MJ: What do his life and death say about us?

We can’t pity him. That he embraced his destiny, knowing how fame would warp him, is what frees us to revere him. . . .
“Deep inside I feel that this world we live in is really a big, huge, monumental symphonic orchestra.  I believe that in its primordial form, all of creation is sound and that it’s not just random sound, that it’s music.”
May they have been his last thoughts.  John Jeremiah Sullivan, Back in the Day, GQ Sept. 2009.

This past July, a lot of bloggers expressed irritation about how much media coverage Michael Jackson’s June 25 death received, especially in comparison to Walter Cronkite, who died a few weeks later.  To them I say, sure, I agree that MJ was probably not as culturally significant as Cronkite, at the very least by virtue of the fact that Cronkite lived 42 years longer than Jackson.  Neither is MJ’s death as politically important as our economy, our war with Iraq, our escalating problems with Iran and North Korea, our upcoming surge in Afghanistan, or our healthcare reform (to name a few national concerns).  On the other hand, MJ’s life is a compelling story because it is so very difficult to reconcile his gifts with his foibles.  His story is a cautionary tale; the ways in which a small child can be ruined by others, the ways in which an adult can ruin himself.  Despite all he accomplished, MJ was a pretty damaged person; partially through circumstance, and partially through his own making.  People are trying to figure out what his life meant, to him, his family, the entertainment industry, his fans, and the world at large.  Thinking about MJ’s life is a lot harder than thinking about Cronkite’s life.  Cronkite doesn’t have a narrative that splits in two in the middle.  He had a fairly singular trajectory.  MJ rose to heights we can only imagine through his work, and fell to depths no one wants to experience through his personal travails.  What does that mean to us?  What does that mean to those of us who display similar mental health issues, but lack similar talent?  Are we relegated to an existence similar to MJ’s worst times?  Or are those situations reserved for the very mentally ill who also happen to be the very wealthy?  If so, what does MJ’s life say about celebrity- and fame-culture in the US?  What does it say about wealth and excess?  Fame and wealth are things everyone wants a little piece of; I don’t care who you are, you’ve thought about what it would be like to be a rich and famous celebrity.  Otherwise, why would reality television be so successful?  Why would people like Heidi Montag, Lauren Conrad, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, etc. be trying so desperately to claw their way to the top of the entertainment tower without having any entertainment skills to speak of?  And what does MJ’s life say about other child stars who have fallen apart much younger and much faster?  The slow-burning self-destruction of Michael Jackson has been played out in double-time for Britney, Lindsay, and a host of others.  They seem to have one thing in common with MJ; not necessarily his talent, but instead similarly pushy, money-hungry, stage parents trying to live out their own dreams through their children (and hanger-on siblings trying to leverage themselves off the former’s successes). MJ is a lesson in what constitutes very poor parenting, to say the least.

These aren’t insignificant or trivial questions, and some of them verge on existential. They are not easily answered, and they are why American society is having its own meltdown—played out via excessive media coverage—over losing Michael.  They make us—at least MJ’s fans, if not American society as a whole—consider this person’s existence in more than black and white (no pun intended; sorry MJ).  The story of Michael Jackson, the trajectory of Michael Jackson, cannot fit in a box.  He doesn’t make sense in terms of an overarching narrative.  That’s because his existence, like everyone else’s existence, is much more nuanced than that.  His otherworldly highs, combined with his dramatic lows, create a very stark example of how a person’s worth can’t really be painted in such broad strokes.  We can’t effectively judge whether this person was good or bad (though I’d point out the basic: no one is pristinely good, or completely evil), and we’re not used to having our narratives limited by nuance like that.  We’ve relegated MJ to the obscure, the bizarre, and even the criminal for many years now, but he was extremely prominent in the public consciousness for quite a while, and his successes can’t be ignored any more than his questionable judgment and suspect behavior.  How do we, a society that has historically focused on quick answers and simple narratives to explain ourselves, make sense of Michael Jackson?  Time and revisionist history have allowed us to forget a lot of our dichotomous past, but with MJ, the ups and downs of his existence all happened in the span of a very short 50 years.  Combine that short time with modern media accessibility, and you end up with a public processing problem.  Nothing about MJ can be swept under the rug, and nothing can be ignored.  It’s all out there for us to consume, examine, and ruminate on.  We’re almost forced to do so.  And it’s stark and scary.  It’s scary to think someone who reached orbit professionally could fall so far personally, and it’s scary to try to reconcile that.

As MJ’s death forces us to examine the nuances of his life, his life makes us examine our pervasive, sometimes subconscious, societal goals of fame and wealth.  The results, and their broader implications, are also unnerving.  MJ’s life shows that happiness does not automatically accompany success as measured by fame and wealth.  Many people understand this concept intellectually, and other public figures’ lives also show it, I suppose.  But MJ’s story proves it in a very drastic way.  And our confusion over MJ’s dichotomous life goes to show that no matter what we know intellectually, societal currents are strong; we still expect a person with MJ’s success to be happy as a result; it’s a permutation of the American dream.  The fact that he wasn’t seems almost unreasonable.  But the man was probably never truly happy at any point, not even during the height of his career (he was reportedly so lonely during the Off the Wall/Thriller years that he couldn’t even contemplate moving out of his parents’ house, at the age of 23-24).  His life very loudly declares that being the best doesn’t necessarily make a person happy; being the richest doesn’t necessarily make a person happy; being the most famous doesn’t necessarily make a person happy.  So if the factors our culture understands as happiness-making do not actually accomplish happiness, then what goals should our society advocate for us to pursue in order to reach that equilibrium in our time on earth?  Does religion really provide the answer?  (After all, plenty of religious people still feel compelled to pursue fame and fortune.)  Does art?  Obviously neither art nor religion helped MJ, despite his strong roots in both.  What should our societal goals for life be, if not pursuing these measures of success, which function as calibrations of happiness?  If we know, intellectually, that these values do not actually make our lives better once realized, should we be taking a more active role in rooting them out of our collective consciousness and replacing them with more psychologically healthy and socially beneficial values?  What kind of social movement would that type of change necessitate?  Is that kind of change even possible?  What does it say about us if we try, and what does it say about us if we don’t?

Ultimately, I didn’t mind the MJ coverage; his story took up an incredible amount of space in my head and every little piece of information seemed to help me gain a clearer picture of the man, and consequently the meaning of his life, for my own resolution as a fan.  But as to those who were and are bothered, I really think this man’s life and death could and should stimulate a societal self-examination/self-reflection that we need.  The important points bear repeating: how do we reconcile such disparate narratives in one person?  We need to learn; it’s hard to see how we can keep painting our world in broad strokes and simultaneously expect to have any sort of accurate view of it, especially in the age of extremely accessible media.  And what do our values mean if a person who exceeded every one of those hopes and dreams still had a monumental meltdown?  It’s hard to see how those should remain our values, to say the least.  I don’t know what the answers are, but I think the questions are worth thinking critically about.  In death, as he saw himself in life, MJ is just a vessel.  In life he saw himself as a vessel for music, dance, and art; in death he is a vessel for a reexamination of the quintessential American success story.  He is necessary to us in that way.  I guess I hope we not only learn the lessons, but also work to “make that change.”  I don’t know how to make any more sense of his story, and our obsession with it, than that.