Re: Pl.everyone read-"Mad monster Michael Jackson"
Here's it-
MAD MONSTER MICHAEL JACKSON
It has been a year since MJ died. Shana Maria Verghis wonders if he turned into a zombie in his last days
During the New Year episode of Graham Norton’s talk show on BBC Entertainment, which was repeated again this week in India, comedienne Joan Rivers and Texas’ singer Sharleen Spiteri were running over 2009’s highlights with Norton. This included Britain’s Got Talent star Susan Boyle’s need for a makeover and her being home alone with a distressed cat. And also Michael Jackson’s demise which had led to days of mourning and merriment. For tragedy can become farcical and Jackson had aced both aspects. So his passing got celebrated with concerts, farewells and drama with faux social commentary essays written with titles like Marxism and Michael Jackson’s death.
Yes, we liked MJ. What a mover. You could watch Smooth Criminal umpteen times over for the slick, trim choreography. We briefly shed tears over his loss. But we couldn’t help agreeing with Rivers, who had quipped on TV that, “now his father will take him on a decomposing tour,” that Michael Jackson had grown extremely weird during his later years. In fact, that unfinished concert of his could have been subtitled This Is It — The Freak’s Rhythm’s Gonna Get You. He also features on a Wierdo web page. But it is a tribute since he shares the space with great nutcases like Van Gogh.
Rivers reminded us short term memory types: “The guy was a great artist but also a druggie and paedophile”
The second part is still a grey area though. She went on to say, “As for his moonwalk, if the narcs were after you, I would be walking backwards too.” Adding wickedly that “Brooke Shields boohooed over his funeral when the last time she met him was in 1993 and then he was Black!”
Our experience with MJ, like others around the world, depending on the generation, and whatever was on TV then, was watching The Jackson Five when we were not even eight-years-old. The kids who shone the most were the youngest. Michael was cute, with his squeaky voice. But prettier and our personal poster child, was his sister, Janet. Frankly, when Janet was with her brothers, the guys faded to the background before that doll-like, plump spunky child who was close to us in age. And as we were growing up with two brothers and four big bro cousins — one of whom saw Michael’s concert in South Africa and remembered his “tremendous energy” — we briefly gravitated to sister spirit.
In those innocent days, when snow was white and Michael Jackson was still black, (and probably blue too, from being beaten into artistic perfection by his dad), his music was soulful disco. After Ben the mouse song, there was funky, psychedelic Off the Wall. And Close Encounters of the Third Kind in the Jackson clan’s Can You Feel it video. All seemed stable with Jackson outwardly and this was the relatively quiet pre-paparazzi period of the 80s. Then he burst on the scene, to bury us with werewolves, ghouls and zombie in the Thriller album. Images that his ex-wife Priscilla Presley said, “Haunted him till his death.” Albums like Bad produced contemporary, snazzy music, with fantastically constructed dance videos, till HIStory. By which time MJ was moulding into history too.
The trouble with showbiz, American showbiz even more. Do you never know when people are making up fake anecdotes at the drop of a hat to build up someone’s image. And also when the fakeness is repeated so often, it seems like it really happened. Was Michael Jackson real to himself? Was he always playing the performer to the point he didn’t see the stage for the world? Everyone’s conjectures without touching base with him. Those close aren’t talking yet to rip the myth and even they seem to have been remote. His kids are like strange apparations he metamorphosed in a video.
Those who met him said they only saw certain facets of Jackson’s multi-demonic (?) self. An Israeli krav maga expert we interviewed had been his bodyguard. He found it hard to think of Jackson as a paedophile. “He was like a kid. He wanted ice-cream in the middle-of the night, and we had to call up the best parlour in the city to open up just for him. And he had lots of stuffed toys.” Could it be his kids are really programmed stuffed toys? Maybe they’re aliens he managed to contact because he was probably “not of this earth.” (Hint, hint). Was he, as a past-life expert we spoke to, “a French contemporary entertainer of Moliere in his previous birth who used to travel everywhere with jugglers?”
Jackson’s greatness was an ability to dance and sing equally well, the hallmark of greatest performers. As for the personality fudge, he more than other stars, played the part of abnormal, superior being who was aspirational. Even Madonna descended to earth and became “Madge” the mother to stable, normal kids. But Michael was a strange, ethereal father who did things like nearly throw his kid of a balcony (because it was really an invincible alien), as gods might do in some cultures mythology. It may have been a harmless photo-op but parents around the world gagged and ranted. Scarier was the sight of the baby in the arms of this cadavar-like, ghostly figure with scraggly hair resembling a living zombie before he was really dead. Adding to the sense of a horror-spoof happening was someone like basketball star Michael Jordan reminiscing about, “sitting on the floor eating fried chicken with Michael Jackson.” Other have memories too of Jackson, the ‘fried chicken friend’. It’s not certain if he liked legs or thigh parts but imagine, this scary zombie man ate chicken! Did he eat it raw and bloody, crunching the bones when no one watched? Grab a cross or charm as protection from him, all you fearing the gory undead.
There’s a figure in Harper Lee’s beloved and only book To Kill A Mockingbird
about a solitary neighbourhood shy guy whom kids demonise as a terror because they don’t know his real nature. This was so with Michael. If he shook your hand and said nice things at a concert, did you know him?
If you briefly danced with you on the team, could you know him? A shaggy haired tap dancer told us he danced onstage with Jackson, ”but never spoke. He had bodyguards, while showing us steps.”
Was he deliberately remote? Showbiz people like to project they are “same as you” because of the unrealness of the profession which can veer on abnormal if one is not grounded enough. But sheltered Jackson became a nutty hermit crab with strange indulgences and purchasing habits, like the current head of North Korea who outstrips Jackness in oddness. And then when he got too remote from everyone’s imagination which built him up as even weirder, he must have wanted to get to earth and “be among humans” as mortal again, but his body gave way. It intensely annoying that he had the luxury to stick around and make music, but screwed the chance because he was severely dysfunctional, despite his prodigious talent. He became one of his own creations — a ghoul from the Thriller video. But even Frankenstein’s monster had feelings, and this strange monster could dance and sing exquisitely. But he forgot to be human enough for a long stretch and that was his undoing.
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