The First Book of Michael (5 page)

During an interview between Michael and esteemed black rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson, Michael spoke of the heritage of Africa being perennially and intentionally misrepresented; how history has attempted to separate Egypt from the rest of Africa, as though it's on another continent. Remember the time when Africans once ruled the world? Michael and John Singleton did. There are other references to Africa in the
Dangerous
campaign, such as the ‘Heal The World’ logo featuring a globe with a crack over Africa, and the globe basketball at the conclusion of the 'Jam' video, which a child picks up, with the continent of Africa facing the camera.

Spielberg did later take Michael’s advice on making a film with black actors, however. It was called
Amistad
. And it was about African slaves.

The ‘Remember The Time’ short film had also been conceived as a response to the criticism of Michael’s changing skin colour. As Michael promoted the
Dangerous
album, every country he visited ground to a halt upon his arrival; with the unparalleled extent of his fame providing him with a very real power to influence the hundreds of thousands of people he encountered. Every time Michael pounced on a stage during the
Dangerous
world tour - using what he called the ‘toaster’ - he did so to the sound of an attacking panther.

Within six months of the successes of the first two single releases from
Dangerous
, Michael began being ruthlessly pursued by a District Attorney mooted to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Though it was not until after Michael had had the gall to advertise the logo (an interracial shaking of hands) of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
- a society founded by the leaders of black rights protests – during a 1993
Superbowl
halftime performance that was viewed by hundreds of millions of people all over the world; and not until after Michael had disclosed an explanation for his changing skin tone as part of a record-breaking Oprah Winfrey interview – that the child molestation allegations against him were made public.

***

The monster that is the ‘Thriller’ short film means that Michael’s other macabre magnum opus – ‘Ghosts’ – is often overshadowed by its older, colossal cousin. Nevertheless, the festival of Halloween always presents a cobwebbed window of opportunity for the less well-known of the two short films to shine. And although the ‘Thriller’ choreography may well be iconic - in comparison with the sophistication of its kindred cinematic spirit - its artistic significance has the mere pallor of the dead. ‘Ghosts’ is not only a spectacular visual and sonic treat – it is also politically-charged and multi-layered in its themes. Part of the choreography evokes the image of a hanging man.

Michael conceived ‘Ghosts’ as a response to the 1993 child molestation allegations. In the film, Michael plays the roles of a spectre, a skeleton, a demon, an oppressive village mayor, and a demonically-possessed version of said mayor. The aforementioned character played by George Wendt in the ‘Black Or White’ short film, meant we had already encountered one fat, white embodiment (and a substantial body at that) of the reactionary, radical capitalist mentality of Bible Belt (and a substantial belt at that) America. The mayor in ‘Ghosts’ was borne of a rather more specific muse, however - the late District Attorney Tom Sneddon.

It was perhaps fitting that at the hour of Tom Sneddon’s death in 2014, many people across the world were continuing to celebrate the festival of Halloween – the time of year when many people believe that the boundary between the physical and the psychical realm is at its most permeable. Michael’s song ‘Thriller’ and its accompanying short film are synonymous with the mischief of October 31st, its hand-in-glove theme and phenomenal success resulting in it now being universally accepted as the official anthem for the holiday.

The echelons of fame that the
Thriller
album vaulted Michael into contained two major drawbacks for him. Firstly, that he would forever be shackled with the impossible task of striving to improve upon the album’s unprecedented commercial achievements; and secondly, that becoming the most famous person alive meant that the bounty on his head suddenly became dangerously high. Especially after his being shrewd and audacious enough to invest his capital into the white man’s game of music publishing. A very young and uniquely influential black man suddenly became perceived by the establishment as one who was getting disconcertingly above his station.

The first inklings of political nuances in Michael’s self-penned work began with the track ‘Beat It’ from
Thriller
. The political references are necessarily subtle – yet once you have interpreted the lyrics to ‘Beat It’ as concerning nothing less than the narrative of a lynching, it’s hard to imagine the song as being about anything else. Consider the line “Don’t wanna be a boy, you wanna be a man” as a simple reworking of the famous Malcolm X quote, “I ain’t a boy! I’m a man!” Michael sampled Malcolm X for his 1995 track ‘HIStory.’ Consider that “The fire’s in their eyes.”

In ‘D.S.’ – the
HIStory
album diatribe directed towards Tom Sneddon – Michael labels Sneddon a ‘BSTA’. This could be construed as an insinuation of the word ‘bastard’, but certainly as a play on the acronym ‘SBDA’, or ‘Santa Barbara District Attorney’. The repetitive occultist chant that forms both the chorus as well as the denouement to the track dictates that “Tom Sneddon is a cold man”. This mantra is finally terminated by the sound of a gunshot being fired. The start of the song features the unsettling sound of an angry, id-driven baby’s cry.

Michael understood that millions of people around the globe would be chanting along with him to the chorus of ‘D.S’ – with him even taking the unusual step of including the track on the
HIStory
tour set-list. Michael had never before performed such an obscure album number on tour, but he brought out ‘D.S.’ to doubly ensure a communal chant of the ritualistic incantation. The song is shamelessly lip-synced, with Michael at one point handing over the microphone to a backing singer who is wearing an executioner’s mask that completely covers his mouth. One desire of the 1993 extortionists was that Michael would “never sell another record.” Michael was touring the world, performing in front of the largest crowds of his career, promoting the biggest selling double album of all time.

Sneddon had cynically and relentlessly attempted to systematically annihilate Michael. It was Sneddon’s turn to be scared.

Tom Sneddon had written to the FBI asking them to convict Michael under the Mann Act – a law created in 1910 used to entrap boxer Jack Johnson in 1912 for what are now regarded as racially-motivated reasons. In spite of the LAPD having been enthusiastic about this line of enquiry in their pursuit of Michael, the FBI disagreed. Following his failure to bring Michael to trial as a result of the 1993 Chandler case, an unperturbed – or perhaps simply incensed – Sneddon then oversaw a successful change in the law that enabled him to resume his baseless chasing of Michael in 2005.

As part of this second wave of allegations, Neverland was stormed and ransacked. It was a strange, entirely fruitless act that involved hitherto unseen levels of scrutiny, undertaken by the ominous luminosity of metaphorical burning crosses; mob-rule insisting that the “freak circus freak” left the village. Michael had portentously referenced these events in the ‘Ghosts’ short film. And the last thing organised racists would do after carrying out a lynching such as that alluded to in the ‘Beat It’ lyrics? Seize the property of the lynched.

It’s important not to elevate Sneddon as anything more than a footnote in the epic cultural event that was the life and career of Michael. However, it’s an unfortunate and inescapable truth that the emotional agony suffered by Michael at the hands of the sinister Sneddon is what exacerbated Michael’s use of analgesics as an emotional crutch.

There were many facets to Sneddon’s malice: he was the relentless motor obsessed with maintaining the norm, repulsed by the myriad things his pitiful close-mindedness couldn’t begin to comprehend; to Michael’s celebration of imagination, Sneddon was the equivalent of the rote-learning of dead facts; to Michael’s revelry in the ecstasy and infinity of rhythm, life and creation, Sneddon was the monotony of a drone engine seeking to destroy innocence.

And it was this engine that powered Sneddon’s indefatigable, merciless hunt of Michael for over a decade. This trait of irrational tenacity was such an innate one of his, that it earned him the nickname ‘Mad Dog’ – a sobriquet Michael refers to with audible glee as he spits the words “Go’on you dawg, down boy!” during the adlibs of ‘D.S.’

That dog is dead.

***

Michael understood that in order to fight bigotry and prejudice, he had to use his elevated position to capture the minds of children and turn them against the ingrained views of their parents. Which is why “Black Or White” begins with a boy standing up to his father.

The philosopher Friedrich Engels claimed the patriarchal family structure as the basic building block of capitalism: the father as owner, the wife as the means of production, and the offspring as the product. Both the means of production and product were the property of the patriarch. Michael, being black and belonging to the slave class of “the owned”, was daring to steal their most precious of property - their children. As well as also hijacking the hearts of white women.

Another esteemed philosopher, Noam Chomsky, suggests the media’s function is to “…amuse, entertain and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs and codes of behaviour that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society.”

Similarly, the film and music critic Armond White described the media as being “the superego of the status quo”.

And this was another factor that generated the inordinate rage directed towards Michael during the 1993 allegations: the feeling that he was undermining the security of the patriarchal system; that he was somehow “stealing” children away from their fathers. Evan Chandler, the father of the 1993 accuser, even admits in his book that he was jealous of his son wanting to spend more time with Michael than him. Evan Chandler was an estranged father insecure in his role, and felt threatened by the possibility of Michael replacing him.

Which is a natural reaction, albeit one borne of the more bestial elements of human nature – as all jealousy is. The more sinister and premeditated part of Evan Chandler’s scheme, however, was the ruthless extortion attempt in which he was content with the idea of annihilating an innocent man. In truth, Michael did indeed steal the children from the orthodox patriarchy, and provided a new, non-patriarchal model; one exemplified by his later becoming both father and mother to his three children. Michael’s reimagining of the family construct is often viewed as pathological, due to its non-conformity. As Michael said, “They don’t understand it so it makes them feel very uncomfortable”.

The traditional “loving family” does not need to be biological. As humanity is becoming more individualised, there is an evident increase in “tailored families” - tailored to maximise the potential for love.

***

On May 6th 1992, Michael anonymously covered the funeral expenses for Ramon Sanchez, a student killed by police during the Los Angeles riots. The following year, Michael was subjugated to a humiliating strip search by the same LAPD.

Inspired by these events - and by the failure to bring to justice the LAPD police officers that were filmed murdering Rodney King - in 1995, Michael published the protest song ‘They Don’t Care About Us’.

‘Scream- the first track and first single from the
HIStory
album also contains a reference to racism and police brutality. During the bridge, in the background, a radio broadcast reports, “A man has been brutally beaten to death by Police after being wrongly identified as a robbery suspect. The man was an eighteen-year old black male.”

A revelation borne of the 2014 Sony emails hack exposes how ‘They Don’t Care About Us’, prior to its publication, was purposefully dismissed and undermined by
New York Times
journalist Bernard Weinraub. The furore generated by Weinraub’s description of Michael’s entire
HIStory
album, which he described as "profane, obscure, angry and filled with rage" and of ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ as containing “bigoted lyrics” meant that radio stations were reluctant to support Michael. The ‘Prison Version’ of the ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ was banned in the United States.

Weinraub is the husband of Sony Pictures Chief Amy Pascal, who had previously been Vice President of Columbia Pictures, where Michael had had a movie contract that was never honoured. Pascal then became head of Sony Pictures. Weinraub also considered David Geffen amongst his friends. Geffen being the man that chose Michael’s management, as well as being in cahoots with Spielberg for the deception of Michael during the burgeoning
Dreamworks
venture.

On Twitter in December 2014, the hashtag #TheyDontCareAboutUs was trending globally, in reaction to the racially motivated unrest resulting from persisting police brutality in the United States. Michael’s song was resurrected at the grass roots level in many cities across the United States. In Ferguson, the song could be heard emanating through car windows. In New York City and Berkeley, performances of the song formed part of the protests. The Morgan State University choir’s contribution to the protests was a rendition of ‘Heal The World’.