So, apparently, they were serious when they said "Memorial Service."
It was easy to expect that the Michael Jackson farewell would be something of a Vegas Lounge Room of schlock... but instead it was a non-denominational service in the Church of Everyone.
The Church of Everyone is that secular notion of "religion" we have in our public consciousness. It's the reason the "religious right" can never completely win - because in one sense they already did, and in another, everything they try to accomplish is immediately co-opted. When a televangelist becomes more concerned with makeup and hairstyles, or the design of the set, or making the musical program more tuneful and upbeat... that's the Church of Everyone taking over.
The Church of Everyone is vaguely Protestant, vaguely Christian, but tends to include new-age elements meant to cover outlying elements like Buddhism, Muslims, and the less religious. If there are bible quotes, it's usually something you knew about anyway, but often Old Testament, where Jews and Christians can all agree. The Church of Everyone covers your general events where some nod to religion is needed; it's especially good for weddings, and mass events... and Memorial Services.
I hadn't expected a Church of Everyone service for Michael Jackson, but now, it seems clear, that it was the right way to go. The Memorial to Michael Jackson had, of course, it's uncomfortable, even tasteless, moments. But at its best, it did actually provide closure, and befitted Michael Jackson's legacy... as the enormous celebrity with the very public life.
For me, the moment when things came together was when Brooke Shields spoke. Looking as glamorous as ever - I'm always struck by how much of a model she remains - Shields spoke, earnestly and from the heart, about a friend she cared about who had died. She did a lovely job of deconstructing images we had all seen - remember when the two of them went on "dates", and we all thought it was weird? As she pointed out, for them, it wasn't. Both were extremely famous children (you had to be there to understand how transcendant the Brooke Shields Calvin Klein ad was, and how scandalous that she was only 15), and few understood the pressures they had, the strangeness of the world around them.
"Both of us needed to be adults very early" Shields said, and in that, I think, was as concise a sum-up of child stardom as anyone could give. Shields cut through the clutter, the generic celebrity worship that plagued Jackson in life and stands to overwhelm him in death, and reminded us - me anyway - of the actual person she had known. And yet, she also magnified the weirdnesses around Michael - describing a "mischievous incident" when she and Jackson tried to steal a glimpse of Elizabeth's Taylor's wedding dress (you have to be pretty old to say "which one?" and get the joke) on her wedding night... only to discover Taylor was in the room, sleeping. That super-celebrity trifecta may put Shields in Celebrity Heaven all on its own.
But most of all, Shields offered a notion of Jackson that no one else had - quoting Saint-Exupery's Le Petit Prince, she made an eloquent case that Michael was the Prince, and that, as a flickering flame, "lamps need to be protected." That sweet, small, gentle image made a world of difference, I think, in humanizing who Michael Jackson was, in the best sense. And it led to probably the best musical performance of the day - Jermaine Jackson's heartfelt rendition of Charlie Chaplin's "Smile."
Yes, bringing in the coffin was a bit much. Yes, some people - that means you, Berry Gordy - might have spent less time promoting themseves and more time focusing on why they were there. And it probably could have used a lot less of the kind of the defensiveness emanating from Al Sharpton and Sheila Jackson Lee. It ran long. Musically, I'm not sure Jackson was all that well represented; many of the singers were in surprisingly bad voice (Mariah Carey, Lionel Richie, even Jennifer Hudson), and the material wasn't necessarily doing them any favors (Usher was fine... but Gone Too Soon probably needed a woman to capture its true delicacy). John Mayer's odd, instrumental presence on Human Nature also seemed ill chosen... though it underscored how, lyrically, so little of Jackson's work was suited to the occasion. But by sticking to the bland, hymn'like anthems of his later career, some of who he really was - the confrontational, demanding, paranoid element in his music - simply became invisible. Like the gospel chorus that led him in - "Soon and Very Soon (I'm going to see the King)" - it's easy to go too far in defying Michael Jackson.
But that, in essence, is the Church of Everyone - it's a church where God exists as a very distant older relative, and what we worship most, really is ourselves, and each other; and where, as long as we vaguely support ideas of doing good and being nicer to one another, we can believe ouselves to be good, decent people. And in that Church of Everyone... who would imagine a King? Or at least a Little Prince? Letting go of Michael Jackson wasn't, as I said earlier, about the singer or the dancer... it was the end of the cultural significance he embodied, the power of celebrity, and the unhappy circumstances that left him, stuck, in a gilded cage. That the ceremony managed to provide the sense of closure, and a measure of humanity for Michael Jackson was what made it, ultimately, a remarkable event. And if it suggests that we also worship the wrong things... well, I can't say you'd be wrong about that, either.
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