Michael Jackson, Moonwalker
A few links:
90 days gone from my students’ 8th greade year. 90 more to go. Let’s do it.
Mr. V, who’s all mamse mamasa mama kusa …
Heath Ledger
In the latest edition of Esquire Magazine (yes, I read Esquire, at least once a year, particularly their end of the year specials), Stephen Marche has an article entitled, “A Thousand Words About Our Culture: Aren’t We Enjoying All This Death A Little Too Much?” In it, he analyzes this idea of celebrity death, its permutations, significance, and manifestations in 2009. In general, his point is two-fold: we make celebrities in large part to celebrate their fall / death and in death, celebrities find new life.
I gave it some thought with a critical eye, and I realized just how right he was. While we may have noted more famous names dying, we also know that the names of notables recognized at any given award show won’t change by much. We so just so happened to have given each and every one more analysis.
I don’t remember much about Heath Ledger before The Dark Knight came out other than his pretty-boy charms and the buzz of his role in Brokeback Mountain, a movie I never watched. I became more intrigued by this man, not so coincidentally, when I heard about his role as The Joker in The Dark Knight and as the details of his death slowly trickled out.
Almost ironically, his role as a demented, tortured, and purposely ugly man hellbent on destroying the psyche of all around him made him most notable to a society that let the affable, incredible, and handsome actor behind the role die silently and with no one to save him before he became a tragedy. Everytime I watch The Dark Knight, I still think about the dichotomy between our culture’s dual isolation and community.
And if it can happen to Heath Ledger, it may certainly happen to any one of us, no matter what we bring to the table.
This year’s even stranger in that now we not only have 24-hour news channels highlighting every ambiguity and angle possible with people who may have had an experience with the recently deceased delivering some off-kilter and semi-unique eulogy to their sibling / friend / acquaintance / former interviewee / co-worker, we also have floods of messages from the Internet controlling our opinions and giving us different dimensions, some warranted, some not-so-much.
Now, celebrity deaths become more than events, but memes ingrained into everyone within a few feet of a keyboard.
It’s to the point where we want to have first dibs on the breaking news of failure and inevitably telling the world how they stuck by that person through their travails, whereas we take our time celebrating successes while people still live. Everyone’s a Michael Jackson fan again this year, whereas before his death, people hid. Everyone’s naming their babies Ted or Edward [Kennedy], but only nodded while his name came up for the last 20+ years. Everyone pontificates on the merits of John Hughes movies, but only caught the ones with commercial interruptions on TV.
Still ruminating over Marche’s article, my thoughts went out to those who currently sit at their deathbeds that matter to us, whether visibly or not, and I thought about how we, as a whole, could remind these folks that they matter before and after they’ve passed on. Thus, when that person passes, the procession of memories don’t pain us as much, and we get to keep those pillars of our lives exalted before our human instinct to knock those individuals down overpowers our rationale. With our impermanence so inevitable, we owe it to ourselves to do so …
Jose, who gives thanks for life daily …
Ed McMahon
For some reason, that title just sounded right. A few notes:
Before I go, (and I know I’m going to get a little flack for this), but I really am tired of seeing MJ news.
Apparently, using some sort of racial metrics, White people think there should be less MJ and Black people want more. I’m somewhere in between. I’m all for the man resting in peace personally. I’m glad he’s getting this amount of coverage, but as far as his children, regurgitating his well-documented past, or anything unimportant, I’d rather not hear all of that. I’d like choices as far as the topics I want to hear about, and until I get that choice topically, I’ve decided to just not turn on CNN at all. (No, I don’t watch BET anyways). With the recent deaths of Ed McMahon, Billy Mays, Farrah Fawcett, and Steve McNair, it just goes to show that we all need to tell the people we love just how much we do.
For the final time here, RIP MJ.
Jose, who’s intent on finishing 2 projects this week so he can really take a break …
Michael Jackson RIP by RJ Matson
Someone asked me recently if I talked to my kids about Michael Jackson and the impact he had on me and people of my generation. I told the person, “No, we had things to do. I hadn’t seen them very much over the last week, so I just wanted that time to let them know we’re cool.” While hanging out with them, I realized that they really did grow up with a love for MJ in a strange way, especially since so much of their current music is influenced by Michael. People who’ve ever listened through an entire album of bachata will notice that someone’ll play a quick MJ riff just to establish their American cultural relevance. Every so often, a pop diva will take a revamped break beat from a dope MJ song and make it even doper … but make us miss MJ that much more. Yet, there’s still this lingering feeling from them that, because he was an accused child molester or because he was accused of not being Black enough in the annals of the Grand Annals of the Ubiquitous Black Tribunal, kids shouldn’t have any reverence for him whatsoever.
To accentuate that point, someone on Twitter said (to paraphrase), “A real n***a doesn’t have MJ as their profile pic or background.” Again, I’m not posting this random Twitterer as the Great Leader or even a Representative in this fake court, but I guess if MJ is not really Black, we should truly question what Blackness means. Is it definable by some tenets that no one really has a true grasp on? Let’s think about that together, huh?
1) Is the music Black enough? Well, MJ has done a lot of work with different rappers, underground and mainstream. Plus, as far as R&B, he innovated and renovated at will with just the sound of his falsetto. The rest of these real n****s have a few good punchlines, and maybe a video, but don’t go beyond that creatively. They don’t push limits; they stay well within them.
2) MJ had his gimmicks; the crotch grab, the shmon, the tight clothing, the monkey, the jheri curl … For every reinvention he had for himself, he had a gimmick or 5 for it. Yet, he also had a few things everyone bit off him, like the red jacket, the piano / Mickey Mouse shirts, the moonwalk (which he borrowed from a Vegas show, no less), and a patent for the technology that let him lean past his center of balance in the video “Smooth Criminal.” No, really. These real n****s have a list of gimmicks like using the n-word just to rhyme. Not to mention the baggy clothes, the big chain, the ice grill … wait, is any of that really innovative? Really? I guess real n****s aren’t innovative.
3) MJ gave millions to funds for humanitarian efforts in the continent of Africa and also gave money for the United Negro College Fund, and not just in the thousands, but in the millions. He’ll freely transform into a Black Panther at the end of Black or White, tell KKK members he’s not scared of them, cite “Mama se mama sah mama ku sah” when others wouldn’t dare use African references in their music, and frequently have Black women as his counterpart in romantic songs and videos. (“Liberian Girl” and “Remember The Time” come to mind immediately). Real n****s on the other hand make videos that perpetuate the light-skinned vs. dark-skinned ideals of beauty prominent in so many rap videos, that would be a book in and of itself. And real n****s donate money to political parties that directly oppose their music … just so they’ll get left alone. MJ wasn’t Black enough I guess.
4) MJ supposedly touched kids (even when there’s irrefutable evidence towards the contrary) so I guess he had to be hung for that, right? A real n***a wouldn’t need to settle out of court or deliver messages through TV interviews just to justify his own success. He would just need to make a club record that sounds exactly like the last few ones, and then ghostwrite a few more that sound just like those, and make the other people he settles his lawsuits with vow to keep their mouths shut so they can’t testify at the next one. Or even just issue a blanket apology for having underage girls on stage. It’s no dirt on their shoulder. A real n***a just does NOT care.
Much like the rest of us who’ve written about him extensively and are absolute fans of his work, I can’t make any excuses for some of his more eccentric behaviors. He didn’t live in the same world we lived in, and the more money he made, the stranger he became. Yet, when I see my kids, the same ones who rock beads and crosses, listen to the bland repetitive music real n****s make, and yet have this subtle appreciation for this legend, I know Michael Jackson’s legacy as a musician and performer wasn’t in vain.
Michael Jackson’s Blackness comes in the form of how many Blacks he’s inspired. Even the real n****s.
Jose, who laughs at cats who call him a plagiarist …
Michael Jackson's Moonwalker
Dear Michael Jackson,
First, let me say that I’m deeply saddened by your death. Your passing ranks up there in the moments where people had to remember where they were standing when they heard the news. On a day when a fellow 70’s-80’s icon in Farrah Fawcett died and so did Ed McMahon, the news of you dying seems to have washed away most news about Middle East and Asian conflict, the NBA Draft, and second-to-last day of school for NYC students. And deservedly so. You were a legend of immense proportions and even with your less favorable traits you still managed to inspire, mystify, and amaze so many of us who only wished they could maximize their potential.
You were often this caricature of yourself, and the older we got, the more your public persona became a caricature of the last image we caught from scenes all over the world. Even still, the music always kept hitting us hard. You already had #1 hits back in your childhood with your brothers as part of the Jackson 5, and as you grew older, to make up for that missing childhood, you pushed the limits of your stardom. For a good two decades or so, you captured our imagination and had the nerve to call yourself the King of Pop, busting through the doors of MTV when they wouldn’t play your videos (they apologized by stealing the whole theme of your greatest contribution to dance).
Personally, Michael, you’re easily one of the greatest musicians ever. I still remember the Moonwalker video and wishing I could lean really hard to my side in a primped white suit, blasting guns into my enemies in slo-mo, or walking through the world made of clay and manipulating my shape however I pleased just to get myself through life. Or how about the time you went into space and spent $10 million to collaborate with your sister on a song where you tell the media off once more? And remember when you scared every person aged 17 and under but had such a fly rhythm you made us all wanna wear red jackets, tight jeans, and cat eyes? Remember when you gave Blacks a social consciousness song or two every album just to let them know you were still down, plastic surgery and all?
Isn’t that what you were all about, though? While on the one hand, your musical genius is almost universally unquestioned, the personal sacrifices you made to reach that pinnacle (some from you, some from your family) almost made it not worth it. It’s almost as if to say, “You mean, to be like this Mike, I gotta do THAT?!” While many have tried to replicate your successes, or sample from the tree you planted, they fail in ways only true fans comprehend. There’ll never be another Mike, on any end and all ends of the spectrum.
What’s most striking about you Michael, more than anything else, is the reverence people have for you as a legend and man. Your dominance was unmatched, and as the media and others in the general public made you into a leper and a circus creature all at once, you still managed to touch the hearts of so many of us who grew up idolizing you. With every child case, your fans surrendered their innermost wounds and exposed them in some sort of catharsis, forming a crowd of the judges versus the pardoners.
You indeed were the man in the mirror, making us take a hard look at ourselves, attempting to answer those questions by looking backwards and moving forwards at once …
Jose, who’s remembering the time …
