The Gay Man in the Mirror: How Homophobia Cursed and helped to Kill Michael Jackson
Poor once beautiful Michael Jackson, It's fairly certan that many of us will never be able to adaquately say goodbye to him.
Curating the Maysles Cinema Homo-Harlem Film Festival. has had as great an effect on me as it seems to be having on our appreciative audiences.
"I didn't realize Audre Lourde was gay!"exclaimed one young lesbian at the second day's screening. After the opening, a gay student had said the exact same thing about Billy Strayhorn who wrote the immortal tune Take the A Train. Initially of course, believing the historian's most significant lesson to be learned through opportunities for people to go back into the past to discover themselves , this was just the reaction I'd been seeking. Only after a few days, thinking how most straight young people know even less about gay history than the gay ones who hadn't known about Lourde and Strayhorn, I started to yearn for something more ambitious: I wanted more straight people to become familiar with the high-achievement of lgbt historical Harlemites as well.
Lets face it , if you are from any marginalized group, even now, even with Barack Obama, where are the heroic and affirming references to offer us encouragement? When Michael Jackson and I were growing up, wow were things worse. Raised on unvaried TV offerings of Dennis the Menace, Opie
and Leave it to Beaver, save for one pitiful little black boy on Julia, without a father or a big house , it was easy to become confused about your 'true identity', to be unwittingly seduced into wishing you could become someone else.
So, at the risk of badly discrediting myself, falling headlong into one of the historian's most fatal pitfalls, I'm going to risk saying anyhow that I feel as if pop-wizard Michael Jackson's 'weird' life and tragic untimely death, both, resulted, at least in part , from puritanical American homophobia. How am I qualified to analyze Jackson's, or anyone else's, inner motivations? Naturally, I'm not. But this doesn't stop me from, perhaps rather rashly, risking the opinion that Michael Jackson was essentially homosexual. 
My supposition is that he was born black and gay into a family who were Jehovah Witnesses'. Just imagine all the nearly impossible to sustain conservative values this repressive faith entails. Privy to the incessant hyper-masculine sexual exuberance of his brothers, he also had knowledge of the numerous related
flagrant and hypocritical infidelities of their father. Is it any wonder Then that Jackson might have responded by postponing adulthood and grown-up 'normal' sexual expression altogether, preferring instead a Peter Pan existence where sex-play was just that; innocent boyish fun without any serious complications, without burdensome or dreary consequences?
Many fans would prefer an easier to take, less queasy making assessment. 'Michael,' they insist, as if speaking of their most longstanding friend, 'was just not really into sex, not with anybody, he was just
asexual' they say. But, I at least can't buy this reasoning. Even as a kid, and all throughout his brilliant career, what was it that beguiled us so about his artistry? It was his sexy, tuneful, hopeful and heartfelt entreatments to love and be loved. His passion, anxiety or yearning in performance, is a poignant enunciation of all our mixed emotions too. Real and palpable, even across the airways, these feelings are hardly liable to of been successfully sublimated in mere song and dance.
Even though every indicator suggested Jackson 'was not the marrying kind,' he entered into, not one, but two old-fashioned 'gay marriages', replete with children, reportedly conceived in the conventional way. So insidious and threatening was his fear of family and fans imagining that he was gay, that Jackson helped to perpetuate the very stigma that would curse his chances of enjoying real happiness. It's a dreadful thing , these supposedly religious derived attitudes, that make most gays and blacks have to eventually come to terms with self-loathing. How dire are the unintended consequences of bigotry whatever the source. Despising who you are is a disease that has impacted many others besides Michael Jackson. It's all bound up in the same issue of avoidance and intolerance that have helped to doom all African Americans, irrespective of sexuality, to innumerable unwarranted stresses and the fastest growing incidence of AIDS in the nation.
Follow Michael Henry Adams on Twitter: www.twitter.com/harlemhellion
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Thank you for theorizing about this topic. You write about, in a non-tabloid way, a very important, valid theory. Not enough has been written about homophobia in African-American communities. Michael Jackson made identity differences (too many to list) real, and I believe that's one reason there's so much agony in much of his music. Not just the pain of being misunderstood, but of getting negative attention for innate qualities that make one stand out. Homophobia in African-American communities is a particular, very disturbing type of prejudice that contributes to elaborate, historically understandable (but regrettable, of course) closeting. I struggle in my relationships with very wonderful but also homophobic black friends (I'm white and thinking, if I'm uncomfortable with not talking openly about my feelings--coming from a liberal family with openly gay relatives--it must be next to impossible for a gay or bisexual person born into a family where homosexuality is completely against everything they believe in). This intolerance for difference is scary and can result in horrifying consequences that prevent people from achieving their full potential. I hope we can learn from this example, and make the world a better place as a result. I greatly appreciate your writing about this issue and hope you will continue to do so.
Oh I strongly support this analysis. The problem for celebs in the closet has always been the fear that coming out would end their careers. In the end, Jackson's personal life in the tabloids did him in instead.
I'm beginning to think that the term gay is often a flag of convenience that is used to describe an array of different types of way in which a human's sexuality is wired. I look forward to the time when people realise that that label is too monolithic. In the meantime people will try to profit from the definition.
To be marginalized, black, brown, gay or whatever, means that very often to pinpoint or specify some critical aspect of our history can be most difficult. When someone, such as a gay person, is desperately working to obscure their true identity, such efforts are harder still. So , how do you learn, how do you know?
You first look at your own self-loathing and related questionable responses. Biographies, authorized, unauthorized, articles, blogs, gossip columns all contribute to how we read people. But juxtaposing them with oneself, putting someone only viewable only from afar alongside what one knows of friends, acquaintances and even dead historical figures, invariably means more. Just like certain Supreme Court Justices, whether out of self-hatred or self-love, one is apt to ere in accessing others according to a kind of recognition. All this and the Muscles song Jackson wrote convinces me at least.
"It's a dreadful thing , these supposedly religious derived attitudes, that make most gays and blacks have to eventually come to terms with self-loathing. How dire are the unintended consequences of bigotry whatever the source. Despising who you are is a disease that has impacted many others besides Michael Jackson. It's all bound up in the same issue of avoidance and intolerance that have helped to doom all African Americans, irrespective of sexuality, to innumerable unwarranted stresses and the fastest growing incidence of AIDS in the nation."
Where is your supporting data?
And where is your clarification? Supporting data for what? Numerous issues are refered to in the above statement. Which are you questioning - and why? You're surely not questioning the entire para? If so, you should state your grounds for this.
Where is any data? Why do I need grounds? I am certainly questioning the entire paragraph.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196009/Im-better-dead-Im-How-Michael-Jackson-predicted-death-months-ago.html
I am referring to data related to a causal relationship between religion, self-loathing, bigotry, AA and AIDs.
The Night MJ died, I watched "Rock With You" on YouTube several times. What I saw over and over was such a beautiful performer, so full of life and happiness, who just happened to be gay. When I saw him in that video, it was just so clear who he was....a gay performer who was electrifying to watch. I asked my friend who was sitting with me: "Why can't people just be ok with gay?" I watched in sadness over and over as his ghost sang to me and I still wonder why no one would just let him be gay, himself included.
Folks, GAY IS OK!! It's o-freakin'-k.
""Just imagine all the nearly impossible to sustain conservative values this repressive faith entails. ""
This one statement alone ruins your entire piece. A good journalist would conduct full research.....that statement couldn't be farther from the truth. You would know that though with a little digging, instead of going with an opinion often slanted by the uninformed.
Michael did live a tortured life, and it's very sad....he is no longer living in pain. His music will stand for years and years, he was a true talent.
There's an article in the Daily Mail today that claims Michael was gay and had relationships with men. I wonder if in his death we'll find out more about him through the men he dated. He was born in 1958 and he was gay and black and look at all he accomplished. Pretty amazing. I just wish he could have loved himself. Why didn't he just come out!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196009/Im-better-dead-Im-How-Michael-Jackson-predicted-death-months-ago.html
The closet is a lonely, sad, miserable place.
"Even though every indicator suggested Jackson 'was not the marrying kind,' he entered into, not one, but two old-fashioned 'gay marriages', replete with children, reportedly conceived in the conventional way."
Actually, the major indicators were absent:
1. Interest in physically mature or near mature (16-17 year old) men.
2. Intimacy with mature or near mature men.
3. Anything that suggested interest or intimacy in these men.
Instead, we have young children and two women. That does not cover every indicator to me.
1.interest in fashion,
2.a sad determination to manipulate and ''control his physical presentation,
3. an apparent utter disinterest in women,
4. except as face-saving accessories an mothers to white children,
5. keen interest in boys as a reflection of his ideal arrested self-image?---I------- have more, do I win?
Ian Halperin, film maker spent 5 years with Michael Jackson:
"It is clear to me that Michael was homosexual and that his taste was for young men, albeit not as young as Jordan Chandler or Gavin Arvizo. In the course of my investigations, I spoke to two of his gay lovers, one a Hollywood waiter, the other an aspiring actor. The waiter had remained friends, perhaps more, with the singer until his death last week. He had served Jackson at a restaurant, Jackson made his interest plain and the two slept together the following night. According to the waiter, Jackson fell in love.
...He told me they had spent nearly every night together during their affair – an easy claim to make, you might think. But this lover produced corroboration in the form of photographs of the two of them together, and a witness.
Other witnesses speak of strings of young men visiting his house at all hours, even in the period of his decline. Some stayed overnight.
When Jackson lived in Las Vegas, one of his closest aides told how he would sneak off to a ‘grungy, rat-infested’ motel – often dressed as a woman to disguise his identity – to meet a male construction worker he had fallen in love with."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196009/Im-better-dead-Im-How-Michael-Jackson-predicted-death-months-ago.html
Actually, I am somewhat of the opinion that there is such a thing as an asexual orientation, which is not to say completely sexless. When you speak of being able to channel sexual energy into his work, I think that is part of it. Some people don't need to be having sex all the time, and there are other means of using the energy, whether it be through artistic expression, or even spiritual ways. And, yes, a little self-servicing from time to time.
At any rate, it would still be true that his sexuality then would not be what is commonly accepted in society.
Recent research suggests around 1% of the population has no sex drive.
"Asexual", which is the word people keep using for this, really isn't the correct word. Something that is asexual sexually reproduces by itself. Asexuality is not the lack of sexuality. Hopefully someone will coin the correct term.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexuality
perhaps you are correct but it does not seem to square with his music's intensity to me
The impact of repressive institutional religion is undoubtedly one of the oppressive forces with which Jackson and so many others struggled. That in itself is another great tragedy, since it so often leads to stigmatisation and rejection of true human spirituality and faith: faith in a unifying, progressive and rational power in the cosmos which, for me, is of the essence of our humanity. Call it belief in God, for want of a better word, call it what you will, I am saddened that all spirituality and faith are so often identified with oppressive institutionalised religions.
Hardly all, but as one observes and more more, perhaps most? It often seems most expressions of faith involve would-be paragons demanding to control the actions of others, while as recent events and Jackson's sad life show, what difficulty most of us have directing even our own actions?
I enjoyed your thoughtful commentary.
Thanks.
"It's a dreadful thing , these supposedly religious derived attitudes, that make most gays and blacks have to eventually come to terms with self-loathing. How dire are the unintended consequences of bigotry whatever the source. Despising who you are is a disease that has impacted many others besides Michael Jackson. It's all bound up in the same issue of avoidance and intolerance that have helped to doom all African Americans, irrespective of sexuality, to innumerable unwarranted stresses and the fastest growing incidence of AIDS in the nation."
Thank you for this beautifully written and insightful article about Michael Jackson, Michael Henry. I totally agree with your analysis. To me, Michael Jackson's great creative genius was charged with, and inseparable from, the pain of the socio-repressive forces which buffeted and caged his life and sexuality and evoked his tragic-heroic struggle with these. So much of his music and dance was an expression of, and creatively energised by, the dialectic of that oppression and pain. Jackson's work was so powerfully evocative of his struggle with the energising, yet ultimately crushing, impact of oppression on his life and spirit. The tragedy of Michael Jackson was perhaps that his struggle resolved itself in accommodation with repression. As a result, as you rightly state, he did indeed help "to perpetuate the very stigma that would curse his chances of enjoying real happiness."
Amen!
His was a tragic life. I am sure there is some truth to your suppositions, that the King of Pop did suffer from internalized homophobia. His addiction to plastic surgery, his clinging to childhood fantasy, were symptoms of someone deeply unhappy with himself.
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