As we know from previous experience, certain figures transcend the usual human script: John Lennon, Bill Clinton, Princess Diana, and now Jackson. They radiate some analysis-defying “x” factor, crowd magick, mass appeal. This ability to be consistently forgiven. Failings and fallings and flaws overlooked. Look at Lennon – heroin addiction, support for the IRA, weird foreign missus, dabbling in avant-garde conceptual art, breaks up The Beatles... what more could he do to lose the love of his popular audience? But he remains the Lads’ favorite pop star, bar none: the love never goes. He preaches anti-materialism and mass togetherness but holes up inside therapy-occluded privation with only stock market deals and a freezer full of furs to keep him warm: they love him more. Puts out god-awful AOR sludge. Still the adoration increases.
Do we really need to adumbrate Michael’s own perplexing choices? The myriad ways in which he would seem to be the exact opposite of anything like contemporary black pride? His almost luminous propensity for bad faith and bare-faced lies? His progressively less urgent or pleasing or interesting music? The jacked-up psychopathology of Hubris: I AM THE KING. I AM THE KING.
- Ian Penman
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