”
Comments like this are the exact reason why one shouldn’t, as somebody said above, ‘convict someone by TV.’ And its a comment from somebody who doesn’t even believe Jacksonwas child molester. Because it’s so easy to read distorted ideas somewhere and think of them a fact.
But there’s no proof or even suggestive evidence, as far as I’m aware, that Jackson ever gave alcohol to underage kids. It is a fact that Jackson had lots of porn in his home, and it is a fact that fingerprints from the accusing kid (this is the accuser from the 200o’s) were found on one of his porn mags. But that hardly proves that Michael gave the porn to the kid or was even aware that he was looking at it – I looked at some of my dad’s porn mags when I was a kid and he definitely didn’t give them to me. And the kid in question was *13*, not 9.
Fair enough, Jess. I was taking Elizabeth’s word for it (see her comment #10) that it happened for the sake of argument, but I actually have no idea if it’s true or not.
I should have made my response to Elizabeth explicitly “if that’s true, then,” rather than just accepting the truth of her statement. You’re right to criticize; sorry about that.
The interesting thing about Michael Jackson and boys is… he spent an incredible amount of time with girls, too. This is never mentioned by any press I’ve ever seen (try to google the name of the first accuser’s sister — she sat on his lap at an award show and was seen carried around with him in France and yet she hasn’t ever been given more than a cursory glance).
You’d almost imagine Michael exclusively sought out the company of underage boys and didn’t even have any adult relationships at all. Audio tapes of him talking to a friend on the phone for close to 2 hours were stolen and released on the internet. He spent the time talking about his father, his family, his tour, how he really wanted to settle down with a women. What did the media focus on? Ten minutes were he talks with the woman’s son about the recent Rodney King violence and school. You’d imagine Michael was calling up just to speak to this kid, when in fact all he wanted to do was pour his heart out to this woman.
Also, he didn’t pay the first accuser any money at all. His insurance paid against his wishes. They settled on the terms of “negligence” and not abuse. Three grand juries were shown the evidence regarding the Chandler case; it was thrown out of each for having insufficient evidence. In the second case the first accuser explicitly stated he would take people to court if they tried to make him go up against Michael and for reasons Sneddon can only explain, he refused to subpoena him, even though he was in the country at the time.
And then of course there’s the fact that the first accuser wanted to put out an album that he’d written and composed about his son’s supposed sex abuse that included a song entitled, “duck butter blues.” He had no interest in taking Michael to court and making him pay for abusing his child, but he did want to sing and dance about it.
And that’s the last time I enter “Michael Jackson porn” into google.