Michael Jackson: Dead

Like most black boys of the seventies, I grew up hating Michael Jackson. There were two unique reasons and they both related to girls. Firstly, we hated Michael because the girl standing next to you would rather say that she loved the distant and mysterious Michael before she'd bother to say she could stand you. Secondly, everybody knew that Jermaine was cooler. Michael was just cute, and we couldn't understand why anybody let him get away with it.

That was until Dancing Machine when he did the robot.

Michael Jackson out-created everything and everybody with about 12 moves. It's not much of an opus, but what it was will always be singularly his. He was an American original who had the best friends popularity could win and money could buy.

Despite what anybody thinks about MTV and the Buggles or Michael Nesmith, Michael Jackson invented the music video in collaboration with John Landis. Thriller was the kind of phenomenon that invented a genre, and that will stand as Jackson's greatest legacy.

I have listened, as a married man ever since Janet Jackson's album, Janet, to every female pop star that has risen to the top. None of them has managed to outdo Janet who stands as the last such superstar to have been at the top of American pop culture before and after the lapdance. As we continue our louche ways and find what was once only viewable on HBO descend into the sleaze bucket of 'R', the necessity of innuendo has become obviated. It was Janet Jackson's last great tour that broke the barrier and forever destroyed the ability for female pop stars to be anything but trampy if they are to be considered sex symbols at all. I cannot imagine that there is any more titillation left after Janet's lapdance and tit stunts. She alone has her reputation tinged by those, wheras the rest have drowned in the appropriate shame their 'showmanship' exploits have earned them. That is because Janet has learned to stay tight to innocence, learning at the feet of the master, her late brother.

We have always done this comparison between Michael Jackson and Prince. And as time goes on, it is completely obvious that Prince is the far greater talent, but Prince was not ever and will not ever be a bigger star. That's because we get him. You cannot play double entendres with Prince, there is never a doubt in your mind that he lets his guard down and becomes approachable. But Michael was always an unapproachable freak who has both managed an incredible amount of control over his image and managed to nurse the exact behavior of childlike appeal as the robot dancing teen through his adulthood. I imagine that in feudal days there were courtiers and courtesans of Michael Jackson's bearing in many kingdoms. Like some eunuch groomed from birth to exist in entertaining service of an emperor, Michael Jackson has made ultimate sacrifices for his art. In the end, Prince is a human being and Michael Jackson is not. Prince is an artist, a star and a musician. Michael Jackson is a human sacrifice to Michael Jackson.

The Twelve Moves

• The Toe Stand
• The Crotch Grab
• The Robot
• The Moonwalk
• The Scream
• The Spin
• The Hiccup
• The Face
• The Glove
• The Socks
• The Kick
• The Shuffle

Everything that makes Michael Jackson a great dancer is his ability to improvise his way through combinations into an iconic pose of which he was a master. If he could walk through life under strobe lights, it would illustrate all of what his dancing managed to be as it was recorded. If you watch and know, you'll see that on many occasions he performs popular dances that are current and then adds his signature moves. He is not a dancer to watch all the way through, but he improved over the course of his career knitting the moves to a perfect vignette.

Smooth Criminal is the best example of Jackson dancing at his finest. It gives a clear overview of his understanding of what he looks like when he moves and working all of the angles of his strengths in coordination with other dancers it showcases all of his moves.

But then there is Billie Jean.

The Motown 25 performance left us all speechless. It was a moment in time that obliterated the old Michael and gave birth to the man in whose shadow he would walk for the rest of his life. To the great fortune of all concerned, he refined and eclipsed that performance and perfected that thing that was dancing, Michael Jackson style. And as much as we all know it so well and have seen it so much there remains something ineffable about seeing it all come together.

I suspect that there are a number of other observations that I could note as I talk about Jackson's transcendence, but I would just leave that for the moment. Here, finally is the performance that I think best captures the energy of Jackson at his finest. It is subliminally fascist. It is the perfection of pop art. 

This is what we are never going to see again.