Pop music
Whacking Jacko
Marcus Berkmann
Poor Michael Jackson. One minute he's the world's most beloved pop star, an icon of musical excellence, a magical and elusive figure with a very strange skin problem and the next he's a child molester and all- purpose hate figure, with small horns grow- ing out of the top of his head.
Do you believe it? I'm not sure I do. Even if you discount the rank odour of opportunism that surrounds the case, there's always the apparent fact of Jack- son's sexlessness. It's hard to imagine him feeling the urges necessary to make him perpetrate such outrages.
It's men with too much testosterone you have to watch out for, not those with too little. Cynics may cite, as circumstantial evi- dence, the rather explicit nature of Jack- son's dance routines, but surely even they are the work of a rampant overcompen- sator. Whenever he grasps his genitals like that, it's as though by doing so he might finally discover what they're actually for.
Still, if we ignore the truth or otherwise of the allegations — and let's face it, every- one else has — it's people's reactions, so evenly split that you could almost imagine that the scandal had been market researched, that have been most telling. In particular, all small children believe pas- sionately in Jackson's innocence, while all journalists and lawyers are equally con- vinced of his guilt.
But it's the glee with which his downfall has been greeted that has really surprised me. Here, after all, was one of the most tragic figures of modern times: a 35-year- old multi-millionaire who cannot relate to adults (unless you count Elizabeth Taylor as an adult), consorts with chimps and regards plastic surgery as a leisure activity. Now, on virtually no evidence at all, he has been declared a non-person, a cruel and deluded pervert.
How this will affect his career is not open to question. The music business will bury him. They have been probably waiting for this opportunity for ages. There's some- thing about his image, his lifestyle, his very shade of lipstick that gives them the heeby- jeebies. Why can't he do the normal things? Why can't he sleep with loads of groupies and snort coke by the skipload, like everyone else? No, he has to be differ- ent. He has to dye his face white and build a funfair in the garden. Now that's weird.
What has emerged, once again, is the lin- gering intolerance that has always charac- terised the music business, and no doubt always will. For a business that is based on pre-packaged notions of rebellion, it can be remarkably conservative. Adolescence is its bread and butter, its perennial inspiration.
But Jackson's appeal is not adolescent, something that he understands more clear- ly than anyone. Jackson's market is child- hood, his appeal entirely innocent. One might say that, by planting his standard in this fertile but hitherto unexploited territo- ry, he is as subversive an influence in pop music as anyone has ever been. His records are bought primarily by children, and work best when they appeal directly to children. He has succeeded in this because he is so absolutely asexual. By accusing him of being a child molester, his opponents have hit him where it hurts most.
And it was all utterly inevitable because, sooner or later, everyone grows out of Michael Jackson. Indeed, judging by many people's reactions this past fortnight, it has seemed as though a substantial proportion of the world's population has grown out of him. Perhaps I'm being naïve, but I find it hard to believe that he would make so ele- mentary a mistake. Even if he were physi- cally capable of it, which is debatable, he's simply too sharp an operator to take the risk. But the vultures are circling: he hasn't got a chance.
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