Claiming the King's Soul
by Andrew Walsh
Michael Jackson’s untimely and
unexpected death on June 25th restored the King of Pop to the
main stage of American popular culture, where he had played a starring role
for much of the 1970s and 1980s.
The news of Jackson’s death—apparently
by a drug overdose—caused a multi-media frenzy that lasted almost all summer
but reaching its peak at Jackson’s July 7 funeral in Los Angeles, which, the
New York Daily News reported, was “the second most-watched funeral
ever, after Princess Di’s.”
“Michael Jackson is still dead,” the
Philadelphia Inquirer’s grumpy columnist Karen Heller opined on the
morning of the funeral. “The Michael Jackson Industrial Death Complex,
however, thrives in its infancy. Dead Michael is fuel for tabloids, chat
shows, and cable news because, clearly, the economy, two wars, and
nuclear-arms talks are not newsy enough.”
The Jackson saga presented too much
grist for the mill: a talented child superstar who evolved into a child-man;
a global entertainment phenomenon-cum-recluse; a generous benefactor and
spectacular spendthrift; a middle-aged Peter Pan or possibly pedophile whose
career reached its nadir when he was acquitted in a 2005 criminal trial on
charges of sexually abusing children whose friendship he had cultivated.
While there was plenty of attention to
the creepy side of Jackson’s life in the media, his death was treated, as
blogger Robert Schlesinger noted in a June 26 comment on USNEWS.com, as an
“all-consuming, world stopping EVENT.” In line with that perception, NBC and
ABC suspended regular programming the evening after his death was announced
to broadcast special memorial programs.
The hoopla continued until early
September, when Jackson was interred at the most appropriate place
imaginable—Los Angeles’ celebrity-studded Forest Lawn cemetery. Throughout,
the central conundrum was how to comprehend what Lisa Robinson, in the
September issue of Vanity Fair, called Jackson’s “unparalleled fame
and dark troubles.”
One way to go, ABC News’ Charles Gibson
remarked in his broadcast coverage, was to forget about the complexities of
Jackson’s life: “People have gone back to the music,'” he told Martin Bashir,
whose 2003 documentary on Jackson led to the 2005 criminal trial. “It's as
if the last 10 or 15 years didn’t happen.”
And while most people did indeed seem
willing to focus on the music, that didn’t resolve the question of why they
were willing to overlook so much.
A better interpretive route, and one
explored more often by foreign (and particularly English) journalists, was
to look at the powerful religious forces at play in and around Jackson and,
in particular, at the salience of African-American religion in contemporary
American and global culture.
Jackson, who had emerged as a stellar
example of the “spiritual but not religious” American, manifested a kind of
suffering and brokenness in his life and work that appealed powerfully to
many people. His version of R. Kelly’s “You Not Alone,” for example, had
become a standard at funerals all over the world.
Since breaking from the Jehovah’s
Witnesses in young adulthood, Jackson was associated at least briefly with a
slew of religious movements, even as he consorted with Hugh Hefner at the
Playboy Mansion. Michael Paulson of the Boston Globe captured this
protean religious identity in a brief piece published on July 5:
“The King of Pop was a Jehovah’s
Witness. A Muslim. He accepted Jesus before he died. The Vatican loved him.
There’s even a Jewish angle of sorts. Not to mention the unending discussion
of what it meant to call him an icon, or an idol.”
Paulson went on to note that in recent
years there had been widespread discussions about both Jackson’s conversion
to Islam and to evangelical Christianity. Both rumors flared up at Jackson’s
death, notably when his brother Jermaine, a Muslim, declared at a press
conference that he wished for his brother, “May Allah be with you always.”
To be sure, the New York Daily News
had begun knocking down reports of Jackson’s conversion to Islam as far back
as 2003. But the Chicago Sun-Times kept the story alive, following up
a speech by Minister Louis Farrakhan on July 26 that described Jackson as a
“Messianic voice” and “an archangel of sound, song, and dance” by quoting a
Jackson aide who insisted that “Michael again was thinking closely about
becoming a Muslim.”
Christian friends thought otherwise.
Christianity Today’s online service reported in late June a “web frenzy”
over reports among a circle of Christian music artists of Jackson’s
born-again experience just before his death. One June 28 Bully!Pulpit.com
picked up comments made by Erica Campbell of the Gospel duo Mary-Mary on her
Facebook page.
Under the headline “Good News—RIP
Michael Jackson,” Campbell wrote. “Last night we received some good news
from Terri McFaddin-Solomon who is good friends with Sandra Crouch. Three
weeks ago Sandra and Andrae spend some time with their close friend, Michael
Jackson. Michael asked Andrae to play, “It Won’t Be Long and We’ll Be
Leaving Here.’ Michael then prayed with Sandra and Andre and accepted Christ
into his heart. Now he’s singing in the heavenly choir! Our hearts rejoice!”
Christianity Today then rolled
back the rumor, noting on June 29 that “initial rumors that the King of Pop
had accepted Christ may have been false.” The Crouches had issued a
statement saying they had prayed with Jackson and discussed the “anointing
of the spirit” but added that there was “NO actual sinner’s prayer.”
Muslims and Christians weren’t the only
ones to stake their claims. Earlier in the decade, followers of popular
Kabbalah had suggested that Jackson was deeply involved in that movement, as
had Scientologists during Jackson’s brief marriage to Lisa Marie Presley.
“Everyone wants Jackson’s soul in their
own bit of paradise,” concluded the ascerbic Tim Adams of the London
Observer, in long analytical piece published October 4 that provided the
best account of Jackson’s complicated spiritual journey. At the turbulent
center of that journey, Adams theorized, was the volatile tension between
Jackson’s mother, Katherine, who remains a fervent Jehovah’s Witness, and
his father, Joe, a driven, ambitious, and irreligious man.
“Katherine tried to bring all of her
boys up as Jehovah’s Witnesses, in part to balance the influence of their
wayward father and their life on the road,” Adams wrote. “Of them all,
Michael, who said on various occasions that he wanted nothing more than
approval in his mother’s eyes…stayed true to the faith the longest.”
Jackson continued to attend Witness
services and to make weekly mission trips around Los Angeles with his mother
as late as 1988, a commitment he recalled fondly in a Beliefnet.com column
in 2000.
In 1988, wrote Adams, Jackson “finally
decided that the religion was not compatible with his life and he formally
left the church, which for Jehovah’s Witnesses is “the unforgivable sin.
Thereafter it seemed he had a God-shaped hole in his life. Jackson’s soul
was up for grabs to any religion that could whisper persuasively in his
ear.”
“The religion that Jackson really
believed in most, though, was the fairytale he told himself about his lost
childhood,” Adams wrote. Others accepted this too, but usually without the
sneer.
Permeating the discourse about Jackson
after his death were comparisons made to Christ and his suffering,
particularly by African-Americans. Most of these stressed the unfair
accusations against Jackson and his sufferings at the hands of a stern
father.
This motif reached truly grandiose
proportions in the hands of Cornell West, the Princeton philosopher and
religious thinker, who told PBS’ Tavis Smiley on July 7 that Jackson’s
difficult later life was “almost like a crucifixion, in terms of the cross
you have to bear. We reap the fruits of the resurrection, in terms of the
power that emanates from [Michael Jackson’s] sacrifice. He sacrificed his
childhood because he loved us so. He didn’t just entertain us, he sustained
us.”
The crescendo of diffuse religious
competition culminated in the dispute among the surviving Jackson brothers,
men of various religions and no religion, as they planned the funeral. As
reported by Joe Kemp and Samuel Goldsmith in the New York Daily News
July 6, the brothers “couldn’t agree on which religion should guide
the King of Pop’s memorial service, so they’re going without one.” Instead,
they “opted for a non-denominational event.”
At first, the funeral seemed likely to
turn into a giant spectacle—with a fan lottery for tickets and Los Angeles
officials beseeching those without them not to flood the streets of the
city. Most commentators were expecting a vulgar Hollywood blowout.
Glitz there was. Jackson was borne into
the Staples Center in a gold casket. There were 20,000 in attendance. The
brothers wore matching yellow ties and a single silver glove in homage to
their brother. There were eulogistic comments from Brooke Shields, Magic
Johnson, Kobe Bryant, and Berry Gordy, who called Jackson “simply the
greatest entertainer that ever lived.”
Yet, to almost everyone’s surprise, the
three-hour-long funeral turned out to be a dignified affair.
“A
spiritual farewell for Michael,” the Newark Star Ledger summarized in
a typical headline. “Jackson’s sincere sendoff left little room for
weirdness,” echoed the Chicago Sun-Times.
Non-denominational meant, it turned out, mainstream
African-American Protestant. While symbols from many world religions were on
display in the Staples Center, the tone and most of the content of the
service came straight from the black church playbook.
Jackson’s coffin was brought into the hall while a
gospel choir sang, “We Are Going to See the King”—Jesus, not Jackson. Later,
Andrae Crouch’s choir sang Crouch’s own “Soon and Very Soon We Will See the
King.”
Gladys Knight sang the Lord’s Prayer, Lionel Richie
sang “Jesus is Love,” while pointing a finger skyward. Singer Judith Hill
sang Jackson’s “Heal the World,” and prompted her mother to tell
Christianity Today that “it seems like God put her there for a
purpose—to bring hope. We’re praying that the Lord will use her music and
she will be an ambassador for Christ through her music.”
Even Mariah Carey closed her rendition of the Jackson
Five’s “I’ll Be There,” by calling out, “Thank You, Jesus.”
The Rev. Lucious W. Smith, the pastor of Friendship
Baptist Church in Pasadena, presided with an inclusive touch:
“First and foremost, this man was our brother, our son,
our father and our friend. In his very beautiful and very human heart,
Michael Jackson wanted nothing more than to give love to the world. May this
moment of remembrance…bring comfort and healing to those who loved our
friend.”
There were many times that “the memorial went back to
church, reminding fans in attendance that this was a service, not simply a
concert,” Los Angeles Times’ music critic Ann Power reported July 8.
“The gospel elements also reinforced the connection between Jackson’s career
and the civil rights movement made in speeches by several political leaders,
including two of Martin Luther King Jr.’s children, Congresswoman Sheila
Jackson-Lee, and the Rev. Al Sharpton.”
“‘He outsang the cynics, he outdanced his doubters, he
outperformed the
pessimists,’ said Sharpton of Jackson, making a strong
contribution to the fascinating process of Jackson’s posthumous
rehabilitation as an African American hero.
“‘Don’t focus on the scars, focus on the journey. Every
time he got knocked down, he got back up,’ Sharpton concluded.”
And so, in the contest over Michael Jackson, it seems
pretty clear that the winner was the black church tradition. That’s not
altogether surprising, given the backgrounds of those who shaped and
conducted the service. And given the increasingly central role of
African-American religion in the broader culture.
In this day, African-American religiosity conveys
dignity, conviction, and religious authenticity without making anyone
nervous. As Jackson’s funeral showed, fervent talk about Jesus is neither
inauthentic nor exclusive when it comes from black voices. |