michael jackson again - wtf, Q?
i'm surprised by how much michael jackson's death has really saddened me. i liked some of his songs, but the constant hype was very off-putting, and personally i thought he was a bit of a creep. but the more i think about it, the more i have to admit that a part of me must recognize his obvious struggles with mental health were not a million miles away from my own experience. i'm not a multi-milionaire; i'm not ridiculously famous (thank god); and prepubescent kids annoy the living hell out of me...but still. i think a large part of the reason why i've been thinking about this so much is a sad sense of, 'there but for the grace of god.'
i have to admit, the first thing i thought when i saw the report of michael jackson's death was, 'this is a hoax, right? did i click on the onion webpage by mistake?' but the second thing was, 'karen carpenter syndrome?' and last night, a doctor interviewed by anne curry was the first to suggest anorexia as a possible cause of jackson's heart failure. i really wouldn't be surprised...as he got older, jackson looked more and more like a good stiff breeze would simply blow him away. but the other possible cause at the back of my mind, which the media have been less ready to ponder, was suicide. yes, it seems unlikely, given that he was about to embark on a comeback tour. but whether he deliberately took an overdose of some kind, or whether he subconsciously starved himself to death, i think it's clear that some very real mental illness was undoubtedly a factor in his death.
no one can deny that the man had major issues. the plastic surgery alone is a pretty clear sign that he felt unendurably ugly on the inside...that something about him needed 'fixing'. which leads me to wonder exactly what it was about himself that he was trying to change.
from what he's said in various interviews, it seems there were two main negative influences in jackson's life: his father and his religion (the jackson family were jehovah's witnesses). aside from being allegedly physically abusive, joe jackson reportedly nicknamed his son 'big nose' from an early age...and, well, we all know how that little jibe panned out. i guess it just goes to show how damaging a parent's petty jealousy can be to a child.
as for the religion, last night i re-read the infamous joke about jackson being born a black man and dying a white woman. but for the first time, i really thought about it...and damned if jackson doesn't tick off several of the boxes for the stereotype of a pre-operative transgender male: unusually soft spoken; passive personality; etc etc etc. now, if he really did self-identify as female, that would certainly explain the overwhelming aura of asexuality he projected: transgender folks are repulsed by their own bodies (especially their genitalia), which they view as a wrongful prison they've been trapped inside. and if jackson really did have a gender identity crisis, then there's certainly no shame in that...unless, of course, you happen to belong to a religion with unusually strict ideas regarding your choices where your own sexuality is concerned.
i do feel horrible for him if that was really the case. i've had two close friends who were transgender, and their descriptions of feeling constantly 'wrong' are the kind of hell i wouldn't wish on anyone. on the other hand, i think i find the idea of him being transgender much easier to stomach than his being a pedophile (and no, the two are not mutually exclusive, i know)...because selfishly, i'd feel much less uncomfortable having this level of unexpected compassion for a transsexual instead of a child molester.
however much i want to condemn him for his (alleged) criminal behavior, though, it's really hard not to feel sorry for him as a kid. he was clearly an abused child, and the seeds of all adult disfunction are planted very early in childhood - to quote kathy lee gifford (yes, god help me, i'm quoting kathy lee), psychiatrists all tell us that whatever we don't get as children, we spend the rest of our lives looking for. and with jackson, that 'something' was his entire childhood. so i think that's why his death has affected me more deeply than i'd like to admit...much more than the 'king of pop' or the ghastly spectre jackson became in his later years, i'm mourning the loss of a bright, gifted child who deserved a much better life than the one he made for himself.
Q