Michael Jackson: sympathy for the devil, but not the celeb

Michael Jackson makes me think of Elvis and Brando. These are people who reached the top of their professions in the “entertainment” business, but somehow failed in being people.

They strike me as solipsistic in their lives, without true friends and healthy relationships. A solipsism of their own choosing, enabled by the power of their wealth (like Howard Hughes, another success who became a bizarro man). This solipsism starts with body issues; they all ended up looking like freakish, dementoid versions of themselves.

Brando famously despised his profession of acting, even though he was probably the greatest actor who ever lived – or the one who embodied the most charisma, “burning up the screen” like no one else. But he bought himself an island and ate himself into one, and though interested in social issues, squandered his talent. We have only four great film performances from him: Streetcar, Waterfront, Last Tango, Godfather. Perhaps that’s all an actor has to do, but wouldn’t it have been nice to have a full body of work? Or maybe we should be thankful that those four performances happened in a business that has everything to do with artistry and little to do with art. That he eschewed live theater after getting to Hollywood was both his loss and ours.

Elvis popularized a whole new genre of music, rock ‘n roll, and became its most prominent exponent, ruling until the group phenomenon of the Beatles and the Stones came along. Yet what he really wanted to be was a serious actor, for which he had the raw talent. But his manager and Hollywood kept him from it. He stood in his own way, too, because it never occurred to him, obedient Southern boy that he was (and lost without his Mom), that he was in charge of his own destiny, and had the power to organize his life his way. He ended a tragic captive of Vegas and sycophantic hangers-on, and OD’d as a fat freak on the toilet, working on his last pathetic crap.

Now here we have the King of Pop, a man so at loggerheads with himself that he has messed with his looks until he doesn’t look human anymore. Why has he stopped mucking about with his appearance? Perhaps because his face would fall apart if it went under the knife again. There ain't no more screws to keep Frankenstein's features in one piece.

How does the public spectacle add to the burden these talents bear? One wonders. The life we see is not the life they live. We don’t see their pain, for example. They have it in spades, yet the spectacle of celebrity allows no room in our hearts for it. We never knew how Elvis suffered because he didn’t get the chance to fulfill his ambition of being a great actor. We didn’t see what drove Brando to despise his own profession. We’ve never sympathized with the anxiety that has driven MJ to disrupt his very identity. If he were actually "Bad," he might get some street cred from us. He's good for a joke (“only in America could a poor young black man grow up to be a white woman”), but his phenomenon doesn’t appear to beg our understanding. We simply look on in shock, awe and giggles. Wacko Jacko. Our journalists, the mediators of our knowledge, are not novelists; they are concerned with surface and thrills: the spectacle, not the understanding of it.

If we were half human, we might be interested in what our celebs go through. But we're not. That’s why Paris Hilton is the perfect celeb. Nothing to understand there, besides enjoying that she’s pretty, spoiled, wild and rich: the perfect wish fulfillment for people struggling to pay the rent and keep their heads above water. She's great because she doesn’t ask for sympathy. Her life says "fuck you" to us as loudly as we say "you go girl" to her. If we sympathize with a celeb, it has to be something easy and not too deep: going along with Oprah on her up-and-down weight journey.

Like Elvis and Brando, fame has not brought MJ fulfillment. How much of it is his flaw, and how much of it is ours? We appear to think that fame brings self-esteem; clearly it does not. James Joyce wrote: “Ireland is a sow that feeds on its own offal.” Is America a sow that feeds on its own offal? Our definition of the ideal existence – celebrity (call it the new American Dream) – does not appear to be a satisfactory light at the end of the tunnel of the pursuit of happiness. At the end of the U.S. rainbow lurks a bucket of your own shit. Perhaps the pursuit of happiness is not an ideal path either? If people like MJ are devoured by the pig of stardom, why do we aspire to it? Maybe we don’t really: how many of us would be willing to do the hard work and take their chances? We want the glitter of gain, not its pain. Neither do we want to hear about it. Success shouldn't be paid for.

There is something at fault with how we define success in life, if those that achieve it publicly aren’t satisfied with what they find there. There is something at fault with how we grow people if, when many of them get to their success, they build themselves shangrilas of solipsism like Neverland and live a life of almost grim self-indulgence. Is this their only defense against a life dedicated to the demands of strangers?

Perhaps rappers whose lives reach their fulfillment in the flash and flaunt of bling-bling are the only Americans who are really honest, balanced and authentic Americans. Screw any other kind of self-fulfillment: it’s all about gold and diamonds and big cars and houses and easy women.

What does it say about us if that’s what it’s all about? It’s the dream of the peasant. Perhaps when we left our peasant existence in Europe and elsewhere, that’s all we ever wanted. If you achieve your peasant success and enjoy it, we’ll enjoy you enjoying it. And if you don’t, don’t expect us to sympathize: not when you’ve got what we want.

What we've lost in all this is any semblance of nobility in public life. Maybe we have it in our private lives, but it does not exist in the circus that our media map out for us -- unless it's in some bathetic report on the sacrifice of our troops in Iraq (where the media and the army demand that the real death of Pat Tillman be ennobled in a lie).

Who today is worth admiring? Dr. King was probably the last public American worthy of admiration, and he bought a bullet for his work. Our politicians stand bent over, anuses athwart and high in the air, ready for special interests and monied lobbies to bang away at their innards. What is there, to take another example, to admire in Bill Gates (except that he got such a bad name for being an unfair competitor that he now, thankfully, tries to earn a good name back with philanthropy)?

Oh, for the advent of a noble American! Maybe Barack Obama will be it. At least he can write his own speeches, unlike most of our public speakers, who are so unadmirable that they need house Cyranos to put words in their mouths, because they don't have any. If Dickens or Austen or Thackeray were alive today, I think they'd be throwing up night and day, and then use their pens to put the boot in on this whole celebrity-driven fuck-up we still have the bluster to call a nation.