Michael Jackson--a hallowed vessel: The Enthrallment Phenomenon

Michael Jackson has provided the masses with an opportunity to embrace entrallment. Who knows who Michael Jackson really was? Even his closest friends found him enigmatic. What we have in the memorials and kudos since his passing is the "use" of Jackson as a national, even international, moment for emotional catharsis. The human, Michael Jackson, is irrelevant. And considering his personal pains and failings, we conveniently and graciously seem to be granting him his due as a talented entertainer, as a way of putting aside his idiosyncrasies in order to embrace entrallment.

We--the media, his fans, his famous friends and fellow performers at least--are erasing, even denying, his weirdness. And those with any decency allow this moment of eulogy at the person's demise. We are casting his symbolism and filling it with accounts of his genius, sensitivity, and talent.

There is authenticity to these testimonies as far as they go. But in the process, his faults become only frailties. The waves of adulation become the phenomenon. Michael Jackson turns into what we need him to be. He had enough obvious star quality to fill the bill. But what we witness is the turning of a human into a man (or child) for the ages. We are doing it for the cathartic effect. We are, for the moment, entralled. The actual Michael Jackson becomes the illusion. And that is fine, as long as we admit what we are doing.

Doug Good