Television
Whiter man's burden
Martyn Harris
In the event it was all the things that Walter Bagehot warned against: a tearing down of curtains, a letting in of light, a destruction of mystique. Kings, as Shaw said, are not born, but made by universal hallucination, and no hallucination could withstand the thick-fingered fumbling of the mass media. Was his father too much of a disciplinarian? Had he missed a nor- mal childhood? Would he ever have a happy marriage? Did he wear make-up in public? Was he a virgin? We shouldn't have the right to such questions, but Oprah Winfrey asked them and Michael Jackson answered.
It was the first TV interview with the 'King of Pop' in 14 years (BBC 2, Monday, 9 p.m.), a period in which, unimpeded by actual information, his persona has built up rococo layers of rumour and speculation. Wacko Jacko has dyed his skin white and had so much plastic surgery that his face is falling off; he has such terror of infection that he lives in an oxygen tent; his house is a giant playroom where his only compan- ions are chimpanzees and children.
As it turned out he seemed fairly normal apart from a mask of white make-up which he blamed on a skin disorder, and a faggy little squeak of a voice — though that is a common affectation in American showbiz. He received Oprah in his 'lovely home' which contained, as she observed, 'leather- bound classics and lovely artworks' — one of these being a full-length oil portrait of Jackson in the Van Dyke manner.
Clearly intimidated by the opportunity and terrified Jackson might terminate it at any moment, Winfrey took the time- honoured course of inviting her host to deny all the malicious rumours, thus get- ting maximum mileage out of them, while avoiding offence. He had not bought the Elephant Man's bones; he had not demanded to be the only performer at the Clinton inauguration; there was no truth in 'I keep bingeing, then throwing up.' the rumour that he had only agreed to the Oprah interview on condition that she called him the King of Pop. 'In fact,' said Oprah, 'I think the King of Pop title is a rather limiting when you are such an all- round entertainer.'
It was that kind of interview, where the only real revelations are inadvertent. 'Are you a virgin?' asked Oprah, as her confi- dence grew, and Jackson replied, 'I am a gentleman,' — which gave no clue to his sex life, but quite a lot to his gracefulness. The best moment came when Winfrey invited him to sing on the stage of the pri- vate theatre he has built to entertain sick children. His unaccompanied voice in the echoing space — effortlessly pitched and rhythmically precise — provided that same sense of awe and exhilaration you get from seeing a great footballer sell a dununy, or a fine artist sketch a profile in a single flour- ish. I would rather have believed in the outrageously weird Wacko Jacko of legend than the everyday eccentric uncovered here by Winfrey, but the voice made him inac- cessible again, as it should. A one-off, once-in-a-generation talent, whose burden would make any of us a little weird.
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