FUBAR: My Blog About MJ

I don’t know if I ever actively pondered Michael Jackson’s mortality, but I imagine if you had asked me a month or so ago when I thought MJ might die I probably would have responded with something like: “Sooner rather than later.” Michael never struck me as someone with a particularly long shelf life, mostly because every time I saw videos or pictures of him he looked frailer and frailer…kind of like a sack of bones held together by something very tenuous and unnatural. And it would always make me very sad. For very many reasons.

First of all, I would like to point out the obvious fact that MJ is only one dead celebrity in a string of recent celebrity deaths: Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Billy Mays (a/k/a that infomercial guy), and the brilliant German dancer Pina Bausch. But I would also like to point out the obvious fact that MJ’s death received the most publicity. By far. Regardless of your feelings about or opinion of MJ, he basically achieved legend status sometime in the early 1980s and has been a household name around the globe ever since. Divisive, talented, mysterious, and FUBAR, Michael Jackson stands alone in a category created entirely for him.

I was emotionally affected by his death way more than I would have ever expected. At first I just thought it was simple nostalgia; practically everyone in my generation has childhood memories involving the music of Michael Jackson, so it would be natural to equate his death with the death of my childhood, etc. But I soon realized that simple nostalgia didn’t explain it for me. There was some sort of ancient, angry sadness in me that was incited by the news of his passing. “What the hell is this shit?” I asked myself. It took a Youtube video for me to figure it out.

One of my Facebook friends posted the “Free to be…you and me” video a day or two after his death. I watched it and I cried. It’s Michael Jackson and Roberta Flack, circa 1974. His acting is awkward and kind of bad, but in a very forgivable sort of way. And watching it 35 years later with the knowledge of how MJ ended up living his life makes it downright tragic. I don’t know if there was any way for MJ to live a normal life, even if he had tried. Especially after his freakish explosion as a pop superstar in the 1980s, he would have had to work overtime to even have had a shot at maintaining some semblance of normalcy. Instead he went in the exact opposite direction.

So that’s where the sadness in me came from…but what about that anger? Fast-forward seventeen years. November 14, 1991. We’re all sitting in our living rooms with our families, eagerly awaiting the brand new Michael Jackson video starring Macaulay Culkin. The “Black or White” video. I was 13 years old. It all started innocently enough – Culkin starts pulling some of his G-rated, cutesy shenanigans, and the next thing you know MJ’s dancing with some African natives. All good, all cool. There are a few moments when MJ sings in front of a ball of angry fire, but the other moments depict Michael dancing with happy people of all ethnicities all over the world. We’re all getting along. We’re all enjoying the native ceremonial garb. We agree that MJ looks weird but not too weird. So…we’re cool. We see an awesome new morphing technique where different-looking people blend into each other. We’re reminded we’re not that different after all. Way to go, Michael. “We Are the World,” indeed.

And then this random panther walks out. And this random panther morphs into Michael Jackson. And Panther Michael is angry.

It was actually difficult for me to find the full version of this video, but I finally did find it. To check out Michael’s dance solo, start around the 6 minute, 30 second mark.

He launches into this a cappella dance that’s a sort of ranting monologue through movement. He starts breaking things. He vandalizes a car. He gets up on top of the car and starts touching himself. A lot. He’s basically masturbating through his pants. Then he gets down, breaks some more shit, falls down on his knees in a puddle, rips open his shirt, all the while screaming and making panther noises. He gets up, walks off, and suddenly Bart and Homer Simpson bid us farewell.

Now, my family was probably one of the most open-minded and progressive households in town…but even we were a bit scandalized by it all. Mostly I think we were confused. It just felt so random and angry and inappropriate. It wasn’t the Michael Jackson we were expecting. It wasn’t the Michael we all wanted to see.

That segment of the video caused quite a controversy, and MTV ended up airing the full “angry masturbating” version only very late at night.

When I was trying to put my finger on the source of my anger surrounding MJ’s death, I started with the “Black or White” video and my memories of that experience. All these years later I can see something very different in it.

First of all, there’s no way MJ could have thought that this wouldn’t cause a controversy. Hell, it debuted during primetime television on multiple channels. And I find it hard to believe that at least ONE person didn’t suggest to MJ and the creators of this video that it might be a bit much for kids (and kids were obviously a target audience because of the use of Culkin and the Simpsons).

No, I think Michael very much wanted us to be scandalized by this. He later apologized for it, but the video was already out in the world. He made sure we saw it. He wanted us to bear witness to his anger. He practically orchestrated it so that we would be sitting in our living rooms with our families, expecting the Michael Jackson we all knew and loved, and then be a-bombed with another.

MJ’s dancing had long been suggestive and emotionally charged, but in the “Black or White” video he took it to the next level. I started looking back through some other old videos and watched a lot of MJ’s dancing. To me, the crotch-grabbing and suggestive choreography isn’t sexual. It’s angry, and sort of sad and desperate. There was a subtle desperation in a lot of MJ’s work. Watch his famous performance of “Billy Jean” in 1983 at the Motown 25 concert. He seems to float about 3 inches off of the ground the entire time. His precision and rhythm is mesmerizing. But I also sense an impending doom. Like Michael is putting a machine into motion that he will never be able to control or stop.

If you watch the video, look at the audience. They’re on their feet immediately. There seems to be a mob-like energy in the room They want Michael. They want all of him. They never want him to stop.

I think the debut of the “Black or White” video was a sort of turning point for MJ. If you watch these two videos, you may notice that MJ’s performance in “Free to be…you and me” is awkward and forced….like he doesn’t feel comfortable in his own skin. In the angry dance section of “Black or White,” he seems more rooted and present in his body than ever before. Like he was owning his body, owning his anger, and making us watch.

I cannot even begin to emotionally tap into the deep, aching sadness that Michael Jackson must have carried around with him almost every day of his life. Collectively as a society we were constantly eating him alive. It’s as if he offered himself up as a sacrifice to the gods of fame and we made him pay the price. I was astonished and offended by some of the horrible things posted up on Facebook about MJ by some of my “friends” right after his death. As if he wasn’t a human but rather some idea or cartoon character that we could keep tying to an anvil and dropping off a mountain top and then get angry when he didn’t get right back up after landing on the hard, unforgiving ground.

So my anger surrounding MJ’s death is actually directed at you. And me. Society. The media. I am angry that the more he gave us the more we expected of him. I am angry that somewhere along the line he got turned into an idea. A joke. And that many people forgot he was a living, breathing, feeling human being.

He was fucked up. FUCKED UP. FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition). But not just him…the entire situation was FUBAR. When I look at Michael Jackson, especially the young Michael Jackson (i.e. mid-1980s and earlier), I see a little boy who only wanted to be loved and to make people happy. And he did….he made a lot of people happy. He kept trying to top himself and top his creative brilliance so that we would be happy. But our love came with a price. And whether you believe all of the allegations thrown around about him during his life or not, it’s clear that he was never able to find peace and never able to truly love himself. He kept buying thing after thing, going deeper into debt in an attempt to fill some aching emptiness inside of him. He kept fucking with his body to try to erase who he was….perhaps in a quest to one day learn to love himself.

Yes, it was truly FUBAR. Especially because I think deep down he was a really caring, sensitive individual. Michael tried to save the world in so many different ways, and I sometimes wonder if he really thought his god-like superstar status and large bank account would be enough to do it. “We Are the World,” “Man In the Mirror,”…he created numerous charitable organizations, and supported countless others. He wanted to help feed Africa. He wanted to help people addicted to drugs. He wanted to get money to needy children. He wanted to save the world.

I was able to trace the source of my anger back to that original “Black or White” video experience for a reason. Michael was speaking to us. I think he was saying: “Look, I know I’m FUBAR but the whole world is FUBAR and I can’t save it by myself. Wake up, break some shit, rip off your shirt, turn into a panther. Whatever. Just do SOMETHING. And stop expecting me to be who you want me to be.”

Since his death, I’ve developed this little daydream about him. In it, it’s about 5 or 10 years from now and he’s still alive. I am a well-known writer and I have written something that has gotten his attention. He likes it so much that he invites me to an afternoon at the Neverland Ranch (which, in the daydream, he still owns). Who would turn down an invitation to the Neverland Ranch? Certainly not me. So I go. And I’m sitting with Michael out on a patio overlooking his gorgeous property, and we’re sipping some sort of beverage, and he’s wearing thick, dark sunglasses, and he has just spent the last hour or two showing me all of the cool stuff he has collected and purchased over the years. We’re sitting there talking, but talking around stuff rather than getting to the meat of it. But I have something I really want to say, so I turn to him. I reach my hand out and put it on top of his. And I say this:

“Thank you. Thank you so much for everything that you have done. And I am so sorry that you are in so much pain. And I hope that one day you are able to find peace.

And just so you know, the ‘Thriller’ video was really fucking awesome.”

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Tags: Michael Jackson

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