- Family ties: Michael Jackson’s siblings and children, Janet (from left), Paris, LaToya, Jermaine and Prince Michael share the stage at the Staples Center. (AP)
Given that Michael Jackson was the ringmaster of the world’s foremost entertainment circus, I was expecting his final act to be a spectacle. An extravaganza.
Cirque du Soleil with a casket.
Instead, Tuesday’s memorial service turned out to be a nice, almost ordinary family funeral. Sure, it was a family funeral at a basketball arena with about 9,000 ticket-holders, concerns about crowd control, an international television audience, a congressional proclamation and a poem written for the occasion by Maya Angelou.
But the most striking moments at Los Angeles’ Staples Center were those that highlighted not Michael Jackson, the icon, but a complicated human being. Who built and burned bridges. Who will be glorified and vilified but, at least on this day, was grieved for by his mother who misses him. By his stoic brother who told a funny story about Michael’s shoes and wailed, “I hurt.”
And by a beautiful, sobbing daughter who misses her father.
And in that moment, Michael Jackson wasn’t an icon. He was somebody’s daddy. And no matter how you felt about him, how could you not hurt a little, too?
Of course, part of his appeal was that he was at once human and larger than life. Only a superstar gets a service produced by High School Musical director Kenny Ortega. And as much as you love her poetry, Angelou is probably never going to write a poem when you die, let alone hand it to Queen Latifah to read.
But there were moments, amid the pomp, celebrity and dance breaks, that fondly reminded me of every funeral I’ve ever been to. There was the sweet but inappropriately dressed niece (Mariah Carey and her cleavage). The uncle who droned on too long, trying to be memorable but mostly enjoying his own droning (Al Sharpton).
The godfather who sang a church song even though he knew half the attendees weren’t religious (Lionel Richie and his lovely rendition of the Commodores’ gospel hit Jesus Is Love). The other uncle who quietly, humbly blew everyone away with his tribute because he let his song and his tears speak for him (Stevie Wonder and his heartbreaking, “Oh Michael, why didn’t you stay” on Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer.)
And there were moments when someone’s private grief became so public that you wanted to look away and couldn’t, like heir apparent Usher singing directly to the rose-covered casket. It could have been a showboat gesture, grotesque, but when I watched Usher crumble in tears, I thought, “This is real.”
And no matter what I knew about Michael Jackson, I hurt.
Maybe it’s because I am a realist, as a journalist and as a human being, that I am suspicious of any memorial service in which no one ever mentions the foibles of the dearly departed — my retired pastor grandfather always talks about preaching the funerals of known rascals, raconteurs and scoundrels lauded as the second coming of Martin Luther King.
So I was pleased that amid the deification, however sincere, by the famous fans who were inspired by him or knew him on the periphery, there were glimpses of the flawed but human man lying in that casket. Of course, nobody came out and said, “And despite those charges, this was a great guy!” But the best moments were the most honest.
Motown founder Berry Gordy’s address, for instance, was astonishing. Here was the man who first marketed this child and set him on the road to be an international commodity, admitting how competitive and overwhelming an environment Motown was, and who actually, tactfully mentioned Michael’s “questionable choices” and then left it at that.
More astonishing was the luminous, overcome Brooke Shields, who spoke about how everybody thought her friendship with Michael was weird, when it was, to her, the most natural thing in the world. And here is why: They’d both had their childhoods sexualized, merchandised and scrutinized from Day One, and no one got it but each other.
And that’s why those moments where Michael’s weirdness and awkwardness were mentioned along with his wonderfulness, meant so much more than when the speaker tried to explain the oddness away. I’m sure Al Sharpton meant to be comforting when he spoke directly to little Paris, Prince Michael and Prince Michael “Blanket” II and told them, “There was nothing strange about your daddy. It was strange what your daddy had to deal with.”
But even though Sharpton got a standing ovation, that bit left me a little cold, because it wasn’t true. Of course, Michael Jackson was strange, and not just in the lurid ways we’re not supposed to remember at his funeral. He was a grown man in sequined epaulets who lived at an amusement park. His kid’s nickname was Blanket. He went out of his way to be strange, but still managed to be someone we marveled at, felt close enough to be disappointed in, and, ultimately, loved.
It would have been tragic if, in this final tribute, we hadn’t been allowed to remember that.
