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June 29, 2009

The Meaning Of Michael

By Michael Shaw

Jackson-Newsweek-cover.jpg

Interesting choice for the Newsweek cover after five days of Michael Jackson-inspired media saturation. After so many images evoking Jackson’s pain, the schism between his public and private life, and his twisted physical evolution, Newsweek wipes it all away with a visual “last word” embracing the tactic of regression.

With the recently redesigned magazine battling for survival and gripped by its own identity crisis, the cover — especially in the context of the headline — is the equivalent of comfort food.

Not only does the photo let us off the hook in confronting any complexity in regards to “the meaning of Michael,” the image — serving up what reads like a sensitive, untouched, all-knowing, black-is-beautiful old soul — offers a simple, soothing, innocent time-out from from things like the brutal recession; the health care crisis; the wars; global warming — in other words, just about everything else that is fractious, complicated and all-too-much-work to make real meaning out of these days.

(image: still looking. Michael Jackson Newsweek Cover July 13 2009)

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  • croatoan

    He wasn’t untouched. He was physically and mentally abused as a child, and started carrying an adult’s workload. He had a haunted look on his face on 1971 Rolling Stone cover. “Why does this eleven year old stay up past his bedtime?”
    http://www.rollingstone.com/photos/gallery/5392213/1971_rolling_stone_covers/photo/8/large/yokoono
    He joined the Jackson 5 when he was eight. By the time he made Off the Wall when he was 20, he’d already released four solo albums. Plus, the Jackson 5 made nine albums between 1969 and 1975, so he made three albums a year in 1970, 1972, and 1973, and two albums in 1971. He made Thriller when he was 24.

  • Reece

    Cosign that.

  • thomas

    From one very narrow perspective, Jackson, like Madonna and Springsteen at the time, managed to accomplish something very few performers can do: sell records to people who don’t usually buy records. And I may be wrong, but I don’t think you can open the doors to access such an enormous number of people (and their wallets) without being able to present yourself as hermetically self-referential, reductive, uncomplicated, readily understandable. What’s interesting about the cover is that Newsweek is, as you point out, employing the same strategy that worked for Michael: make it simple and appealing like a pop star or a Pepsi and maybe you’ll sell magazines to absolutely everybody. Michael and Newsweek here are two petitioners for your attention, the presence of each endorsing the other. It’s a feedback loop of reassurance and triumph that is pop culture’s signature beacon to the uncritical consumer.

  • Gasho

    croatoan – did you read what the Bag wrote?? he’s not saying MJ’s life was easy… quite the opposite. the picture is simple. Michaels life and the flood of coverage has been painful… That’s what makes the cover remarkable. They choose to bookend the madness with a simple image of a child star. . . . as if that’s a simple thing!!

  • http://www.victorfitzsimons.net Victor F

    I’m not sure if Mr. Jackson ever had a chance to develop past childhood. Overworked and famous from a young age, this picture probably represents Michael’s character the best.
    Ultimately, his actions were his own, but I can’t help but think that American consumers should feel a bit responsible for essentially taking this kid’s life away from him. We like to push our celebrities to the breaking point. We give them money and power and we take from them their privacy and time. We do it again and again, and no matter how many celebrities we drive over the edge, we don’t stop. Can’t stop ’til we get enough, which is never.

  • yg

    doesn’t avoiding contention actually creates anxiety?

  • ratfood

    -I can’t help but think that American consumers should feel a bit responsible for essentially taking this kid’s life away from him.

    I think that is a bit off the mark. I am an American consumer who was never a fan or owned a record by Michael Jackson. I do have sympathy for what he went through when he was too young to have a choice, which I think left him too damaged to cope with life after he reached adulthood. If we have to blame someone, I suggest the parents who exploited their kids and the lax labor laws that allowed it to happen.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/stevelaudig stevelaudig

    this photo needs to be paired to what the autopsy photos seem to show. The story is heading down a dark tunnel with maybe no lights. MJ was frozen at 10 when he [my speculation] he realized something that kept him from getting any “older”. Maybe it was that being Black in the U.S. at the time was too painful to engage and he stopped maturing. Not saying it’s good or bad but something froze him at that age. perhaps that why he always seem incomprehensible to me, enjoyable, admirable and incomprehensible.

  • rob

    Such a beautiful little boy. Hard to believe he grew up to become Wacko Jacko.

  • TAI WEI

    His story is the saddest one ever….

  • TAI WEI

    Have you seen my childhood?
    I’m searching for the world that I come from
    ’cause I’ve been looking around
    In the lost and found of my heart…
    No one understands me
    They view it as such strange eccentricities…
    ’cause I keep kidding around
    Like a child, but pardon me…
    People say I’m not okay
    ’cause I love such elementary things…
    It’s been my fate to compensate,
    For the childhood
    I’ve never known…

  • http://theforgottenwar.blogspot.com Sergei Andropov

    I find it interesting that so many of you read the image as promoting simplicity. Remember, we need to analyze it in the way that we view it, namely in the context of the immense amount of publicity that was Michael Jackson’s life and is his death. In that light, the picture actually forces a much more complicated image of Jackson upon us. It is so easy to view him as a freak that we forget that he was once a child.

  • thomas

    Good point. No question his adult life was more spectacle than anything, but I think it’s fair to say that one of Jackson’s talking points about himself was that he was just an innocent and misunderstood child underneath it all, that a good deal of his troubles came from being persecuted by mean grownups who didn’t understand his special world. Whether dangling a baby off a balcony, slurring and nodding off in his depositions, shuffling to court in his pajamas, dancing on an SUV in front of the court house, etc. he shouldn’t be judged because his freakishness *IS* his childish innocence. The complicated assessment might say that this looks designed, this looks like a shifty, irresponsible child molester’s intuited strategy of evasion and distraction. But Newsweek is selling Michael’s line: I’m just a sweet, asexual, innocent, caring, misunderstood child at heart.

  • Joeradish

    I like the Newsweek photo. I perceive an unbroken spirit, relatively unmasked. It does not make me forget the Skeletor mask of Jackson’s final years. He was a good looking kid, with a pleasing voice, who mastered the performance of pop songs early. I can easily mark some of my life’s stepping stones by his hits.
    This is what our infantile culture does to its icons. The boy’s features are so African (hooded eyes, full lips, prominent nose, Afro, light walnut skin). The damaged final man seemed to have attempted to vanquish his blackness (No eyelids, permanently pursed thin lips, almost no nose, bone colored skin). He reminded me of Lon Cheney’s invisible man under wraps.
    It all makes me think of our collective greed (and we are all greedy)and it’s like like we sucked the life out of him. I happened across a video a couple of days ago showing Jackson’s physical transformation by morphing one face in to the next. I wish I had saved the link because it was creepy and fascinating.
    Anyway, this is what this post is bringing up for me. Thanks for providing such great thought grabbers for my greedy mind.

  • cenoxo

    The media is the message…
    Morphing Michael Jackson
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDW1TVH78BU

  • felecia

    i see the picture and think that if the world ever produces anyone nearly as talented as that little boy..how bout we don’t call him ugly when he goes through puberty. and not work him like he is an adult and just a meal ticket. i hope that if we take care of him/her and treasure the gift. i know that i’m being a sap about mike but i loved him and always saw that little boy.

  • Jason

    The pressure this young boy must have already been feeling when this shot was taken. It’s common for eight year olds to dream of becoming a superstar whether it be in entertainment, sport or heroic fireman; we all day dreamed. However to be on your way there and bringing your entire family along at 8? Michael became a major child celebrity during a sexual revolution, war and one of the greatest generations of American music; this certainly seems like a tough row to hoe. Only in America!

  • Quiet1

    Interesting – that is not the cover that appeared in my mailbox this afternoon. I was expecting an MJ cover on everything this week but it was actually a picture of a beach setting across the bindings of books with the headline “WHAT TO READ NOW.” I guess they thought a cover story on summer reading would not sell as well at the check out counter.

  • Apple

    I see in that picture the eyes of someone much much older than Michael’s young face portrays.

  • http://imtalkinghere.typepad.com Victoria

    My personal reaction to the image: I don’t feel at ease with this picture. It doesn’t wipe away all the sickness, or let me off the hook. Rather, it seems respectful and deeply poignant – a soulful reminder of natural beauty, human potential…and how far we can all travel from that.
    Michael Jackson, yes. But also the child in all of us.

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