The poet William Carlos Williams wrote, “The pure products of America go crazy,” and like his temporary father in law (deceased) and King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson was as pure a product of America as we’re going to get. The extent to which he went crazy far eclipses Elvis, or for that matter, any popular figure of the last 100 years or more. Jackson’s freakish facial restructuring, the slow, methodical process of bleaching away any the darkness of his skin, his Peter Pan nose, his drag queen hair and make-up, all of it was beyond strange, even in these very strange times. 

Jackson was a man of colossal excess, who reportedly could make more than a hundred million dollars in a year and yet was frequently on the verge of financial collapse. He was a boy-man who, by his own admission, could only be truly happy and comfortable in the company of children, who could not recognize the impropriety of 40 year old man engaging in sleepovers with 12 year old boys.

If his alleged acts of child molestation were indeed true, a case could be made that Jackson himself was partially blameless in the incidents if he was indeed partially crazy – mentally and morally unable to see why the boy within him could not touch another boy of his own emotional age.

There’ll be books written, endless ink spent on analysis, what happened, why. The accolades, how he changed music, brought the acrobatic and elegant moves of Gene Kelly into pop, pioneered new musical terrains, broke the MTV color line, became THE post-Beatles mega star. All of which will be true.

When looking at his musical output, there are two distinct times in Jackson’s career. His Motown years with the Jackson Five being the first part, taking the torch from Berry Gordy and bringing it into a new decade. The Jackson Five were indeed miraculous – that a boy of ten could sing with such conviction, purity and soul – it was nearly beyond belief, but there he was, spinning and twirling on the Ed Sullivan Show, impish and grinning, knowing something big was happening, not sure exactly what, but the showman in him was determined to give it his all, all the way to the rafters.

For a boy to be singing songs about intimate adult relationships – “I Want You Back,” and “I’ll Be There” – when he obviously knew nothing about them, seemed precious and prescient, as if Michael were some kind of old soul who intuitively understood such things at the age of 10. It turned out that the truth was simpler. What Jackson understood intuitively was how to be a master showman, a mimic, a great creator of illusions. He reportedly  idolized P. T. Barnham, someone who also knew how to give America a great show.

Jackson matured, though mainly as a performer. He reached his zenith at the Motown 25th anniversary concert, where he riveted the nation with his moonwalk and rendition of "Billie Jean." For a brief time, he was untouchable - the true King of Pop, the most magnificent American popular entertainer we had. He became a megastar, exactly he'd always strived to become.

As Jackson got older and further into his career and phenomenal superstardom, his showmanship kept getting better, his stage productions more extravigant and outrageous, but at heart, his songs, the stage, all of it, beyond the magnificent surface, were becoming increasingly hollow things – emotionally false, a marvelous façade of flash and style, empty of heart. Watching his videos, his pelvic thrusts at beautiful women, the grabs at his crotch, his emoting about being bad, his West Side Story balletic knife fights - knowing what we know about him, one can’t help but see,

in retrospective clarity, how it was all a staged performance devoid of any actual personal experience with the subject.  Nothing meant anything except giving the audience the best show. Jackson never seemed to connect his own life to much of it, except perhaps in abstract ways, the

truth of which were recognizable mainly to him.

He seems happiest in the Thriller video, a creature in his own monster movie, part of a Disneyland attraction. The boy in him must have loved this. One of his most famous songs, “The Man in the Mirror,” is the greatest example of the paradox and irony that was Michael Jackson – the fundamental change he wanted to make after staring into the mirror of his soul was to change his face to resemble Peter Pan’s.

What actually existed behind the illusion, who this strangest of all American icons actually was, how he thought of himself, where he felt he fit in the world, what his darkest, most tormented dreams were – no one will ever know. But we can observe one apparent truth – that all the things he did, everything he created with his life and his massive talent, the great pleasure and joy he brought to the world, were to him an endless string

of gigantic efforts to throw a fantastic mask over the haunted dreams of

a lonely, wounded, terribly lost boy.

 

                                                                                          Will Brennan

Michael Jackson's Grand Illusion