Jehovah's Witnesses aren't supposed to celebrate birthdays. Nevertheless, here Michael Jackson stands onstage in Copenhagen, August 29, 1997, on his History tour. Shuffling in behind him is a troupe resembling The Band of the Grenadier Guards. They sport red coats and black felt towers strapped across their chins. But their white trousers are the converse of the official uniform for the oldest military band of the British Army. Among other performances, that group's distinctive duty remains the birthday parade for the Queen of England. For the now-televised event, popular since World War I, everyone expects perfection. So does Michael for the musical assembly behind him. On cue, they welcome fireworks and a seven-tiered cake no one eats. He sips from a plastic cup and hides his face with a black towel. The bashful smile we know competes with the big screen projecting it. The pixelated image looms so close to what's transpiring, it pulls everything in.
Nine years earlier, for his 30th birthday, Michael gave to the British charity "Give for Life." Onstage during his Leeds stop on the Bad tour, he presented a check for £65,000 in front of a sold-out crowd. Backstage was Jimmy Safechuck, the blue-eyed, nine-year-old alum of a 1988 Pepsi ad called "Dressing Room." For the television spot, Jimmy dons Michael's shades, sparkly black jacket, and fedora hat. Jimmy's fingers pull the brim down over his eyes. The hat perks up to reveal Michael's face. On tour, Michael brought that transformation fantasy within Jimmy's reach. Michael had his costume designer Greg Upshaw make kid-sized versions of his stage outfits. Once, they both came onstage in strappy costumes modeled after Michael's in the "Bad" video.
In Singapore, Elizabeth Taylor and then-husband Larry Fortensky check into their penthouse suite across from Michael's at 1:30 a.m. This Sunday August 29, 1993, she inspired Michael to eat two slices of carrot cake with butter frosting. With a diet of milk and bread, Michael had lost nine pounds since the allegations commanded global headlines. Today, Michael was panicked that L.A.'s District Attorney would arrange for an extradition. Still, he waved to fans gathered at the colonial Raffles Hotel for a glimpse of the dazed star. He turned 35 in a red shirt and black hat. The media was there, too, of course, but uncertain. Most outlets were uncharacteristically cautious. Michael's reaction to the news became its own safer story. So did a film icon's transcontinental journey to be the stalwart by his side. Journalists made the flight with her. There was plenty of time for platitudes: "He'd rather cut his own wrists than harm a child." She believed in her friend's "integrity, his love and trust in children. I know he will come out all right. Michael is a very proud man, and he has good faith. He's a very spiritual and a very religious man."
In 1969, Michael was in the midst of his own launching. His birthday seemed insignificant. In October, he would make his television debut, introduced by Diana Ross. 18 days before his eleventh birthday, she presented him performing with his brothers at the Daisy, a swanky disco in Beverly Hills. The telegram she sent as an invitation heralded the "brilliant" Jackson 5, "featuring sensational eight-year-old Michael Jackson." He soon understood that "if someone said something about me that wasn't true, it was a lie. But if someone said something about my image that wasn't true, then it was okay. Because then it wasn't a lie, it was public relations." Michael was a quick study. In attendance that evening was Judy Spiegleman, who gushed in Soul magazine about "an eight-year-old kid who became a man when a microphone was in his hand."
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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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