|
There is a game that's played in elementary schools called "Pile On." The goal, as you may have intuited by now, was to pick one child and then pile on to that child. Talking about Michael Jackson, in the year 2001, feels a bit like a game of Pile On.
Because, really, there's nothing left to say: nothing to say about the surgery, or the chimp, or the oxygen tent, or any of it -- the Elephant Man's bones, the boys, the sham marriages, the "pigmentary disorder," the glove, the socks, the short pants, Macaulay Culkin, Elizabeth Taylor, the Xanadu-esque hideaway, or the eroding, ever-more-frightening, improbably more frightening, just-when-you- thought-it-couldn't- get-any-more-frightening physical appearance. (Michael, whatever you are doing to yourself, please, please, stop it if you can, though we know you're not listening, to us or to anyone.)
And, a few weeks ago, we were happy to stand by silently as he mounted a string of ill-advised, self-organized tribute galas, with their ragtag assemblage of actual celebrities (*NSYNC), freakish Hollywood train wrecks (Liza Minnelli), and some transitional creature in between (Whitney Houston). We didn't go out of our way to badmouth his tepid new single, or the whole sad project to resurrect the career of a man who, long ago, really did make some things that were special, before starting his slow collapse into a walking heap of horrifying consequences, be they physical, mental, and/or spiritual.
But we do now feel a need to say something. We feel a need to pile on. Because, for the first time in recent memory, the pile on Michael Jackson suddenly doesn't seem quite deep enough. Because, in the wake of September 11, Michael Jackson is organizing a benefit song. How convenient that he just happened to be in the midst of a juggernaut campaign to breathe life into the crumbling husk of his career -- a campaign he can now seamlessly redirect towards the unimpeachable effort of organizing a benefit for victims of tragedy...with himself ensconced at the centre. Rather than folding up his faltering comeback blitz and retreating back to his Xanadu to cultivate what tiny seeds of dignity he may have left, he's decided to do something that every other celebrity has, for the most part, managed to avoid: he's going to turn this tragedy to his advantage. He's going to rally stars around him -- because, you know, he's the King of Pop, goddammit, and America needs his healing touch -- and enlist them to record a song. That he wrote. For his new album. He's going to prove that he is still relevant, that Michael Jackson still matters. It takes a special brand of person to see the flash of tragedy and, rather than step silently to the wings, treat its glow like a spotlight. It takes a special brand of human to regard seven thousand lives lost as just the tonic to kickstart a floundering career.
Yes, of course, the victims need money. And celebrities are doing their part, in their way, to help ease the load where they can. And because they are celebrities, there will be moments that may leave a sour taste in your mouth, like a picture of Robin Williams giving blood on the cover of Us magazine. ("Photographers? I didn't know you'd be here!") But for the most part, the tributes have been tasteful and the results hard to argue with: $150 million is $150 million, and if it gets to the firemen's families, then we're happy to watch Fred Durst sing all night, if need be. But in all of Hollywood -- a place where good judgment is routinely hobbled by the sharp, thwacking sticks of opportunism and ego -- everyone has sensitively, admirably managed to avoid bald opportunism, or even the appearance of bald opportunism, with one exception.
Michael Jackson, we know that you are not listening. We know that there is nothing in your recent past to indicate that you have anything resembling human judgment. We cannot begin to imagine what it is like to be inside your skin; these days, we can barely even begin to look at your skin. But do you not think it's a bad idea to simulcast your new, fourteen-minute video in L.A. and New York's Times Square at this particular time? Not simply because no one cares anymore, but because the last thing that New Yorkers need, as they wring the lingering stink of smoke out of their clothes and cry that stinging smoke out of their eyes, is to see you and Chris Tucker and Marlon Brando looming over them as big as Godzilla, Mothra, and Megalon? Do you think this will salve anyone's pain? Do you honestly think you are bringing good into the world and not ill? Why are you even making fourteen-minute videos anymore? We understand that you love music, and that it is hard to let go, and that all of this is falling on deaf ears. Do you even have ears anymore? More importantly, is there anyone you will listen to, or anything that can stop you?
|
