Notes From D.R. | Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

Hard to believe, is it not, that this fall will mark the 25th anniversary of the release of Michael Jackson’s Thriller album?

It speaks volumes about Jackson’s self-destructiveness that when we think about him now, we only see him in terms of the scandals he’s been involved in since the early 1990s, as opposed to the work of creative genius that propelled him to super-stardom in the early 1980s. Listening to Thriller nowadays is sort of like watching Roman Polanski’s The Pianist: you can’t deny the quality of the work, even as you shake your head at the depravity of the person who created it.

Jackson was arguably the last "traditional" musical figure to achieve tremendous success prior to hip-hop’s ascendancy in the popular culture. Ironically enough, it was Jackson’s ability to transcend racial barriers that allowed hip-hop to gain so much popularity in the mainstream. (Few remember that prior to the Billie Jean video in 1983, it was extremely rare to see an African-American performer featured on MTV.)

Even at the height of his Thriller success, Jackson was far from a universally loved figure. Louis Farrakhan condemned Jackson in April 1984 for supposedly presenting an unmanly image to black youth, and the racial-solidarity crowd didn’t look too fondly upon his dalliances with Brooke Shields. Let’s not even get into the debate over his altered physical appearance.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that the pre-whacko Jacko was to the 1980s what Colin Powell was to the 1990s: a symbol of bigotry conquered, of hatred overcome. Jackson became popular at just the right political/cultural moment: after three decades of civil-rights-related strife, and during a time in which racial and political tensions still hadn’t really receded (the debate over efforts to make Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday was only just beginning to conclude, and President Reagan had been repeatedly smeared as racially insensitive by America’s civil rights leadership), Jackson held out hope that blacks and whites could ultimately find commonality. He was embraced by both communities solely on his merits as a performer–an accomplishment that was trumpeted in the ’80s but has been completely ignored now (for obvious reasons).

Those of us who remember the Thriller era will always fight a desire to forget about everything that came after. One wishes that post-Thriller fame hadn’t gone to Jackson’s head, causing him to completely separate himself from reality and thus set the stage for future disaster.

Remember when the media tried to portray Jackson as the "babyface" of the music industry, and Prince as the "heel"? Jackson was the sweet, kindly role model and Prince was "His Royal Badness," the former a symbol of innocence, the latter a portrait of perversion. It may be that Prince avoided the fate that befell Jackson precisely because of the negative way he was portrayed in the press.

Like Bill Clinton, Jackson evidently figured that he could get away with anything since he was seen as a positive figure in the eyes of the media. While Prince certainly had an ego, he never had the American press corps telling him, in essence, that he could do no wrong–and thus never really behaved as though he were without fault.

Like the mythical Narcissus, Jackson made the mistake of falling in love with his own image. As a result, a populace that embraced him 25 years ago has now told him, in no certain terms, to Beat It.