When I gave the eulogy at my grandmother's funeral, I urged everyone to remember her as she lived and as she would want to be remembered, rather than to associate her with her most vulnerable or decrepit state and thereby associate her entire life with a negative portent. Let's do the same for Mike.Michael Jackson's death has had a pathological effect on me. I mean pathological in terms of the Greek word "pathos", meaning "A quality, as of an experience or a work of art, that arouses feelings of pity, sympathy, tenderness, or sorrow."
Perhaps all that needs to be said is that within ten minutes of the announcement, I got calls from friends from Maine to California. It meant something; we all knew that somehow. But it wasn't as if we'd listened to his music in the last decade. But that didn't matter. Because when he died, we remembered...
I am a 30 year old American, and I know no one of my generation who did not think that Michael Jackson was the coolest person alive when he or she was 5 years old. For my generation, Michael Jackson is a pillar of our common infrastructure. There is not a single person in my generation that does not know Thriller.
Think about that. An entire generation, tens of millions of people, who will never meet, but who all know the words to the songs on the same album. I honestly don't think it's hyperbolic to ask, "what parallel exists in our culture other than the Bible?" If there is a single cultural artifact that the most Americans have in their homes, it is probably the New Testament. And second is Thriller.
The man brought people together. Before he became a joke, he was globalization personalized. He compressed races and languages and nations into a rhythm that transcended everything else. And he did all of this before the internet. Or cable.
By the time this man was 10 years old, he was understood to be an eerily transcendent talent. When he put out Thriller at age 25, it became the best-selling album of all time. Every single song became a number 1 single. He won 7 Grammies for a single album. He reinvented dance. He reinvented bass-lines. He reinvented music videos, though we all know it would be more accurate to just say that he invented them.
He did all these things before any other person had done them, and he did them as a black man. Michael Jackson played a role that traditional white liberals are slow or loathe to acknowledge due to their investment in the narrative of victimization and the inherent corruption of wealth.
Michael Jackson set a precedent that was followed by Michael Jordan, Jay-Z, and Barack Obama. It used to be that phenomenally talented black folks would aspire for a decent salary, but actual control or ownership of the means of production was a fantasy. Micheal Jackson didn't settle for proceeds from ticket sales; he took charge and reaped his just rewards, even if he subsequently spent it all on feather boas and painkillers.
Because of what Michael Jackson did, Michael Jordan bought the team he played for. And Jay-Z bought the record label he rapped for. And Barack Obama leads the country he believed in.
It may seem ridiculous in retrospect, but people need to sing and dance together before they trust each other. And Michael Jackson created a world where EVERYBODY had something in common. And that something was Michael Jackson.
The only musical artists who can compare to Michael Jackson in terms of impact on society are Elvis Presley (with the huge asterisk that comes from simply singing black music with a white face), Bob Dylan, and the Beatles. Michael's reach may not have been as deep as Dylan's, but it was far broader than all others on this list. Michael Jackson sold tickets to people who didn't speak a word of English. Millions of tickets.
He did all these things despite the fact that he was in the end, if not for the entire second half of his life, a self-loathing freak if not a serial child rapist. But do any of us imagine that he was not abused as a child? And do any of us deny that 99 out of every 100 people that ever met Michael Jackson didn't care about anything other than what they could get from him?
All the pathos aside, in a strictly clinical sense, Michael Jackson's voice has been heard by more people that any other voice that has ever been spoken. He sold 750 million albums to 3 generations of people on every in every civilized corner of the Earth. We praise thugs and tyrants that have achieved infinitely less.
2 comments:
A) I made the exact same comment about being five and Michael being the indisputably coolest person on the planet to Willis. Very true.
B) Not all singles off Thriller went to No. 1. He released 7 out of 9 of the songs and "The Girl is Mine," and "Human Nature," for instance, never got higher than No. 2. A minor quibble, but there you go.
C) Finally, I have to disagree with the oft-repeated notion that Elvis was merely a black music impersonator. Rock 'n Roll - which Elvis certainly did not invent - is a mixture of blues, gospel, and a type of swinging honky-tonk country music called "rockabilly." And while Chuck Berry might be considered its perfect incarnation, the fusion was accomplished by dozens of artists - black and white - over as many years. There is a social guilt at work that casts blame on Presley for being successful at something that no black musician could have been successful at during that time period. He was not an innovator, but neither was he an imitator.
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