I admit it. I watched the Michael Jackson documentary on 20/20 last night. It opened rather innocuously with the interviewing journalist asking Jackson “So, how do you write a song?” It was a good way to open because as a writer, I completely understood why Jackson couldn’t explain his artistic process in any way more coherent than that he “gets out of the way of the music” and it just “comes to him from above.”
It was all downhill from there.
In some ways, Martin Bashir’s documentary was the perfect meditation on the perils of our celebrity culture. This is not to say the external forces are completely responsible for the mess that Michael Jackson is now; for, if something in his personality hadn’t been ripe for it I very much doubt that fame would have impacted him the way it has. However, in many ways, I personally believe that pop-culture is largely responsible for Michael Jackson the adult.
As a child star his cuteness was encouraged — hell, it was demanded of him — long past an age when it was appropriate for him to be cute. To maintain his stardom it was necessary for a certain part of his personality to infantalize, to cease developing so he could maintain that 12 year old state of mind he had when the Jackson 5 first rose to fame.
As an legal adult, celebrity culture has allowed Jackson to maintain his fantasy world because, quite simply, we treat the famous differently. Special rules for special people. Professional athletes get off on murder charges. Lesser known rap stars take the fall so the mogul doesn’t have to go to jail. Actors get to go to rehab in some $12,000 a day resort as punishment for that DUI when the rest of us would be doing hard time and walking every where for the rest of our lives.
Has Michael Jackson chosen to indulge in what celebrity culture has to offer him? Hell yes! After all, what person is going to turn down priviledge? So who is more responsible: him for taking what is offered or our culture for offerring it in the first place? Perhaps both. I don’t know. All I know is that the idea of him raising children (as if he’s actually raising them, not the nannies) frightens me. After all, you are only as good a teacher as your teacher was, and frequently not even that good, so if you look at the way the Jacksons were parented what do you suppose they are going to pass on to their children?