Michael Jackson

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Robin Markowitz

The nucleus of his own mammoth pop sideshow, pop singer Michael Jackson absorbed the most affecting African American musical traditions with which he had grown up, infused them with his own musical eccentricity and the popular trends and technology of the moment, and created a popular explosion of nearly unprecedented proportions. Although perceived as the ultimate sexual, racial, and social "Other," between 1982 and 1984 Jackson helped sell over 40 million copies of the record album called, most appropriately, Thriller. In the late 1980s, Jackson again established new records with his album Bad and its accompanying worldwide concert tour. During the early 1990s, Jackson's inscrutable off-stage antics made him one of the best-known eccentrics in modern history.

By the time Jackson left on the notorious 1984 "Victory Tour" as lead singer of the Jacksons pop-soul singing group, he had already broken all the rules of popular success in the late-twentieth-century music industry. A teen idol without any apparent sexual interests of his own, he attracted a huge popular audience without compromising his black musical roots, and displayed eccentricities that constantly kept him in the headlines. An obviously unhappy man, Jackson revealed his social and personal discontent in his overwhelming, unavoidable, and disturbing strangeness. That strangeness reached disconcerting proportions in 1993, when a thirteen year old Beverly Hills boy made a criminal complaint against Jackson alleging sexual molestation--a claim Jackson repeatedly denied. After a thirteen month investigation--during which time Jackson settled a multi-million dollar lawsuit-- the district attorneys in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties announced that they would not file charges unless and until a child witness agreed to testify against Jackson in open court. They also announced that the case would not close until the statute of limitations ran out in August of 1999.

Those allegations continued to disrupt Jackson's career well into the late 1990s. He suffered financial setbacks during this time and, while his albums still sold well in Europe, they did not fare as well in the United States. As of 1999, Jackson had not recorded an album of all new material since the early 1990s. Instead, he concentrated on arranging his personal financial matters, frequently announcing plans to fund theme parks in such places as Poland, Brazil, Japan, and Las Vegas.

Before the "madness" of Thriller and the subsequent publicity stunts and notorious allegations regarding his personal life, Michael Jackson was a member of a family singing group from Gary, Indiana, called the Jackson Five. In addition to Michael himself, the group originally included four of his five brothers. A child performing sensation from the age of five, Jackson was one of the nation's finest 1960s rhythm & blues vocalists long before his grade school graduation. An acolyte of James Brown and Jackie Wilson, the young Jackson was also a dancer of nearly unmatched ferocity and versatility. His singing skill far surpassed any other child recording artist; young Michael almost literally sang his heart out. The eleven-year-old boy sang of desire, joy, anguish, and loss with all the sophistication and embittered knowledge of a man in his 40s. His presence on the radio in the early 1970s stunned and impressed listeners. Very quickly, the group amassed a vast collection of gold records and was able to move to a California mansion.

Although clearly gifted, Michael did not come by his success "naturally"; he was trained by a fierce, brutal, and unforgiving group leader: his father. Joseph Jackson was a crane operator at a Gary steel mill who left a music career behind in the early 1950s to support his rapidly growing family. He put his guitar away in a closet as a "memory piece" and warned the children never to touch it. When nine-year-old Tito Jackson was caught playing the guitar in 1962, he was, by his own account, "torn up" by his father. This was the founding event of the Jackson Five; after the incident with Tito, Joseph began to organize the youngsters into a singing group. The group, at first, did not include three-and-a-half-year-old Michael; he made his entrance when his parents caught him imitating older brother Jermaine's singing. They were alarmed and delighted, and Michael was immediately installed as the group's tiny new front man.

Michael and his siblings have reported being beaten and terrorized by their father during their childhood. Joseph Jackson ran long daily rehearsal sessions armed with belts and switches, which he used with frequency and severity. Sister La Toya Jackson has said that the beatings the siblings endured were bloody and often involved the use of fists, while Michael reported in his autobiography that he fought back with his own small fists. "I would fight back and my father would kill me, just tear me up. Mother told me I'd fight back even when I was very little, but I don't remember that. I do remember running under tables to get away from him, and making him angrier." Joseph denied this charge to the Associated Press with telling succinctness: "Maybe I should've punched La Toya, like any other normal parent would do, but La Toya stayed quiet and never did get into any trouble or nothing." La Toya Jackson also made charges of sexual abuse against her father, which he has repeatedly denied. At the age of thirty-four, Michael said he was still frightened of his father and that on meeting him, he often "would get sick; I would start to regurgitate." Joseph responded to this, too. "If he regurgitated," Joseph told Michelle McQueen on ABC-TV's Day One program in 1993, "he regurgitated all the way to the bank."