The First Book of Michael (3 page)

There was always such contradiction in the backlash against Michael’s change in skin colour. Yet, as a statement from the Vatican upon his death put it, his “surgeries elicited a personal rather than ethnic redefinition.” After all, Michael ultimately became of almost translucent - rather than of white Caucasian - appearance: a translucence that transcended barriers imposed by racial identity.

The philosophies of Nelson Mandela and Michael can be our global antidote to cynicism. They taught us that there is no weapon as abundant or as robust as love, and that the good fight is worth fighting for. They taught us all to be brothers in arms.

***

The turbulence and brutality of the world and its press empires that were prejudiced against Michael manifested in his creating his home of Neverland. It is where he sought refuge. Though this is not to say that Michael shied away from conflict. On the contrary, Michael possessed an admirable courage to confront, yet preferring to do so using peaceful means. Indeed, any examples of Michael’s arrogance were always borne of a reaction to his being treated unjustly: the
HIStory
statue that was floated down the Thames; the persistence in surrounding himself with children; the ever-increasing size of his white socks. Cornered animals seek to make themselves appear bigger.

In response to the attempt to have his freedom taken from him, Michael chose the recently Communist countries of Eastern Europe as a foundation for the
HIStory
campaign. He opted to promote freedom through the portrayal of his stark individualism, in countries entrenched in the active homogenisation of its people by their governments. With the irony being Michael’s demeanour expressing a homogenisation of so many cultural differences: an embodiment of universality traversing not only the boundaries of race and gender, but also of age.

Michael implored us to "harmonise all around the world". His philosophy for a successful society appeared to be one that is celebratory of each person's individuality, with the primary motivation of each individual being the potentiation of their fellow human being through means of reciprocated assistance, and the acceptance of the unbridled freedom of each individual to achieve this.

That - in the mirror of each individual, society finds its reflection.

***

To say Michael was a liberal is perhaps an obvious statement. Yet as with most people, there existed elements of his persona which didn’t comfortably fit within this moniker. One particular area in which Michael wouldn’t typically be identified as a ‘liberal’ is in the issue of foetal abortion, something he was quite clearly opposed to in his song ‘Abortion Papers’, in which he sings, “Those abortion papers / Signed in your name against the word of God / Think about life / I’d like to have my child”.

Although – conversely - in the
Thriller
track ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’’, Michael unapologetically states, “Don’t have a baby, if you can’t feed your baby”. Perhaps Michael was liberal to the militant point of acknowledging the right to freedom for foetuses, as opposed to the freedom of the mother and father that conceived them. This would make sense, considering his adoration of children and ideology of fulfilling potential.

During the eighties and early nineties, Michael was twice entertained at the White House by the
Republican Party
(though this may well have been mere opportunism by the presidents in question: they had the chance to meet Michael - and they took it). However, although content to be entertained by the Republicans for reasons of self-promotion, it was the Democrats for whom Michael opted to actively entertain and raise funds for.

And Michael’s private behaviour was certainly not conducive with the eighties mantra of greed and excess, what with his record-breaking philanthropic ventures and penchant for purchasing from charity shops. This was a trait that had been instilled in him since his poverty-stricken childhood, and one of the many behaviours inherited from his stoic but gentle mother, Katherine. As part of the riposte to the public relations catastrophe that was the Martin Bashir interview,
Living With Michael Jackson
, Michael released his
Private Home Movies
documentary. It was a collection of candid footage of him over the years. One segment shows a
Thriller
-era Michael being filmed in a car on the way to Alabama with his brothers, in which, after his suggestion that they pay a visit to the
Salvation Army
, Michael is endearingly forced to defend his predilection for a bargain, arguing,

“…don’t laugh. You find good stuff… That other places would sell real expensive… I’m tellin’ ya… You gonna be hittin’ them soon when the depression hits ya.”

Michael’s contemporaneous musical peer, Prince - on the other hand - was a screaming true blue, as evidenced on his
Around The World In A Day
album, on which he sings, “Whoever said that elephants were stronger than mules?” I like to imagine an agenda at one of the two great pop artists’ many clandestine meetings (one of these occasions at least occurring over a game of Ping-Pong), involving a conversation in which they decided to separate the two political polarities of the time – the communist and the capitalist – and schemed to work in cahoots in promulgating a message of universal peace. After all, there was a mutual admiration between them, with both paying tribute to each other’s work: Prince’s covers of ‘Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough’ (original percussion on the record courtesy of longtime Prince collaborator, Sheila E) and ‘Shake Your Body (Down To The Ground)’ occasionally feature in his concert set-lists; whilst Michael paid homage to Prince by using his music in the band intermission on the
Bad
tour, as well as incorporating the refrain “Let’s work!” - from Prince’s track of the same name - into some live versions of the ‘Billie Jean’ dance breakdown. In
Moonwalker
, there is a joke about Michael’s chimpanzee Bubbles choosing to wear a Prince T-shirt.

Michael’s response to the 1993 allegations was a lesson in socialist propaganda: the robot from
Moonwalker
, fresh from annihilating hundreds of faceless clones, mutated into the Stalin-esque
HIStory
statue; the teaser for the associated album was a direct lift of Hitler’s
Triumph Of The Will
; the ‘Earth Song’ video was clearly influenced by the 1972 Soviet propaganda video,
Ave Maria
; the spoken outro to ‘Stranger In Moscow’ translates as “Why have you come from the West? Confess! To steal the great achievements of the people, the accomplishments of the workers.”

Michael had much more to do with the fall of the Berlin wall than anyone had ever thought. The Stasi were so worried about his influence that they ran a covert operation on him during his visit. Notes in a file created by the East German secret police describe how Michael had been watched as he toured Berlin. The Stasi spied on his visit to the Berlin East / West border checkpoint, observing that:

“three cars pulled up to the border crossing, with many unknown male and female people. Among the people was the USA rock singer Michael Jackson. Accompanying him at all times was a female person, about 25 years old, 165 centimetres tall, with a slim build."

Namely, Karen Faye.

The Stasi were concerned that the
Bad
tour concert Michael gave in Berlin in June of 1988 – a little over a year before the wall fell - would act as a catalyst for an already increasing level of disestablishment behaviour. The secret police worried that the "youths will do anything they can to experience this concert, in the area around the Brandenburg Gate… youths are planning to provoke a confrontation with police." The amount of foreign media that would be present for the concert flagged the situation up as a potential national security threat.

It was common knowledge that Michael was performing in front of the Reichstag that evening, a mere few hundred metres from where the crowd had assembled. Thousands of young people congregated to hear him. Violent clashes between East German youths and police ensued.

The
HIStory
tour performance of ‘Black or White’ celebrates the fall of the wall, its climax featuring the destruction and collapse of a symbolic wall of speakers. ‘Earth Song’ on the same tour incorporates a tank rolling onto the stage at its conclusion. The significance of these visual symbols for the audiences in Eastern Europe, considering the contemporaneous events of that region, cannot be understated.

***

And lest we forget the controversy surrounding ‘They Don’t Care About Us’.

Michael’s use of the words ‘Jew’ and ‘Kike’ in ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ resulted in his being forced by Sony Music to mask the offending terms. Which he did by utilising what was tantamount to a sonic scribbling out. And in the very act of making these alterations so obvious, he managed to explicitly express his disgust at the enforced censorship. Footage shot during the recording of ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ shows a silhouetted Michael angrily throwing equipment around a studio. Ensuing variations of the track – released on later compilations – replaced the ‘trashing’ sound Michael had cut over the censored words, with an equally auditory jarring repetition of the lyrically arrhythmic word from the first part of the line – “Kick me,
kick
me / Don’t you black or
white
me.” The song is thus forever both scarred and sanctified by this intentional lack of proper rectification. Or – to paraphrase Michael’s adlib at the denouement of said track – “it’s there to remind us.”

During the Diane Sawyer interview that Michael organised in order to promote the
HIStory
album, the “vainglorious”
HIStory
short film was shown. It is a work that irrefutably borrows heavily from the Nazi propaganda piece,
Triumph of the Will
. As part of this interview, Michael defends his use of the terms ‘Jew’ and ‘Kike’ in ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ with the retort that he was merely utilising the imagery to illustrate the extent to which he himself had become a victim. As in, how Jewish people were victims when subjugated by the atrocities meted out upon them during the Holocaust. Indeed, the word ‘Kike’ is derived from the Hebrew word for ‘circle’ – a derisory term given to Jewish immigrants as a result of their being required to draw a circle on themselves instead of a cross, upon their arrival in America after fleeing World War II atrocities.

And – certainly – Michael had also been marked and victimised.

In conversation with Rabbi Schmuley Boteach, Michael argued,

“Well I'd say, they don't care about us, those who are treated unjustly, those who have been bastardised, being called '"nigger", being called the word that they misunderstood me for when I said those who say "kike" to people. When I was a little kid, Jews, we had Jewish lawyers and Jewish accountants and they slept in my bed next to me and they would call each other "kike". I said "What is that?' and they said, "That's the bad word for Jews. For blacks they say 'nigger'. I said "Ohhh." So I always knew when people have been bastardised, they've been called 'nigger', they've been called "kike". That's what I am saying and they used it. They took it all wrong. I would never… you know?”

And in his official statement rebuffing the allegations, said,

“The song, in fact, is about the pain of prejudice and hate, and is a way to draw attention to social and political problems. I am the voice of the accused and the attacked. I am the voice of everyone. I am the skinhead, I am the Jew, I am the Black man, I am the White man. I am not the one who was attacking… I am angry and outraged that I could be so misinterpreted.”

Yet, insofar as far as being “a victim” is concerned, one cannot ignore Michael’s stance on the criminal violence flaunted by the nuclear power state of Israel upon the displaced Palestinian people. A situation Michael laments in another
HIStory
track, ‘Earth Song’, with the words: “What about the Holy Land? / Torn apart by creed” and even more explicitly in his lyric: “God’s a place for you / Oh, Palestine / I believe in you / Oh, Palestine, I will die for you”.

Michael liked to highlight social injustice – wherever it was, and in whatever form it took. He shone the spotlight on instances of oppression. In fact, almost two decades prior to the furore forged by the deaths and social disharmony resultant of Brazil’s efforts to host the 2014
FIFA World Cup
, Michael had already strived to focus the world’s attention on the injustice of the wealth divide there, by means of the ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ short film (‘Brazil Version’ – in which he performs both the Black Panther salute and the Nazi goose step, and whilst singing the words "The government don't wanna see", strikes a Nazi-salute timed to coincide with the utterance of the word 'government'). Brazil’s economic disparity is starkly illustrated in the opening sequence of the short film, as the statue of the Vatican-installed
Christ the Redeemer
pans into view. Omniscient and omnipotent, it towers dominantly over the ramshackle slums that cower in its shadow, as a Portuguese voice speaking over the footage implores, “Michael, eles nao ligam pra gente” (“Michael, they don’t care about people”).