Friday 26 June 2009

R.I.P Little Michael Jackson

My admiration for Michael Jackson stopped at Thriller. By the time he released BAD, I started to get bored of him and I never bought another album by him, so I am not going to write some gushing obituary about him because I wasn’t a fan so I’m not going to hypocritical. Adult Michael Jackson was so far removed from anything I actually admire in so many ways that I had very little time for him and couldn’t understand the gushing displays of affection he solicited from people.

However, up to Thriller, I thought he was wonderful. I must have sat and watched The Making of Thriller about ten times round my friend’s house (I didn’t have a video). With childish awe, I would gasp with shock at that moment at the end when he turns to the camera with those yellow, devilish eyes.

What makes me sad is watching the news footage of him as a small boy, so cute and talented and I can imagine the impact seeing such a gorgeous child had upon the world. It is heartbreaking then to discover that that adorable, dancing boy was practically forced into performing by a domineering father who thought nothing of using his fists or a belt to get what he wanted. Joseph Jackson took the concept of ‘Showbiz Parent’ to the max. Yes, Michael was a musical genius, there is no doubt about that and any decent parent wants their kid to fulfil their true potential, but to what cost?

By the time he made ‘Off the Wall’ in the late 70s, Michael was blossoming into a beautiful young man and it is still impossible to comprehend why he wanted to disfigure himself in such a horrific way when he was so good looking. It’s my personal opinion that like an anorexic girl who starves herself to retain a childlike, androgynous figure; Michael couldn’t cope with his burgeoning sexuality and so began to make himself look as asexual and almost unhuman as possible so he didn’t have to cope with the reality of adult relationships.

He was the boy without a childhood who grew up and tried to recapture what he’d missed by buying the friendships of young boys in whom he could see himself. It is not my place to say whether or not abuse took place and it has to be asked what parent allows their young son to sleepover at a thirtysomething man’s house anyway. I’d like to think it was because they bought into the Peter Pan image and saw him as nothing more than a ten year old in a grown man’s body. The more cynical part of me thinks they saw nothing but dollar signs and the fate of their child was secondary to their greed.

Whatever happened, Michael Jackson continued to be a victim of abuse until the day he died. When Joseph saw his little boy was too shy to go on stage without the threat of a beating, he should have called a halt to it. Let Michael grow up and decide for himself if he wanted to make the most of that genius or be like a lot of people who are gifted children but grow into ordinary adults.

So, I am not mourning the adult Michael Jackson; I of course feel sorry for his family and his children but like Elvis, John Lennon, Marc Bolan, Jimi Hendrix and all the other stars that died young, his music will live on so they almost become immortal anyway. I am mourning that beautiful little boy who was forced to live a life he did not choose that ultimately turned him into the adult who never really engaged with reality, opening himself up to all sorts of allegations. Michael may have made millions happy with his music and his dancing; but the question is, did he ever find true happiness himself?

Monday 1 June 2009

Dreams don’t come true

If had a teenage daughter (and sadly I am old enough to have one), and she took after me and was tall and..ahem..strapping, but had a pretty face (unlike me!) and after people telling her how attractive she was, decided she wanted to enter Miss England, as much as she would hate me for it, I would do all I could to stop her from doing it. Why? Well I know what a cruel world it is out there and even though my daughter might be stunningly pretty and maybe no more than a size 16, which the average UK dress size. She would be entering a world where anything over a size 10 is considered as fat and rather than risk my (imaginary) child at best being laughed at and at worst ending up on a mortuary slab after starving herself to death to keep up with her skinny peers, I’d rather she hated me for a few months.

But that would be acceptable. We live in a world where it’s still OK to call people fat, to laugh at their shortcomings and stop them doing things because they don’t look quite right.

I’m going to be shot down about this, and have the PC police on my back but I have to get this off my chest. Just like my imaginary chubby daughter with the pretty face but the wrong figure to be a beauty queen; Susan Boyle never was going to be able to cope with the fame that was thrown at her. Cards on the table - the woman has learning difficulties. Just because she doesn’t come across as a drooling simpleton or someone with a sweet, childlike demeanour like Benny from Crossroads, it is a fact that she has been crippled by her limitations all of her life and now it transpires that - like a child - her frustrations manifest themselves in terrible rages. When I wrote my previous blog, praising us all for giving her the chance to shine, I, like everyone else just thought she was a simple soul who’d never been given a break.

The moment she started raging and throwing her weight about, all those people back home in Blackburn started saying they knew she had rages like it and had even nicknamed her ‘Ramboyle’. Her brother whinged to the papers that she had been treated badly by the producers of Britain’s Got Talent and it’s their fault she cracked up. No, it’s all those people around her who have encouraged her to pursue her dream of singing who are at fault. Yes she has a lovely voice, but it’s not that exceptional that it would have been some terrible disaster if we’d never got to hear it. What is more important is this poor woman’s mental health. Her overtly but somehow innocent sexual displays are like a young teenager whose hormones are raging but their body doesn’t know how to cope with them; her tantrums when Piers Morgan praised Shaheen Jafagholi is like a child who wants to be their parent’s special little soldier. She may be 48 years old but mentally she is much younger and those around her should have put the brakes on her showbiz aspirations years ago. OK they live in a small village, but do they not have TV, books, magazines, internet? Day in Day out we’re exposed to the ravages of fame, how people are built up and then knocked down. They should have known this would have happened to Susan and drawn a line under this farce a long time ago.

Equal opportunities are fine but just like companies who use positive discrimination to recruit people to fill quotas are wrong and impractical because it should be about the right person for the job rather than who they represent, so should the same go with things like talent contests and reality TV. Susan Boyle is no Jade Goody – a simpleton academically but with a business brain as sharp as a barrow boy. Susan has genuine problems that will always hold her back.

I watched a programme about Tourette’s syndrome the other day. It was contrasting two young men with the condition. The first one, John is the same age as me, the other was a young lad of 15, and just the twenty years between them had made all the difference. John had grown up in a world where Tourettes was treated like a major embarrassment, his own mother even told him to pull himself together and ended up moving across the border to England. Greg, the younger lad is surrounded by a loving family and friends who think his condition is cool. Well, Susan Boyle is another ten years older than John and no doubt when she was growing up, someone with her condition would not have been given any encouragement to develop and integrate with society so her frustration would turn to anger and violent rages. This behaviour is now ingrained in her and it will be how she always reacts when she doesn’t get her own way.

Maybe she will be better off in the US. Americans don’t seem to have the same culture as us where people are built up then knocked down. Maybe her tantrums will just be seen as diva strops and she’ll have a team of psychiatrists to take care of her. Whatever happens, I can’t see this fairy tale ending with a happily ever after.

On a lighter note, I’ve just finished my six hour State of Play marathon. I chose to avoid the Russell Crowe remake as to me Cal McCaffrey will always be John Simm. This is a fantastic thriller and in parts reminds me of The Wire, where the police, press and politics all intertwine. What is also fun to watch is Philip Glenister playing a DCI. He may speak with his London accent and the mannerisms are more controlled, but if you watch closely enough you can still touches of Gene Hunt coming through.

I might watch the film of SoP when it comes out on DVD but I doubt if it will be able to compete. How can that anodyne Ken doll that is Ben Affleck compete with the gorgeous gorgeous David Morrissey? Can Helen Mirren live up to Bill Nighy? No!

Now I’ve got to get thinking about writing my own thriller…I have ideas!

Ciao for now