Book #152: Michael Jackson: The Magic, The Madness, The Whole Story, 1958-2009

But was he, really? 🤔

Pages: 765

Unless you have been living under a rock for your entire life, EVERYONE knows who Michael Jackson was. He was a man of many talents and one of those was beatboxing. MJ could’ve beatboxed the instrumental of a song before it came together. 

Now, this book took me many years to read believe it or not. A friend of my mom gifted the book to me in 2010 and I left it for a while. I started reading it sometime in 2012 or so, then left it again and returned to it sometime in 2014. Then, late last year was the final straw. I finally picked the book up and read until the last page which I completed earlier this year. I was glad to get this off my TBR.

“I want my whole career to be the greatest show on earth”

Michael Jackson

The author had known MJ since they were little – MJ was 10 – and so he decided that he was MJ’s official biographer. However, Randy struggled with accuracy throughout the book and you can tell that Michael’s youth up until he was 20 was the best-researched part of the book for as the years rolled by, they weren’t that close anymore. MJ had shut a lot of people out of his life, for he was always insecure, mistrusting, and suspicious.

Some things/thoughts I took away from the book:

* The author overwrote. There was no need to talk at length of the Thriller video. We know it scene for scene. At one point, I wonder if I was reading a bio or a journal. 

* MJ didn’t want to do the Pepsi deal for he had a bad feeling about it, but his money-hungry brothers and father forced him to sign the contract anyway.

* MJ wanted to rename the “Victory Tour” to “The Final Curtain”. Many, many years later, he got to call his final shows “This Is It”.

* Paul McCartney is a proper right hypocrite.

* Berry Gordy and Diana Ross taught MJ to lie about his age when he was about 9. I still don’t know why he idolized this woman.

* Elizabeth Taylor was a brat and a handler who always knew how to get under MJ’s skin. She made decisions for him as if she wishes she was Katherine Jackson. She was high maintenance and expected MJ to gift her with extravagant things. At one point, she moved MJ to her home. She nagged MJ about opening up himself to a romantic relationship and when he finally had something with Lisa, she felt jealous and left out. She even took charge of his life and legal proceedings in 1993. I never trusted her friendship with MJ, but I also think MJ was infatuated with her and she knew it and she held him at arm’s length for she had control and power over him. 

And I think I’ll stop here for there was nothing to really surprise me about the man and the myth. Now, my rant… or something like it.

The Magic

Trust me, there was nothing magical about MJJ. He was programmed and brainwashed by Disney just like many of us were as children into believing in magic and that’s probably why he preferred fantasy over reality. MJ was an enigma and he beheld the world with a childlike wonder and curiosity, but his talents had nothing to do with magic. He was just crazily gifted. Did you know he also drew and painted? Exceptionally well, too?

See, crazily gifted. No magic there.

The Madness

MJ was highly valued by his mother as the son who can do no wrong and put on a pedestal by fans making him a god. In the 80s, he was said to be battling with lupus and vitiligo. 

He often shied away from talking about his skin condition and that was fine by me. I did not need to know every medical detail. But it spiraled him to another height of madness for over the years people were crazy over his skin and his eccentricity. It was as if he was in a circus peep show except that he was viewed in front of the entire world as a freak at a P.T. Barnum circus show. 

The greatest madness of MJ’s career were/are his fans. 

The Whole Story

Hmm… will the REAL MJ, please stand up?

Did we really know the whole story? Do we really know the real MJ? Alas! We don’t. Michael was a slave to Hollywood and the devil for he used his God-given talents to carry out the devil’s work through his lustful and sexual dancing. He was the ultimate sex symbol and sexual fantasy for both men and women. He ripped his shirts, thrust his pelvis and gyrated his hips in ways no man – or woman for that matter – ever should.

It seems like he had childhood trauma, but sometimes I wondered if he also had DID. He was a terrific father, but he avoided communication and conflict. He loved giving and visiting the orphanages, but he was also a narcissist who quickly became bored with people so he discarded them like unwanted toys.

Over the years, I couldn’t decide if Michael was too feminine for my liking (he really blurred the lines between masculinity and femininity), but his smile endured and up to this day, I still think he had one of the most beautiful smiles in the world if not the most beautiful. I mean, come on, that smile could bless a nation!

Overall:

MJ was a gifted, talented genius, but he was also battered, bruised, broken, and the poster boy for why you shouldn’t love the world and all that is in it (1 John 2:15; Mark 8:36). He was tortured, twisted, molded and created in their image – turning him into a caricature of his former self; the image God created him in – for our entertainment and we contributed by enjoying his work or ridiculing him (especially by mocking the way he looked in photos when he was just probably miserable, silently pleading for help while dying inside) whichever suited us best. He never found the happiness he passionately yearned for, for he was looking in the wrong places.

Only God could’ve granted him what he was searching for.

Michael died as he lived for the worldly desires: the King of Pain, never freed,  always chained.

***GIFs and images via Google Search