by Syl Mortilla
And then along came Jarvis Cocker: the historical footnote frontman for Britpop band, Pulp.
The day after Cocker’s cynical stage invasion of Michael’s performance of ‘Earth Song’ at The Brits ‘96, one newspaper headline read, “The Night Our Young Dreams Were Pulped”.
This surprising message of media support for Michael was ephemeral, however. Once it had been noted that young and trendy Brits were not in agreement with the media stance, the backlash began. The following week, Cocker was interviewed on cult TV programme, TFI Friday. The programme contained a live audience of young adults, who mocked Michael and championed Cocker throughout. The host, Chris Evans, concluded the interview with the words, “We all support you and know it was just a bit of a laugh.”
What it actually was, was a cultural watershed: a paradigm shift in the morality of a generation. Those children who had grown up entranced by Michael transforming into cars and robots in an effort to defeat a drug baron, suddenly became ‘Cool Britannia’ Blairites. But it was okay. At least they were all ‘Sorted for E’s and Wizz’.
A year previously, Chris Evans, who was also a BBC Radio 1 DJ, had been the person to premiere ‘Scream’ on UK radio. After the song’s unveiling- its opening lyric being, “Tired of injustice” - Evans immediately commenced a campaign to castrate the track: adamantly refusing to play the original version, insisting on the minimal playing of a remix (and not the ‘Scream Louder’ version, which incorporates the bassline from ‘Thank You’ by Sly and the Family Stone - one of Michael’s favourite songs).
Upon the release of the HIStory album a few weeks later, Evans then proceeded to use his popular breakfast show to disproportionately slate Michael and the album. The subsequent success of the album and its singles (‘You Are Not Alone’ laying claim as the first ever song to debut at number one on the Billboard Charts; ‘Earth Song’ outselling ‘Billie Jean’ in the UK, with it holding the number one spot for seven weeks - including the much-coveted and hotly-contested Christmas Number One position), meant Evans then had to backtrack.
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The AEG trial that exposed Randy Phillips’ damning email correspondence, also revealed that if Michael had lived, he could have expected to earn over a billion dollars from the This Is It venture. The unprecedented demand for tickets to see This Is It meant - had Michael been physically capable of following orders - he would have eventually played to one million people. That’s a tremendous amount of people representing a whole range of demographics who wanted to go and see Michael: a man who had essentially become a cult following during the noughties, having gone full-circle since the cult following of his band, the Jackson 5 in the sixties. Before they exploded onto the world stage.
The day Michael died, the social network Twitter collapsed at 3:15pm, exact. Upon this internationally-sensed, seismic-shock, the resultant grief expressed by the planet at such an irreplaceable loss for humanity became manifest in myriad ways.
Conspiracy theories abound: had Michael known he was going to die when he did? When he had whooped the This Is It press-conference crowd into frenzied delirium with the chant, “This is it! This is it!” – had he literally meant this - this moment – is it? Conspiracy theories ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime: had Michael been targeted by secret NASA technology possessing the capacity to identify and exterminate any specific target on the globe – their motive being that, during the This Is It run of shows, they had reason to believe he was going to expose the insidious Illuminati elite?
Then there were those that point-blank refused to accept that he had died. A theory spawning a faction of fans who persevere in referring to themselves as ‘BeLIEvers’: a small group of seemingly sorry souls.
(I appreciate this could ostensibly be interpreted as an insensitive stance, but – from the BeLIEvers I’ve had the misfortune to encounter, at least – they promote their agenda for reasons much less fuelled by the denial synonymous with grief, and much more by one powered by necromaniacal voyeurism.)
BeLIEvers are inordinately proud of themselves for having noticed that, in the English language – on occasion – shorter words sometimes exist within longer ones (although the rudimentary rules of any language discourage those words ever being capitalised). This apparently startling syntactic revelation is the bedrock of the BeLIEver self-delusion system: an ethos that actively promulgates the idea of Michael being alive – with him merely residing on the sidelines of civilisation, in the guise of various individuals ranging from tragic burns victim and famous recipient of Michael’s philanthropic aid, Dave Dave, to the very man convicted of killing Michael himself - Conrad Murray.
This lunatic fringe group put stock in such things as the reading of messages in the creases of the lips of the images of Michael that adorn posthumous album covers. The beyond-the-grave (nudge nudge, wink wink) messages vary; depending, of course, upon the native language of the interpreter.
BeLIEvers claim that the picture taken of Paris Jackson prior to her suicide attempt, in which she is sporting self-harm scars on her arm, was photoshopped - and that she is both aware of and complicit in perpetuating the hoax. Or else – with frightening contrariety – that Paris’ attempt to take her own life was a ruse to draw Michael from hiding; that – for all Michael’s self-defining concern for the welfare of other people’s children – it’s impossible for him to emerge from exile, and so simply refuses to intervene and console his own children in their agonised grief. Because the sanity of his kin must be duly sacrificed in lieu of the accomplishment of the bigger plan – a scheme of insidious deceit that essentially boils down to the most distasteful magic trick in history. The reveal to which, would be Michael’s instant arrest and incarceration as a consequence of the somewhat misjudged endeavour being responsible for an innocent man having spent time in jail.
The voluntary acquiescence involved that allows oneself to hold such beliefs is not a symptom of grief; it is a result of purposeful self-perversion. And supporting such sentiments as these strikes at the very core of Michael’s lived and hard-earned philosophy.
Fans of Elvis Presley that continued to insist on his persistent hip-thrusting upon this mortal coil, became a global laughing-stock (although their wordplay of ELVIS being an anagram of LIVES is actually far more credible – if only for the reason of it not having been randomly plucked from the ether as the term ‘beLIEver’ evidently was). However, the importance of their idol’s legacy – compared to ours – pales in significance. Quite apart from the fact that Elvis fans didn’t have to constantly contend with defending their idol against incessant accusations of paedophilia.
What with Michael’s fans being all-too-often dismissed as deranged due to the actions of a loud, lunatic minority, Michael’s vitally important message of kindness and brotherly love – particularly in the current global political climate – ends up becoming massively undermined. The lunacy plays directly into the hands of those wishing to smear his legacy. The BeLIEver movement represent a part of the integrity of Michael’s art and soul that we must reclaim.
For the minority of BeLIEvers holding on out of genuine feelings of bereavement, perhaps they simply can’t believe he’s gone, because of course he’s still here. Some things last forever. To live in the hearts and memories of those we leave behind is not to die, so in that sense Michael is surely more alive than any deceased person has ever been.
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Considering the infinite permutations of perspective created by Michael’s perfect storm: his level of fame; his being victimised; his own oracular propaganda technique of the dissemination of factoids; and the advent during this time of that supreme catalyst for suspicion, paranoia and unfounded hearsay – the Internet, it’s hardly surprising that fans of Michael are so often daubed with the conspiracy theorist brush.
Michael’s use of ambiguous imagery in the artwork for both the Dangerous and Blood on the Dance Floor albums provides a treasure chest for nuanced interpretation. The rational perspective is that the
se choices of cover artwork are merely an extension of the intentionally enigmatic promotional tactics utilised during the Bad campaign: such as the Elephant Man’s bones and Hyperbaric Chamber controversies. Many others insist, however, that Michael had exorcised himself of such gimmickry with the release of Dangerous. Which therefore means Michael must have been attempting to use the imagery to covertly communicate the danger he was in: that the assembly line winding through the Dangerous album cover represents Michael’s journey from Illuminati slave to Illuminati whistleblower; that Michael dancing on the checkered floor adorning the Blood On The Dance Floor cover represents his being emancipated from the role of Illuminati pawn.
Others argue that the 1997 Blood on the Dance Floor cover is portentous – that it is no coincidence that Michael’s legs are positioned on the Manhattan skyline in situ of where the Twin Towers once stood, with his arms pointing to what would be the numbers 9 and 11 on a clock face. This interpretation is made further intriguing by the knowledge that Michael missed a meeting in the World Trade Centre on that fateful morning of 2001 – being late for the appointment due to over-sleeping after performing at his 30th Anniversary celebration concert, held at Madison Square Garden the previous night.
According to Illuminati observers, all the signs are that Michael became associated with this alleged egregious gang of elites just prior to making the Thriller album. Conspiracy theorists correlate Michael’s increasing closeness to the Disney Corporation in the late seventies and early eighties with the rite of passage that - these days - is the Disney Club scholarship that all aspiring Satanists must now undertake. With Miley Cyrus being the most recent alumnus. Indeed, according to some conspiracy theorists, the song ‘Thriller’ - which was originally entitled ‘Starlight’ and themed on love, with lyrics including, “High in the night / This magic’s gonna keep us close together / We’ll start to fly / ‘Cause this is the beginning of your life” - was turned into the occult-revering track ‘Thriller’ in order to satisfy a bargain with Satan: a deal in which Michael’s fame was eternally guaranteed as a result of recording and performing the seminal soundtrack to the annual celebration of evil known as Halloween, and therefore being forever and inextricably linked with it. Decades later, and barely a Disney or Dreamworks animation goes by without the obligatory inclusion of the film’s characters performing the ‘Thriller’ choreography as part of the DVD extras. Add all this to the stories involving the speakers exploding during Eddie Van Halen’s recording of the ‘Beat It’ solo and of Michael’s snake, Muscles, making itself at home on the mixing desk during the album’s production, and it’s easy to see where such mythology derives from.
Elite-terrorised conspiracy theorists scour the Internet for evidence of ritualistic acts that they believe are precursors to celebrity sacrifice. They contend that such events are practice-runs, one instance being the model made of Amy Winehouse before she died, in which she is pictured in a pool of blood, holding a Minnie Mouse mask. They point to the ‘Thriller’ short film itself, in which Michael is killed, as being his version of this. (Of course, Michael is also then reanimated in the video – the theme of resurrection a recurrent theme in his work, occurring as it does in both Moonwalker and Ghosts. But far be it from me to provide the BeLIEvers with any further ammunition). Famously, to appease the Jehovah’s Witness movement, of which Michael was an active member, he was forced to precurse the ‘Thriller’ video with a disclaimer (actually penned by its director, John Landis) stating that the short film in no way endorsed a belief in the occult. Michael performed ‘Thriller’ right up to - quite literally - his dying day.
Awards shows appear to be most popular with Illuminati interpreters. No international award show goes by without its accompanying YouTube video pointing out the all-seeing-eye subliminally worked into a stage consisting of a suspiciously pyramidal construct. Pyramids, diamonds, and celebrities covering one eye, or using the Baphomet (devil horns) hand sign are like red flags to conspiracy theorists. Any celebrity referring to any of these themes is immediately fingered as a victim of mind control, a mere puppet performing a bit-role in the Elite’s masterplan of creating the perfect welcome party for the coming of the antichrist and the ideal culture for his apocalyptic endgame. And it’s true that these ostensibly incongruous motifs are inordinately alluded to in recent popular culture (Frank Ocean’s ‘Pyramids’, Rihanna’s ‘Diamonds’ and Beyonce’s Superbowl Illuminati gesture, to note but three examples from 2013), although I imagine that’s a lot more to do with the commercial advantages of playing up to Internet virality, rather than ritualistic acts of subservience to honour a taurine or strigine deity.
Indeed, Michael himself was a prolific user of the Baphomet hand signal. And the original title for the song ‘Liberian Girl’ was ‘Pyramid Girl’.
In spite of the ‘Thriller’ video disclaimer, rumours would persist. One story alleging that Michael hired the services of a witch doctor to enact revenge on Steven Spielberg, after the movie director’s reneging on a deal involving Michael being a partner in the Dreamworks SKG enterprise (the company retained the use of the logo of the boy on the crescent moon that Michael had created as the emblem for Neverland).
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The accumulated financial wealth of the richest eighty-five people on the planet, is more than that of the poorest three-and-a-half-billion people on the planet combined. It is this financial elite of people that are often the focal points for conspiracy theories. Even the Queen of England – by no means on the list of eighty-five – warned the late Princess Diana’s butler with the words, “Be careful… No one has been as close to a member of my family as you have. There are forces at work in this country about which we have no knowledge. Do you understand?”
In this world divided between those struggling to make a living and those intent on limitlessly potentiating their already galactic financial situation, Michael was the shining example of the profligate philanthropist – giving more than three-hundred-million dollars to charity – with the will held by the Estate requesting a (still unsanctioned) bequest of a further twenty percent of his assets to good causes.
The image of PT Barnum’s head on the front cover of the Dangerous album is often confused with that of renowned Satanist, Aleister Crowley. This mistake is either down to the malicious motivations of those that insist on promoting Michael as being something he wasn’t, or another byproduct of Michael’s self-concocted mist of mystery.
As for the cover of the Dangerous album – surely it is the most underrated of all time? Michael commissioned pop-surrealist artist Mark Ryden to create the image. It’s an enigmatic masterpiece, one that reveals a new detail with each perusal. Much like the nuances of the music contained on the album itself. (As an experiment, put a mirror down the centre of the cover artwork. The results are equally fascinating and terrifying. It encapsulates perfectly the idea of Michael and dichotomy. Try it.)
Certainly, the promotional campaign for the Dangerous album did little to disassociate Michael from the Occult, what with David Lynch – fresh from the supernatural horror TV Series Twin Peaks – hired to direct the Dangerous teaser: a surrealist nightmare set to the loudening sound of industrial drums, in which Michael’s head emerges from a fiery pit, before steadily floating towards the viewer across a barren, hellish landscape and finally settling on a close-up of Michael’s eyes.
Furthermore, immediately prior to Michael’s appearance on the stage during the Dangerous tour, Carl Orff’s connotation-laden classic ‘O Fortuna’ - instantly recognisable as the music announcing someone’s imminent doom in horror-movie, The Omen – was played as the soundtrack to the accompanying idol-worship video, Brace Yourself. Michael also used a sample from another horror-flick inspired soundtrack in ‘Human Nature’ – namely, ‘Tubular Bells’. As used with chilling effect in The Exorcist.
Along with the love of their mother, of music, of animals, of other children, of cartoons and of theme parks, the supernatural also factors on the rather limit
ed list of interests entertained by the ten-year old boy – as does an acute sense of injustice, and an innate need to rectify it. Whatever dabbling with the supernatural Michael may have done, it carries with it this air of naivety.
Besides, in counterbalance, for every ‘Scream’ there was a ‘Smile’ (indeed, the HIStory album itself can be interpreted as a journey of catharsis); for every angry spit there was an ethereal melody (sometimes in the very same song – ‘HIStory’ and ‘Morphine’, to name but two. Michael even used the flute from John Williams’ Jaws theme in ‘Heal The World’); for every demonic entrance, there was an angel’s embrace. In This Is It, the only examples of music from the Invincible album that we hear, are the gentle ‘Speechless’ and its macabre sonic antithesis, ‘Threatened’.
When ‘Scream’ was released, critical commentators queried how the ordinary person could relate to the song, considering the uniqueness of the subject matter that had spurred its inception. The response was that the refrain, "Stop pressurin' me" could be interpreted and extrapolated by listeners, who would make it relevant to the general frustrations of everyday life. The same principle applies to what was the Double A-side track to ‘Scream’: ‘Childhood’ - which can be individually appreciated by anyone that feels the need to implore others to attempt to understand them by asking them to see the injustices they suffered as youths. As Michael sang,