Michael Jackson is dead. Physically. Michael Jackson the media image, Michael Jackson the celebrity… that’s going to be tougher to kill.
Jackson was probably the first person ever to reach the definition of post-human. He started as a child star, was transformed by wealth and celebrity, then used that wealth and celebrity to transform himself and, eventually, the world.
While other celebrities were arguably as famous in life as Jackson — Elvis, Marilyn Monroe — Jackson was the first celebrity to live almost his entire life in the spotlight. He was 8 years old when he became famous. Before then, he had done almost nothing but train to be famous. And after that, his self became public property — subject to revision by any number of people, turned into any number of selves.
The money helped. A lot. Once Jackson became an adult — legally, anyway — he took control of a fortune that was staggering by almost any measure. And he used it to build the childhood he never had. His purchases were like something out of a kid’s book. A house that was also an amusement park. A personal zoo. A monkey as his best friend.
And he began to rebuild himself, too. Nobody can say with any authority how many times Jackson went under the knife, aside from Jackson himself and his doctors. But everyone with a TV watched his transformation. Jackson’s physicality — effortlessly expressed in his ability as a dancer — was torn down and reconstructed over and over again, until he no longer resembled himself. He only resembled the caricature of himself.
Jackson’s albums, after Bad, were disappointments, critically and commercially. The music he actually created — his true accomplishments — became a footnote to the semi-sentient, half-life of his fame.
In the 90s, long before Paris Hilton reached puberty, Jackson became famous largely for being famous. And his life became a mere prop to maintaining and servicing his image.He spent millions to bury the first allegations of child molestation at Neverland. He ordered MTV to call him “The King of Pop,” even though no one was listening to the songs anymore. He married the daughter of Elvis in a union so fake as to verge on surreal. He kept saying he just wanted to be left alone — and then, he kept lurching his Frankenstein creation — the one with his name, if not his face — back into the spotlight.
More important, Jackson’s living fame went out and deformed the world, as well. Look at the prisoners in Thailand who spent weeks, months, choreographing a dance version of the “Thriller” video. Prisoners in Thailand. That goes way beyond the girls in my junior high who wore Madonna lace gloves, or the guy who bought the red leather zipper jacket. That’s not pop stardom. It’s more than celebrity, even. That’s as close to actual pagan worship as we get in these times. That’s not the kind of thing that goes away when the cameras are turned off.
Whatever the personal reality of Michael Jackson was, it became irrelevant. His eventual trial on child molestation charges was practically unnecessary, since he’d already been convicted in people’s minds by a few thousand bad jokes. His divorce, fatherhood, financial crises, health issues — none of those things really happened to him anymore. They happened to the image, the creation, the celebrity. People believed in the stories more than they believed in any real human being behind them.
Jackson’s death was the final, perfect example. It was posted on the Internet before it actually happened. There will be a lot of crocodile tears, and some genuine heartfelt loss over the next few days. There will be tributes on TV, and a lot of commentary from people like me, who never knew him, never could, who only knew the image. There will be T-shirts and videos and a million more bad jokes.
But none of it is happening to Michael Jackson. Not anymore. It’s happening to the thing he became, and that thing has a lot of life left in it, no matter what became of the 8-year-old boy who sang and danced all those years ago.
Michael Jackson, the first post-human, dead at 50.