When Michael Jackson died suddenly last week, the news cycle shifted from politics to pop culture. An icon for Gen-Xers and baby boomers who grew up with his music, Jackson’s songs provided backdrop for our lives and loves.
Unlike other celebrities, Jackson wasn’t just famous for being famous — he was famous for altering pop music. Like Elvis and the Beatles, he revamped pop culture. His album “Thriller” remains the biggest seller of all time. And Jackson made the TV music video a pop-culture art form.
But like Elvis, Jackson had serious demons. He unwittingly and unwillingly became one of America’s queerest icons, a man continually linked to young boys whose best friends were aging actresses known for being fag hags.
A perpetual Peter Pan, Jackson repeatedly said he never wanted to grow up. He remained trapped between his public persona and his odd vision of who he wanted to be. Somewhere in between, the music continued.
The June 28 episode of “The Insider” played a clip of a 16-year-old Donny Osmond and a 15-year-old Jackson together after a gig. Osmond is incomparably pretty and Jackson looks incredibly normal.
In the interview, Jackson looks longingly at Osmond. Viewing the scene, one cannot help but wonder: What if Jackson had been able to come out then, be openly gay? How different — how normal — would his life have been?
But that’s not what happened. As Jackson grew up, he grew eccentric, then strange, then bizarre. In an interview with Oprah from 20 years ago, replayed June 28, she asks Jackson — only a few years younger than she but looking like one of Peter Pan’s Lost Boys — if he’s a virgin. He giggles like a schoolgirl and says, “Now why ask me that?”
Oprah also asks Jackson — whose skin, once the color of hers, is nearly white in the interview — if he’s ashamed of being black.
Jackson says if all the people in Hollywood who have had plastic surgery disappeared, it would be a ghost town.
Jackson also told Oprah that he wanted everyone to love him.