Neverland woes won't win them

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Recent reports that Michael Jackson might lose his Neverland ranch to foreclosure offers an illuminating moment about celebrity codependency.


Michael Jackson, unlike Britney and Paris, is too alien to garner the public's sympathy. He should focus on his music.
By Ann Powers, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 1, 2008
Michael Jackson will never be just like us. The Us magazine method of democratizing fame by trailing celebs when they head out to Starbucks in their baseball caps doesn't work for this iconic freak -- a snap of him shopping invokes not normality, but one of those renderings of space aliens from the Weekly World News. But recent reports that Jackson might finally lose his beloved Neverland ranch to foreclosure do offer one of those illuminating moments about our national crisis of celebrity codependency.

As many commentators have already noted, Jackson's Neverland situation magnifies the problems many overextended Americans currently face. During his ongoing retreat from reality, Jackson spectacularly overspent, signed up for all sorts of crazy loans and invested in unlikely start-ups, spurred by advisors he later called "thieves and crooks."

If he were savvy (or, dare I say, sane), Jackson could use this threat from the bank to try to reassert his humanity and reconnect with pop fans. He should take that alleged offer to play 30 nights at London's O2 Arena. Not only would he garner a rumored $30 million, he'd place attention back on the only part of his life story that remains palatable -- his extraordinary musical talent.

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Yet it really might be too late for Jackson. The "Thriller 25" reissue is outselling nearly every other CD these days, despite those awful remixes by will.i.am, Akon and Kanye West. But without any really new music -- or even a public appearance to celebrate the old -- it remains a beautiful artifact. Just as the cover shot on "Thriller 25" invokes a Michael who has little in common with the pale, bandaged Jacko of today, the voice inside is like a Sleeping Beauty, frozen and abandoned by the negligent Prince of Pop.

So much trouble separates Jackson the personality from Jackson the artist; he might be the only contemporary star besides O.J. Simpson who has so thoroughly alienated the public that he's lost the chance to be forgiven. That's why the news about his troubles doesn't have the same emotional effect as the latest missive from Britney’s Malibu manse.

Jackson doesn't engage us; he doesn't even try. And celebrity increasingly relies on a cycle of transgression and forgiveness. The more stars mess up, the more they offend us with their crassness and carelessness and self-destructive indulgence, the more chances we have to pose imaginary interventions. We will never forget the time we saw Paris Hilton cry.

The damage radiating from fallen stars like Britney and Jacko obscures what makes them exceptional -- their talent, their beauty, their riches -- in order to fulfill tabloid culture's ultimate mandate that celebrities be just like us. Like us, that is, in our worst and saddest moments, enacting the catastrophes regular households face and find most shameful.

It's painful to dwell on your own financial missteps, or to talk about your cousin who went a little crazy after her divorce and lost her kids. It's stressful to wonder whether the sleeping pills you're taking could lead to a dangerous addiction. Celebrity crisis is a trick mirror that distracts from what's broken in our own lives. And even crisis is prettier when abetted by privilege. Michael Jackson may be sweating right now, but he's doing so in the gilded palaces of Las Vegas and Dubai.

Ever since the advent of the talkies gave birth to Hollywood glamour, stars have offered lessons in how to enjoy luxuries most people will never attain. The crimes and accidents of Hollywood Babylon, as Kenneth Anger famously called it, punctured the glittering façade. But somewhere along the way, it seems, luxury suffering became as profitable an item to promote as Chanel knockoffs. And we can't stop buying it.

Next time you find yourself dwelling on a famous person's problems, try this: Imagine them as not famous. Remember that this stuff happens to people you really know too. Becoming famous can be a very alienating experience, but to blame fame alone (or even primarily) for Britney's pain or Jacko's mad folly is to ignore the fact that the crises they face are everywhere and mostly experienced quietly. Neverland may survive, but how many foreclosures are on your block?

Graycap23 said:

and yet everyone still clears prime space on their magazines or ezines
n tvnews to report on the imminent foreclosure of mj's neverland ranch.

if scientists found absolute proof for the existence of god, the news
would be relegated to page 2 if mj dangled one of his children over a
balcony again that day.

it's inconceivable how the media still spend so much time on him and a
non-newsworthy item like the foreclosure of neverland ranch.

even with Katrina, the reports never talked about charity singles from
people like prince etc. everyone only kept reporting about an mj song,
which never materialised. etc etc etc.

"jackson's Neverland situation magnifies the problems many
overextended Americans currently face"

omg way to come up with an excuse to fill yet another page with stupid
ramblings on mj.

lol.

Hmmm...Interesting article. The writer does make some good points not only about Michael but just about celebrities in general and public fixation with them. However, from reading that article the writer makes it seem ALMOST as if Michael's latest financial problem was a ploy to gain public sympathy and of course that was not the case. I'm sure that situation with Neverland is the last thing he wanted at all as all it does is add to the string of humiliating and embarassing stories about him and does nothing to help him whatsoever. My feeling however is that the general public is pretty much OVER Michael and his outlandish behavior. They have Britney, Paris, Lindsay and others to keep them entertained. The only thing he can do now is focus on his music and that's what he's been doing lately it seems, even if it's just crappy remixes of classic songs from "Thriller" lol.

IstenSzek said:

I'm just baffled as to why they spend so much time talking about a supposed "has been freak" and the foreclosure of his home . Like I said, I think the general public is over it but the media seems to still be obsessed with writing negative crap about MJ all the time, it really is beyond pathetic.

[see http://prince.org/msg/8/262467 -sos]