Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Feb. 19, 2003: MJ Fascination

Given the insanely steady influx of people to my site to read my various essays on Michael Jackson, I have to ask: Why are we so fascinated?

Is it the rubbernecking instinct, driving past a wreck of a career? You just can't stop looking? Maybe it's partly that, but it's more complicated, too.

Plenty of celebrities have gone from the pinnacles of the entertainment world to become, say, Marlon Brando. But most of them quietly live out their lives, however strange, without attracting the sort of fascination we have for the King of Pop.

The best quote on the subject comes from Ice-T. He was on Carson Daly's Last Call last autumn, shortly after the infamous Berlin hotel incident, where Michael dangled his third child over the balcony, Prince Michael Jackson II, a.k.a. "Blanket," to the astonishment of most of the free world.

Carson and Ice-T were playing a game called "Pimp or Ho." It goes like this: you go through a list of celebrity names, and for each one you decide whether they're a pimp or a ho. A "pimp" is somebody who is in charge, who runs the show, someone in charge of their own career. A "ho" is somebody who's ruled by others.

When the name "Michael Jackson" came up, Ice-T sighed sadly and said, "He pimped himself into being a ho."

And that's exactly why, I think, we're so fascinated. It's not just his spectacular rise and his exquisitely bizarre fall from grace. It's that, all along, he did it to himself.

The rise and fall of Michael Jackson destroys our idea of the myth-making celebrity dream machine. The celebrity Dream Machine myth works like this: first, that you have some sort of fantastic talent or spectacular quality. For example, you're a terrific singer, a great actor or you're just plain sexy.

There are two ways for the Dream Machine myth to work. One is that you work really, really hard until you get a break. The second is the kind we all love to hear about: the so-called rags-to-riches story. Your success comes at the drop of a hat when you're discovered somewhere.

Most people have assumed that Michael Jackson's story fit into the second category. He grew up poor, jammed into a one-story house in Gary, Indiana, with his religious parents and numerous siblings. Then record producer Barry Gordy sees a taped audition of the Jackson 5 and knows right away that Michael will be a star. This version doesn't mention the many hours of thankless practices under his merciless father or the early gigs in and around Gary, Indiana, in places like restaurants, bowling alleys and strip clubs.

So then, the Dream Machine myth says, you go from being discovered to spectacular success. The Jackson 5, as far as the public were concerned, were an overnight sensation. They hit the top of the charts, had their own television show, endorsed Alpha Bits cereal and even had a cartoon based on them.

And in the late '70s and early '80s, when his first album, Off the Wall, got him noticed and his second album, Thriller broke industry records and broke barriers for black musicians, he had fulfilled the requirements of the Dream Machine myth.

Usually, a music career goes one of several ways after you hit this kind of a peak. There's Strong and Steady, like Bob Dylan, where you continue to produce a stream of work that, while the actual album sales may vary, secures your status in the music world, as well as critical acclaim.

There's the Flash in the Pan: musicians like Peter Frampton, whose Peter Frampton Live put him on the rock music map but who's never followed it up with anything terribly impressive. And yet, he continues to be respected, goes touring, engages in projects with other musicians. While he's no longer considered in the upper echelon of rock, his history there is secure.

Of course, there's the One Hit Wonder, such as Big Country and their hit, "In a Big Country." Lead singer Stuart Adamson died in a Hawaii hotel room on Dec. 16, 2001, and nobody noticed.

Every once in awhile there's the Rock 'n' Roll Martyr, like Buddy Holly or Kurt Cobain, whose life is cut short at the peak of their glory, so that forever afterwards they are frozen in time. The most common things said about Rock 'n' Roll Martyrs are, "If only we could have heard their next album," or "It must be a hell of a band jamming out in Heaven."

And then there's the Flame-Out, the kind VH1's Behind the Music loves to profile. Flame-outs are artists such as Andy Gibb, who hit the peak of fame and then get involved in drugs and decadence, which leads to their downfall. The usual result being that the more decadent the band is getting, the less their albums sell, so that they can never recapture their past glory. The pyramid, turned upside down, collapses.

The reason Michael Jackson astounds us is that he's taken the Flame-Out to levels we've never before seen, and to a more extended and public extent than just about any previous case. Usually the Flame-Out happens when the pop stars in question are so intoxicated by wealth and fame that they believe they can do anything they want. Usually, that's glitzy outfits, groupies, heroin and wrecking hotel rooms.

But what self-respecting Flame-Out squanders millions on video games, carnival rides, zoo animals and gaudy bric-a-brac? Nobody, until Michael Jackson. Whose decadence is defined by general's outfits, high-water pants with white socks, hats and gloves? Sequined outfits, yes; carrying around a chimp who dresses like you, no.

In this sense, Michael's behavior has been more like a Diva than like a rock star, divas being notorious for making odd demands on their assistants, flaunting excess and demanding their privacy while simultaneously demanding your attention. The excessive plastic surgery seems to fit this category.

Michael Jackson said, early in his career, that he wanted to be known as the P.T. Barnum of his time, and it's rumored he fed his own bizarre press coverage by having a publicist drop off a photo to a national tabloid back in the Thriller days, alleging that Michael slept in a hyperbolic chamber in order to stay young.

He wouldn't be the first person to court that type of attention. David Bowie did it with great success when, eyebrows shorn, hair dyed an excessive red, he appeared to the world as Ziggy Stardust. Refusing to be trapped in that image, he converted himself again and again so that nobody knew exactly who he was. And yet, with him, the sideshow was clearly a game.

With Michael Jackson, the side show has become the center ring.

So why does he still fascinate us? Not only did he continue to produce hits at least for the first few years of his gradual Flame-Out, not only did he lend his hand to helping various worldwide charities, not only has he attracted a huge international fan base, but he is, quite simply, the most fantastic and unusual Circus Sideshow Diva Flame-Out that anyone has ever, ever seen.

And we will continue to pay our 50 cents to see the Magical Morphing Peter Pan Man until somebody directs us to the Egress.

Moral:
Everyone loves a circus.

Copyright 2003 by Alyce Wilson

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