On Friday August 28, 1987, London's Daily Telegraph revealed Katherine Jackson's heartbreak, as verified secondhand by "one friend." In Michael, his mother saw only a stranger, "a curious freak" who relished "another personality behind the new face." She was distraught when he disassociated himself from the Jehovah's Witness congregation that May. What little she knew of her son didn't match this man "sharing his home with a menagerie of animals." Now, Michael brandished his peculiarity. It was a conspicuous reminder of just how different he had always been. According to that family friend, the Jacksons had spoiled the "small and fragile" Michael, "but they never understood him." He showed only what he wanted to: "He never allowed them to enter his private world."
The speculation about Michael's off-camera life made it contradictory. How could Michael have one when his eccentricities and reclusiveness proved to be so marketable? When everything you do becomes newsworthy, what doesn't become part of the public record? What exactly would Michael do without us watching? Sister LaToya explains: "Even when Michael isn't working, he's working."
So all-encompassing was the anticipation for Bad, it seemed everyone was both on Michael's payroll and an eager spectator. Michael reports worked like promotion and revealed curious investment. For some media outlets, Michael's imminent unveiling pre-empted other breaking developments. For example, the cover of the August 23rd New York Daily News proclaims "EIGHT DAYS TO GO." Deemed less thrilling for New Yorkers that day was Governer Cuomo and Mayor Koch's announcement. A raucous 15-year debate ended with $810 million committed to rebuild the West Side Highway.
A new Michael album carried greater cultural weight. Michael made sure to that with Bad's two-year theatrical buildup. A series of odd public stunts put his known musical talent in balance with his increasingly enigmatic choices. Individuating himself in public like this was a canny tack, an unexpected gamble. Michael's maneuvering undermined the clean-cut accessibility of his most thrilling incarnation. It heralded the trend that New York Times music critic Jon Pareles saw dismantling Michael's own juggernaut wake: "After the big bang of the early 1980's, when music video and pop geared to the widest possible audience led to the world-beating sales of Michael Jackson's Thriller, the pop audience is splintering again." Some worried that Michael himself was cracking. They read Michael's newly-visible plastic surgeries and lighter skin as proof. He was dismantling the very image that already stood for a singular nostalgia, an unrepeatable moment in music history.
Those two years in the studio produced tension and disappointment. Michael wanted Bad to be "as perfect as is humanly possible." He couldn't do the duet he wanted with Barbra Streisand, and then Whitney Houston, for the album's first Number One single "I Just Can't Stop Loving You." Prince declined the invitation to duel with Michael on the title track. By June 1987, the pressure he felt was almost unbearable. According to Randy Taraborrelli, an associate of Michael's explained: "The closer he gets to completing it, the more terrified he becomes of that confrontation with the public."
On August 28, 2002, Michael met with publishers at the Westin in Stamford, Connecticut. The lighting in the penthouse is nightclub dim. Michael's trying to look scruffy, with facial hair punctuating the rhinestone studs on his slippers. He wears shades. To those gathered, Michael seemed disoriented. After they handed him their latest catalogues, he asked what company they represented. Michael wanted to write a real autobiography now. He wasn't ready when Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis "twisted his arm" to do Moonwalk. Michael cried softly when talking about his loneliness. No one understands he's just a regular guy. He was disappointed that Diane Sawyer let him down with the June 1995 PrimeTime Live interview. He confided that he barely keeps in touch with his family. He rolled his eyes at the idea of a Jacksons camping trip. Michael shared his recent horror walking the gaming floor with Chris Tucker in Las Vegas. "It was terrifying," Michael explained in his public whisper. "People had to touch me. They had to keep coming up to me and touching me." He sighed, "I am thoroughly bored with myself."
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YOUR GUIDE TO THE MICHAEL JACKSON™ WHO PRODUCES OUR KING OF POP
This Day in Michael starts August 24, 1993. Certain days of the King of Pop's life expand far past their 24-hour periods. From there, this blog catalogs 100 days in the public life of Michael Jackson. It orders those calendar days chronologically but draws from any of the years Michael has lived.
Read from where you will. This Day in Michael's introduction lies below these Michael snapshots.
reading This Day in Michael
“Michael understands drama. He really does. … He’s been onstage since he was five years old.”
—Quincy Jones
Everyone thinks they know too much about Michael Jackson. Few appreciate how he modeled that speculation. Particularly since Thriller’s heights, he has influenced the public conversation about him with coy determination. As if from his own sidelines, he customizes the commodity known everywhere on a first-name basis. Michael stays in print by offering himself as a palimpsest. He’s an Etch-A-Sketch with which we can draw our fantasies and nightmares.
Michael’s achievements stand. But his charm also takes form in planted lies followed by indignant denials and sly explanations. Not the first but a notorious example of that celebrity method came in 1986. The cover of The National Enquirer’s September 16th edition declared that Michael slept in a hyperbaric chamber. Publicly, he disparages the exposé while his mother concedes it “had been spread by Michael’s own people.” According to biographer Randy Taraborrelli, Michael was elated. “We can actually control the press,” Michael gushed to Taraborrelli. “I think this is an important breakthrough for us.” Whether Michael admitted his complicity matters less than its plausibility.
Questions about Michael’s intentions only complement the lurid, reported details of his life offstage but never quite off-camera. For two decades now, Michael has orchestrated a renegade reality show that appreciates the fitting fantasy that should be celebreality. Unlike the stars parading themselves on VH1, apart from whatever vehicle made them known, Michael has never seemed regular. Nor does he stray from the vision that makes him alluring. That's how he maintains the product Michael Jackson™—with his singular showmanship. He's not joking when he confides, “I'm not like other guys” near the beginning of the “Thriller” video. He's shown us that consistently with the usually-disregarded design of his tabloid broadcasting. With those “silly reports,” as his mother calls them, Michael Jackson™ instructs how he should be regarded. They reveal less than they offer instead a theory on the sensational spectacle of being known that this book respects. This Day in Michael will demonstrate it’s not what you read about Michael, but how.
<the introduction continues below>
About Me
- Seth Clark Silberman
- New York, NY, United States
- I organized the first academic conference on Michael Jackson at Yale University September 23-24, 2004.
Blog Archive
Fame makes being in two places at once possible. The more famous, the more that star can multiply—and the more some find him falling apart. If he endures a media life, he knows that those who claim his irrelevance contribute to his legacy. The shreds they make from him sparkle like they're twisting together in a kaleidoscope. Controlling the coloring of that sight doesn't matter as much as making it worth watching and revisiting. Shaping it into a good mystery with the help of conspicuous discrepancies doesn't detract from deserved celebrity. It proves its tenacity by inspiring debate and research. A public life becomes a library. A documented past thus accumulates clues. It signals an audience’s collective viewing. Their memories are more palpable than the star they assemble.
Re-reading Michael Jackson™ requires a calendar. With This Day in Michael, I chart a daily career that proves why Michael matters still. Each entry recalls moments from the many years of Michael’s public life. Taken together, they coalesce the monumental with the anecdotal. That story relies on assessing a record not always accompanied by music. It also doesn't presume to represent—or pity—Michael’s inner thoughts. I have no access to Michael, but I do Michael Jackson™. I follow how intertwined his attributed actions are with the publicity that shapes them. With This Day in Michael, I want to consider how a celebrity reared by cameras understands the power of suggestion.
Few stars of his stature talk to the public so infrequently. His television interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Diane Sawyer and Martin Bashir were more than newsworthy. They were rare opportunities to ogle at a notoriously shy and beguiling curiosity. Every videotaped gesture competed with whatever he said—or mostly didn’t—about a life so familiar it’s hardly his own. So often, the arrangement of Michael’s apparent biography suits the designs of others. As the precocious Jackson 5 lead or as the best-selling Thriller, he represents crossover dreams. As the acquitted expatriate appearing to be cross-dressed in Bahran and France, he’s a kind of Frankenstein. His plastic surgery confirms he’s a monstrous shell of his past peak. Against recent tales of Jesus Juice, his purported vitiligo pales by comparison. Or, he’s a hapless victim, an easy target. Whatever story appeals, Michael remains metaphoric.
<the introduction continues below>
where i'm quoted about Michael
- The Washington Post (June 14, 2005): "One Strange Case: The Real Michael Jackson Remains at Large" by Libby Copeland
- Newsday.com (May 23, 2005): "Simmering race issue" by Tina Susman
- The New York Blade (April 22, 2005): "Gonna be startin' somethin': How has Michael Jackson's trial affected public perceptions of gay men?"
- salon.com (March 26, 2005): "The man in America's mirror" by Farhad Manjoo
- ABCNews.com (February 23, 2005): "Why Are Michael Jackson's Fans So Devoted?" by Bryan Robinson
That symbolism pronounced itself where This Day in Michael opens: Tuesday, August 24, 1993. That night, Michael launched the second half of his Dangerous tour. Hours before he took the stage in Bangkok, Los Angeles' KNBC was scrambling to report veiled allegations. In L.A., it was August 23rd. The day before that, a freelance journalist tipped off the network about a police raid at Neverland ranch. No one knew why. Monday's investigations answered little. Seven minutes before the 4:00 p.m. broadcast, KNBC received finally a vague confirmation from the L.A.P.D. On air, the anchor relayed the statement: "We are conducting an investigation on Michael Jackson for a criminal offense." That incomplete revelation exposed what we suspected already. The news accumulated illicit details that fueled a worthy scandal. Television testimony sounded like innuendo. Michael seemed equally suspicious. Reporting on the police investigation became its own industry. Defending Michael rested in swaying the coverage. Reasonable doubt had to shape the press.
Now, his interest in young boys justifies the Michael we need. For some, Michael's purported predilections prove what his recent trial couldn't. Or, his company confirms a childlike innocence more alien than journalists find his face. The mêlée publicizing the 1993 case characterizes the contemporary Michael debate. With its suspicious multi-million dollar settlement and complicit cast, it also signals what Michael learned from P.T. Barnum. That impresario and architect of modern popular culture appreciated the value of controversy. Barnum stayed in newspapers with compelling hoaxes he called humbugs that didn't lose their allure once exposed. Deceit's manipulation fascinates as much as its spectacle. Michael attracts attention by never fully explaining events so conspicuous and consonant they seem staged. Photos like his mug shot only contribute. That quizzical look works like a mirror. As one of four decades of performances, it reflects our interest in analyzing, lamenting, and protecting the King of Pop.
Throughout This Day, I adhere to Michael's consistent carnival, both with and apart from his melodic feats. After all, his appearances outside a Santa Barbara courthouse compete with his iconographic choreography. His late, disheveled arrival in pajamas couldn't have been better scripted. The gasps, applause, and snickers Michael generates coheres his media saturation. Parsing the telltale from either the juridical or the musical ignores the market that perseveres as Michael Jackson™. Thus, I place published details of his life, either attributed or irrefutable, alongside my readings of his videos and concerts. Leading it all is the undeniable drama of a man who exploded an industry's possibilities. He also appreciated the fantasy of celebrity. He teased us with an intimacy meticulously packaged. The man who started “making-of” programming for music videos with “Thriller” understood what cameras did "behind the scenes." They documented performances for an acknowledged audience. The VHS tapes sold as The Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller offered a first run of Michael Jackson™’s reality. Then, the child star who doesn't remember a life not looked at saw himself in a biography of P.T. Barnum. In 1985, Michael gave the book to his manager and lawyer. “This is going to be my Bible and I want it to be yours,” he told them. “I want my whole career to be the greatest show on Earth.” This Day in Michael details that profound pageantry.
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