The things we aspire for in life, are the things which we believe will make us happy. The vast majority of us aspire to be rich, imagining, as we do, that access to material luxury, sating our senses, will give us joy. The New Testament, however, famously warns, “What does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul?” The world can excite and please our senses: the soul is something else again.
In America, there are some black people who have become fabulously wealthy, billionaires in fact. I suppose the publisher of magazines like EBONY and JET and so on, John H. Johnson, must be dead by now, but his media and cosmetic business empire was exceedingly wealthy. Oprah Winfrey is doing very well in these modern times. But the late Michael Jackson was probably in a class by himself. He got his early, and he got it by the plenty. In his MIAMI HERALD column on Friday, the columnist Leonard Pitts wrote, among other things, of how big Michael’s 1982 THRILLER album was, compared to anything else before or since. Check it out.
In Detroit, Michigan, there was a black music executive by the name of Berry Gordy who created a music production and distribution business he called “Motown.” When I first arrived in the United States in August of 1965, his superstars included The Temptations, The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and others. Gordy discovered The Jackson Five – 10- year-old Michael Jackson and his four older brothers, in 1968 thereabouts.
Berry Gordy’s superstars were all black, but he packaged them in such a way that they were accepted, even embraced, by white America. His performers were all beautifully attired, impeccably mannered, and forced to abide by his discipline. White America could find no fault in them, and Motown’s music was spectacular. Berry Gordy made a lot of money.
There is almost always a problem with child prodigies. The fact that they are denied their childhood, because of their precocious talent, leads to serious dysfunctions later on. Child prodigies are not allowed to grow up at the normal pace. In the later 1950’s, there was a New York City youth by the name of Frankie Lymon who was the star of a singing group called “Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers.” (Their big hit was “Why Do Fools Fall In Love” in 1956.) We young Belizeans saw them in a movie at the old Eden Theatre on North Front Street. Lymon was the first black teenager singing idol. By the age of 25 in 1968, he was dead of a heroin overdose.
Michael Jackson biographers say that he was the victim of a lot of pressure from his father, Joe, and that Michael never had a real childhood. His father saw Michael as the family’s ticket out of Gary, Indiana poverty, and so the child was heavily hassled.
As he grew into young adulthood, Michael Jackson it seems, continued to behave in a childlike manner. The kid was becoming strange. A CNN documentary last week claimed that his first “nose job” (plastic surgery) took place in 1979 after he had fallen and broken his nose. In other words, it wasn’t really about altering his appearance. When it was that Michael Jackson began the actual process of changing his appearance, “neutering” himself racially and sexually, no one can really say. In fact, there are some who claim that he took estrogens in order to keep his voice as dainty as it was. For sure, his body remained a light and acrobatic one, even when he was entering middle age. His nose changed from an African one to a European one. The plastic surgeries must have been multiple and traumatic. His skin became light in color. They said it was a skin disease. His hair, of course, was long and straightened. At the time THRILLER took over planet earth, Michael had achieved his “neutering.” In music and dance, he conquered the world – both black and white.
So, what was the price that Michael Jackson paid? To begin with, he was denied his childhood. Moreover, whatever he was doing to his body with surgeries and medications, it is clear that he was experiencing pain. An hour before he suffered cardiac arrest, Michael Jackson reportedly received an injection of Demerol, a pain killer. It appears to me that Michael Jackson’s body quit on him on Thursday, June 25, 2009.
Where the matter of the child molestation charges and weird behavior in the 1990s are concerned, all I will say is that this was a man who had become abnormal, and to a great extent by his own choice. The question is: how much did those abnormality choices contribute to the immensity of his success? We will never know the precise answer to that question.
I don’t know much about dance, but I can tell you this. While at Dartmouth College, I attended a performance by the Alvin Ailey Dancers, and I knew, at least my impression was, that these people were as good as it could possibly get. I suppose you call the Alvin Ailey material “classical” dance. And I think they call Michael’s work “popular” dance. My generation thought James Brown was the “baddest” we could ever see. But Michael Jackson, in full flight, was better than James, from whom he had learned much. The student was superior to the teacher.
So then, we deal with the matter of the world and the matter of the soul. In our time, as much as it is possible, Michael Jackson did “gain” the world. Part of the price he paid was a frightening loneliness. He couldn’t go anywhere without people becoming hysterical.
For me, what matters about the death of Michael Jackson is how our young Belizeans, the post-1982 television generations, consider the Michael phenomenon. It does not appear that Michael Jackson’s life, overall, was a happy one. Yet, if someone gave us ordinary Belizeans the opportunity, wouldn’t almost all of us have chosen to be Michael instead of ourselves?
There are images out there which are not real, and they are wrecking our young people. Personally, I wouldn’t want anybody for me to be like Michael Jackson. He was the greatest performing artist of our lifetime, but who the hell was he, really? Young people of Belize, you don’t have to be Michael Jackson to be happy. In fact, all the evidence suggests that Michael was not happy. So then, if real happiness does not lie with The Thriller, it means you have to find it for yourselves, wherever you are. If love is not in the world, perhaps it may lie in the soul. As-salaam-alaikum. Peace be unto you.