In the avalanche of articles and comments that have been posted since Michael Jackson died - if one googles Michael Jackson one currently gets 377 million hits! - it is remarkable how often it is written that we should now disregard the "bizarre" in the star's life. That is to say, what Michael Jackson became, the way he chose to live his life, and instead remember the "good", what he once was, in other words, when he was still a highly achieving, singing Negro.
That he himself many times talked about how immeasurably unhappy he was as a drilled child star, we can ignore. The Washington Post even flatly states: "but let us put that aside and think of him as he was when he was at the top of his career, when he sang and danced so well..."
One of the most common verses quoted in obituaries is: "I minnet Du lever, Du finns alltid kvar. I minnet vi ser Dig, precis som Du var." (In memory You live, You always remain. In memory we see You, just as You were.) The ethnologist Ingeborg Svensson writes in her doctoral thesis "The corpse in the closet: a study of sexuality, lifestyle and burial (2007)" about how this very verse is used by a mother after her son has died of AIDS. The son had been an active leather fag in the Big City, in the obituary that his boyfriend submitted one could find a picture of a teddy bear with a harness instead of a black cross. The mother chose to completely disregard the son's adult, self-chosen life. The boyfriend was omitted from the obituary she entered, and the deceased was presented as "My Beloved Son" and "Our Dear Brother", as if he had had no adult life whatsoever, followed by the verse "In memory we see You, just as You were", and finally one was asked to donate to a cancer charity.
What we should remember is thus "as You were". Before. Before everything. Before the sickness. Before the homo sex. Before the nightmare. Then, when the deceased was a "son" and a "brother", not that strange creature the Big City had turned him into, that which ultimately killed him.
In the same way we are now urged to remember Michael Jackson "just as he was", that is to say before. Before the strange Michael Jackson. Before the bizarre Michael Jackson who according to the The Guardian spent his final years "mutating into an ever weirder version of himself, so as to become an object that best belonged in a celebrity zoo." In other words: before his transgressing, self-chosen adult life.
And we even fancy ourselves magnanimous in doing so. When we disregard who he actually was. Because initially one is born and becomes what others say that one is. Then one can give birth to oneself anew, if one has the energy, if one has the power and the courage. It is a grand thing to do. And a brave thing.
I have occasionally written about Michael Jackson over the years and in March of this year I received a letter from someone who wrote: "I am frightened by Michael Jackson's face. It doesn't seem real, if one puts it that way." In a similar fashion we have all agreed that Michael Jackson's face wasn't real. We pity him, for what did that poor man do to himself! We assume that he was unhappy.
He, who was as handsome as he was, and sang and danced so well!
But perhaps we should sometime dare to think the thought that he was a man who could afford all the top plastic surgeons, perhaps his face was the result of something he himself wanted. Perhaps this face with its thin nose, broad chin with an artificial dimple, this white-painted face, this straightened hair, these false eyelashes, these tattooed lips, was what Michael Jackson wanted to look like.
Perhaps it corresponded to his own self-image.
Perhaps he thought he was beautiful.
Perhaps he was beautiful.
In my monologue "Scheherzad" from 1999 I describe the English eccentric Quentin Crisp: "I had to make the best of a bad situation and I did so with the aid of thick layers of foundation, eye shadow, lipstick and mascara. The strange thing is that the more I painted myself, the more like myself I became. Through the makeup emerged that which was I. The more artificial, the more real. In the end I was completely myself. Pleased, I went out into the street and was promptly arrested for lascivious behaviour."
That which is deemed "bizarre" is all that Michael Jackson as an adult chose to recreate himself as: a man that transgressed against all boundaries and all norms. He was a black man who looked white, a man who looked like a woman, an adult who wanted to be a child. In the end perhaps Michael Jackson was completely himself.
And we hated him for it.
As every deviant is hated. As every organism tries to reject what it recognises as foreign. Is there another public person of our age that has had to withstand as much hatred as he? Now when he is dead, we take him back into our graces. Like the parents of fags took back their children, de-homosexualised them and once again made them "sons" and "brothers". Often as an act of consideration and magnanimity.
We disregard the "bizarre" and think of Michael Jackson as he was "at the top of his career, when he sang and danced so well..." In memory we see You just as You were.
And in so doing abuse the deceased once more.
Jonas Gardell
PS. Several of you have drawn parallels between Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley. I should rather like to point out the similarities (towards the end even an outer similarity) with Oscar Wilde. I will return to that in an additional article. DS!
His own parallel to the de-fagification of the men who died in the wake of the AIDS epidemic strikes very close to my home. I shudder to think what my own mother would try to portray me as should I get run over by the bus tomorrow: the "good son" who went into higher learning, became a doctor and is to be an object of social envy. Not as the wretched fag she prefers to make pretend doesn't exist to her friends and family.
What would you hate to be remembered as? What would you fear others would want to make you be remembered as?
