The Three Stations of the Cross in Michael Jackson's Calvary
First station of the cross: things. The holy horror of things. An entire apparatus of masks, breastplates, umbrellas, nomadic objects, an entire bubble at once suffocating and over-oxygenated, cloistered and overexposed, operating like a greenhouse and preserving him from the great contamination of things. Not only, as has been said, was it viruses, germs, and bacteria. But life itself as a germ. The living as a bacterium. Matter, objects, and the very air he breathed as soon as he ventured beyond his dear Neverland became a source of infection, pestilence, a macabre obsession -- a school for cadavers. The dandies were like that. I mean the great dandies. The founders of the tradition. Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly. Beau Brummel. Wilde and his Dorian Gray. Red heels to dance on top of a world of vapors and humors. Makeup and artifices to escape the De Profudis of a definitively parasitic abyss. Not to mention Baudelaire who based the principle of his aesthetic, his ethics, and his politics on his disgust with nature and its monstrous proliferations. Michael Jackson was their heir. Michael Jackson, with his vinyl, latex, his mausoleum of a house, his prophylactic terrors and also of course his entrechats of a dance genius, besieged by light on every side, was the last of these great dandies. Add the morbid care that he apparently gave to his body. The hyperbaric chamber where he tirelessly prepared himself for some kind of funereal ritual. He didn't die from a drug overdose; he died because of his desire not only to invent a vaccine against life, but also to want to inoculate himself with it.
Second station: others. Others, truly. No longer things, but humans. Their contact. Their malignant and repugnant proximity. The very presence of others, of their odor, their instantly searching gaze, experienced as an offense, a threat, the source and cause of all violence -- and from which he was only protected by the smoked lenses of his glasses. Hell? Yes, hell. A Sartrean Jackson this time. Or even a Cathar. A Jackson not the least of whose paradoxes was the moment he wrote "We Are the World," the moment where, in other words, he popularizes what must be called the contemporary humanitarian while viewing humanity as a fiasco, men as cankers and their company as a necessary evil, an obligatory compromise, a degrading accommodation that an artist can only begrudgingly make. This reincarnation of Peter Pan sincerely thought, for example, that children were made without anyone touching. This incomplete adult feeds the mad dream -- and, in a certain way, fulfilled it -- of having his own sons without contact, and almost without a mother. This misanthrope, this mutant, was one of the last modern humans to believe -- and to live -- the ancient theorems of the inconvenience of being born. Generation, corruption... Desire without concupiscence... Which, at the very least, shows the absurdity of the witch trials conducted against him the last ten years of his life which were like an endless persecution. Michael Jackson did not want to be a child; he wanted to be a saint. Or an angel. And angels, as we know, don't have a sex. Or only have one in the imagination of the perverted who project onto them their own fantasies.
And finally: himself. His own body and his own face, seen as even greater threats, sites of every danger, the intimate yet merciless enemy that would take a lifetime to subdue or annihilate. There again the singular adventure of Michael Jackson is misread; the mad metamorphosis that he impressed on his face and the repeated plastic surgeries that he inflicted on himself over the course of his life are utterly misunderstood if reduced to a matter of pigmentology -- race, anti-race, self-hate, malaise, unease in his own skin, this reason or that. Look at his photos. Look at this epidermis essentially becoming whiter and whiter, almost like living limestone. Notice this nose reduced to almost nothing, these lips eaten away from the inside, these narrowed cheekbones like those of a Jivaro mask or a Giacometti rendering. Look closely at these dwindled features, this shrinking skin, these eyes that only seem to sit in his skull like a ring on a skeleton's finger. Consider this reduction -- a philosopher would say this epochè -- of a face reduced to its simplest inexpression, having become its own double. Isn't the face the very signature of the human? Its truth? The way that it exhibits and expresses itself? The sign of everyone's singularity, of their priceless uniqueness? Of course. It is always that, a face. And that's why this third chapter, this way of torturing, mortifying, profaning, and ultimately of erasing his own face should be read as the last station of a long and terrible Calvary. Because, having reached that stage, when you have decided to escape the reign of things, and to leave the ranks of humans, and then to become a human without a face, you don't really have too many choices left. Either you reinvent what is considered human, become truly trans-human, and create a genetically modified organism, a GMO. Or you die.
Translated from French by Sara Phenix.
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MJ had a bi-polar disease and drugs might have helped for awhile. But in the end he didn't get the help he really needed, and I believe that he wanted to die, and he knew that the drug he took in the end was a drug that could kill him. Sometimes people have self fulfilling death wishes that come true. He rolled the dice and it rolled against him.
What a vocabulary! I thought I had a pretty good command of the language, but this is over the top!
Very interesting article. Thank you!
I agree. The only thing that would have made this a better read is if it had been structured in stanzas.
I was prepared to be annoyed and possibly offended by this. But I must say that I am amazed and impressed. It explains Michael Jackson so succinctly. I am reminded of one of his performances where he is enfolded in the wings of an angel at the end.
I have always been very confused by Michael (never judgemental). Now I think I can understand some of who he might have been.
Or possibly Bernard, he may have been bamboozled into belief in a rendition of reality of his own devising. In much the same way as you, and I.
This is a very interesting analysis, Mr. Levy, and I believe you captured much of what was going on in MJ's life. His music will long be remembered, but I believe he lived what I would consider a tortured existence, and as you suggest in your final sentence, he only had so many options for dealing with reality.
michael died because he simply lost control of his own myth; it got to the point that even he couldn't live up to it.
There are 14 stages of the cross of Christ. The first three are:
l. Christ was convicted.
2. Christ took up the cross.
3. Christ fell for the first time.
Even if you covered all 14 I am not sure your premise would work.
I would think Dantes Inferno would have been a better reference in relation to your concept of his decent into hell.
Don't forget Station 15: Christ buys a chimp.
Thank you for the much needed injection of levity!
LOL
Yes. Thanks to his father. Have you read what Michael had to say about his father? Joe's pretty creepy. I really don't know why the Jackson family continues to let him speak. A mere couple of days after his son--his SON--died, the man is standing on a red carpet, adulating in the attention, talking about how chipper he and his family are...but of course they're all sad, too, at the same time. I mean, the greatest superstar in the world has died. Not "my son has died." Just: The Greatest Superstar (my life's greatest project, my meal ticket, my glory vicariously).
And then he goes on to promote an upcoming album.
This was beautifully written, and very sad. But you left off the fourth station of the cross: Joe. Of course Michael longed to be a child forever and ever, and did it in ways that made normal people uncomfortable. Of course Michael was weird and effed up. Duh.
I think that you have really gotten to the heart of the matter. Michael was his father's project and he may never have recognized the person at all. All of us parents have to seperate ourselves from our children when they reach the age of reason and let them either fail or succeed on their own, painful as that might be. His father was so determined that Michael would succeed that he destroyed the person inside. He saw Michael as a meal ticket for the entire family, himself included and it turned out to be just that.
I am reminded of a quote from Jim Morrison:
To transcend the body, we must immerse ourselves in it.
It is quite remarkable, that as much as he attempted to "erase" himself, his essense was still there.
I agree with your one point. I've always thought that MJ was trying to erase himself with surgery. His features were flattened, excised and bleached. And what was left was covered in a forest of black hair and black masks.
But after we are done analyizing Michael Jackson I'd like someone to do a psychological profile of the butchers who did that to his face. What kind of doctor agrees to mutilate another human being like that? Weren't they supposed to be the sane, responsible ones in this equation? If someone came up to me and offered me a million bucks to dowse them with gasoline and set them on fire, the answer is "No". Why couldn't these modern day Mengeles just say "no"?
Dr. Arnold Klein was the "dermatologist" corresponding with the years of skin lightning, the pimp of his receptionist and paid surrogate-Debbie Rowe, and...possibly did "minor facial surgeries" that required hospital anesthesia in his small office setting. He may also be the drug dealer, by the end of this sordid story.
Dr. Arnold Klein made money off of Michael's demons, insecurities and traumas - coming/going. Seems he had a FOR SALE sign up for just about anything.
Last but not least, he may be the natural father of three small children - who were and may remain commodities/currency beyond the origins of their births in the matter of Michael Jackson.
Mr. Levy can take up analysis of Dr. Klein next week.
all good points.. this is all I will say..
Michael Jackson was an Artist - and his entire life was his art.
The point is that he never really had a life apart from his art. Talent is not enough for a rewarding, fulfilled life. He was stripped of a real life by his father, by his doctors and by everyone in his entourage and even among his fans who encouraged his insecurities and his delusions. No human being is merely a vehicle for his or her talent; if a person tries to live only in terms of that, destruction comes soon. We need to take a good, close look at our celebrities and focus on them as human beings as well as artists.
He wasn't a celebrity - he was an Artist. Dig deeply - study - you'll get it.
The first day I wasn't so affected by Michael's passing, but as the days have passed, and having learned more about his last months, I've been surprised to find myself in a rather deep state of mourning. When an epochal figure like Michael dies, I think we not only mourn his loss, but our own inevitable loss as well. If we're at all sensitive, death shocks us with the transitoriness of this life. Nothing lasts. No one, no matter how invincible, outlasts Death.
When the carousel stopped turning, Michael got off and disappeared into the dust of the fairground while we kept riding.
Just one question - 'who's this Mike Jackson guy... is that the Oxyclean fella?
Few people have an abstract purpose for living. But our daily concerns and rituals, our social lives, fill that role superficially.
Woe is he who lacks both an abstract purpose and a consuming social life.
He had ISSUES. But he made great music. Once.
Great music? Has anyone heard of Elliot Carter.
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