Over time, I felt like I was one of millions of people who wanted Michael Jackson to succeed. MTV at first refused to play his videos because black artists, no matter how successful, didn’t fit their idea of their format. Of course Michael Jackson, with the help of Quincy Jones, went on to become the King of Pop and the king of music MTV video. In the intro to Thriller, Michael Jackson says “I’m not like other guys” and “I’m different” and then proceeds to transmogrify into a werewolf. Pop culture literature from “Twilight” to “Harry Potter” has taken feelings of alienation and packaged them for wide consumption. Michael was one of the first masters of our modern era to do that well. But what he could not seem to do is seize control of his own transformation and find his own center as a man, not just a creator. After all, the trope of successful transformation is that the hero becomes something else, but can return to his or her human emotions if not human form. John Landis, the director of “Thriller,” has called Jackson a “tragic figure.” And that brings me, personally, back to race. Race added a very specific prism to the failed transformation of Michael Jackson. His plastic surgery bordered on pathology and racial caricature. His need for the spotlight brought him, arguably, into clashes with both the law and public opinion. I am thinking specifically of the charges of his treatment of children others, and his own. Would he have felt freer to pursue his own alternative identity if we had not also wanted him to be what he could not seem to be an adult black man who provided fodder for the fantasies we cherished when he was a child? In the prelude to the Thriller video, Michael Jackson speaks to the black, bobbysox wearing girl who is his love interest and says, “You know I like you and I hope you like me the way I like you.”  We always loved you, Michael Jackson. I hope you found peace in just being you, whoever you were, and despite what we all wanted you to be.

Tags: MTV

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 6:25 pm and is filed under Michael Jackson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.