Against Idolatry: Forget Michael Jackson

My mother claims that when I was a small boy and we lived in Indonesia (must have been the lateish 80’s) – I really liked Michael Jackson’s music. Most people wouldn’t think of Indonesia when you ask them for the most populous Muslim country, but that it is. So I, having been the only male around when my father was at work, held despotic rule over our driver (and other staff), overruling my mother and elder sisters even though I was but a small boy maybe 3 years old. So returning to my story – I would demand that Michael Jackson be played in the car wherever and whenever we drove. But the claims go further – apparently I would insistently pose the question “Isn’t he the best?”

Now that so many years and the man himself have passed away – I can say that I look back on this moment with a mild sense of shame. You never really know people until all is said and done. And no – Michael Jackson is not the best, in my mind his is a story that substantiates certain cruelties of life:

1) Talent (an overinvestment in one particular skill) often comes at the expense of a proper balance

2) What we value as a society is utterly confused—focusing our collective attention on this event

These two notions are deeply interconnected. Let us not forget Michael Jackson’s story is about the striving of a family for upward mobility. His father rounded up the kids and made them endlessly rehearse for a career in showbusiness. It was probably a miserable childhood, but it made him a fabulous performer who could captivate audiences. But what happens when we equate excellence in singing and dancing with all-around success? We set role models that are profoundly troubled and that should serve as a severe admonition to neglecting a proper balance. Michael Jackson’s success as a pop-star condemned him to poverty of the mind.

The result of his enormous success was a frivolous life of facial degradation – the obsession with sharpened quasi-feminine features and pasty skin. All the fame and wealth that he obtained based on the disciplinarian single-mindedness of his father was put to the service of a becoming someone else, and trying to modify his way out of his own self-image. These facts are self-evident. But it is shocking how the entire world plays dumb and completely goes silent on this profoundly disturbed behavior. Exalting beyond measure his talent and artistic graces—this veneration almost seems forced, as if the public can obviously not ignore the monstrosity of such derangement, so they channel the awkwardness into poses of adulation just to fill in the space.

The inability to recognize Michael Jackson’s failings betray a strange schizophrenia in the public’s perception. It exposes a fundamentalist approach to the notion of success – almost as an insistence that no one who could be so successful could really be so misguided. I would argue that such obstinate insistence in the righteousness and inherent value of “cheap success” is a major reason why there are so many problems which we collectively are dropping the ball on. "If it's got lipstick on, it can't be a pig!" – That’s the modern-day conviction that lubricates people through a world that becomes increasingly abrasive as it gives clear signals that “truthiness” just won’t cut it.

The reality principle always wins – and in this case, the reality is that we have just lived through a very quick “real-estate” bubble again, except the asset was Michael Jackson – a man who had not done anything noteworthy in years, but spend money, get charged with sexual misconduct, and take loans out on his ownership of old Beatles songs.

Some might say nothing is lost with this amount of frenzy. But last year the biggest news story was the death of Anna Nicole Smith. This year it will surely be the passing of a bizarre pop star. It is unlikely that these events are so much as footnotes in the annals of history – so what is the world we are overlooking?