| mahoney |
03-09-2005 01:28 AM |
The case against Michael seems open and shut. Let?s review the principle facts as we know them: (1) He molested a 12-year-old boy back in 1993 and bought him off with hush money; (2) And now he?s doing it again; (3) This, as the hired shrinks tell us over and over again, is because you can?t cure a pedophile. They can?t stop themselves and they?ll just keep on doing it until you lock ?em up and throw away the key; and (4) A 45-year-old man who likes to have young boys sleep in his bed with him?this is tantamount to admitting he has a sexual fixation on pre-teen boys.
But in actuality the current case against him is, at the moment, no case at all. All these supposed pieces of evidence could actually prove the reverse: (1) The original child abuse allegations of ten years ago have been more or less discredited. In ?Was Michael Jackson Framed?? (GQ, October 1994) Mary A. Fisher pretty conclusively showed that the boy in question (who initially denied any abuse) was coerced by his parents, relatives, and an unscrupulous lawyer into testifying against Jackson. At one point they gave him sodium amytol, the so-called truth drug, to get him to talk. But sodium amytol has also been shown to be a highly suggestible drug?especially for an impressionable boy who knows what his parents expect him to say. The D.A. found him so unreliable that he decided not to proceed with a criminal case;
(2) The new allegations against Jackson are even more suspect than the first ones. The mother of the boy, after being scorned and refused more money, made verbal threats that she would go to the tabloids if Jackson didn?t ?take care of her.? The vindictive Diane Diamond of Court TV claims that because there is (so far) no civil suit brought against Jackson, it ?cleanses the case.? In other words, since they don?t want money, the charges must be true. But just you wait.
The unsettling thing about accusations of child abuse is that they are hard to disprove, and they taint the accused even when disproven. The most egregious example of this is the McMartin case where children at a school testified to repeated, sadistic, ritual molestation. Years later, child psychologists realized that such memories can be easily implanted in children's minds by the interview techniques which were used at the time.
(3) Jacko is an obvious case of arrested development. Most rock stars remain frozen in their teen dream of sex and revenge?which isn?t that serious, seeing as the entire culture is in a state of adolescent regression. We actually count on them to exhibit the kind of boorish, narcissistic behavior we can?t do ourselves. But Michael has the misfortune to be stuck back in the limbo of pre-adolescence: pillow fights, hot chocolate with marshmallows?and sleep-overs. A great deal has been made of the fact that he only has sleep-overs with boys?but that?s what 12-year-old boys do. It?s pre-pubescent?they don?t get girls yet. A 60-year-old rock star smashing up his hotel room may be a bit pathetic, but a 45-year-old man who likes to sleep with young boys?well, let?s face it, this does sound a bit creepy. But perhaps (and we?re giving him a wide benefit of the doubt here) he?s not necessarily someone who molests 12 year olds?maybe he just thinks he is a 12 year old whose childhood habits have been hermetically sealed by fame. Neverland is a giant pre-teen biosphere, an alternate reality that is maintained at huge costs financially (and now morally as well).
(4) Everything about this case is unsettling?your reactions yo-yo wildly from one extreme to the other. Just at the point where you start saying maybe he just looks guilty and, in the interest of fairness, we shouldn?t rush to judgment, up pops some scaly fact like the love letters which spins you back to thinking about that 2O million bucks of hush money and you start to get that creepy feeling about him again.
Michael Jackson is clearly delusional, disturbingly eccentric, and damaged. On top of corrosive celebrity, child star psychosis, and a brutalized, purloined childhood, he obviously has such ambivalence about his racial identity that he has virtually buried that little kid from the Jacksons under dozens of plastic surgeries and made his face into a grotesque mask. But that doesn?t mean he?s guilty of anything other than trying to make reality fit into his aberrant make-believe world.
The truly disturbing thing about this case is the crowd frenzy, the sadistic glee with which the news shows have pursued Jackson. His entire two-hour drive into Las Vegas was filmed live, as if we were hunting down some dangerous mass murderer. The Santa Barbara D.A. Thomas Snedden clearly has it in for Jackson. After ten years of investigation and interviewing dozens of kids who had sleep-overs with Jackson, he found only one disturbed child and his rapacious mother. Sheriff Jim Anderson, rushing in a fleet of 70 cops in black vans, was a disgusting and pointless deployment of man-power and spectacle. Hate radio, with its infernal mix of bile and self-righteousness, has savaged Jackson. Talk show hosts make nasty jokes about him??Two tykes and you?re out? (Leno). Something about Jackson brings out the vicious, feral side in us, the way a pack will attack a sick animal.
Michael Jackson has begun to fight back, setting up a web site, attacking the press for their ?irresponsible speculation,? the D.A. for his ?personal dislike? of him, and even those unauthorized people speaking on his behalf for undermining his credibility. In the curious equilibrium of the media?s churning well of adulation and spite, it looks as if they went after Jacko too savagely and public opinion is turning in his favor. Jackson?s fans are holding vigils around the world for the Little Prince of Pop.
But in the dream-world of popular culture, there are always rip tides. Idolization and defilement are two sides of the same coin. As in Nathaniel West?s scathing vision of fan frenzy, The Day of the Locust, nightmares and fantasies drift into a psychic Sargasso Sea. ?Just as that imaginary body of water was a history of civilization in the form of a marine junkyard, the studio was one in the form of a dream dump. A Sargasso of the imagination! And the dump grew continually, for there was not a dream afloat somewhere which would not sooner or later turn up on it.? Many boats sink and never reach the Sargasso, but no dream ever entirely disappears. Somewhere it troubles some unfortunate person and some day, when that person has been sufficiently troubled, it will be reproduced on the lot.?
|
