"Thriller" -- Michael Jackson
Five a.m . Darkness, save for scanty shapes of moonlight on the leaves outside my window and the screaming glass screen perched before me like a life.
Thoreau wrote that most men live lives of quiet desperation and I’m sure my preacher friend Torosian had this in mind when wrote a series of sermons he called “The Zombie Apocalypse.” Zombies and vampires are in vogue right now and Torosian says Christians need to – not necessarily imitate the culture – but engage the culture. Something like being in the world without being part of the world. He asked Martha, a dance teacher in the congregation, if she would choreograph a group of dancers re-enacting Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
Sometimes I find myself enervated by a noonday demon. It’s like I’m among the walking dead. A 21-year-old J. Guy, himself, no stranger to depression, was nevertheless a bolt of frantic vivacity, lustful for a stage, experience, about nine different lives. I channeled that person when I volunteered to be one of the dancing zombies. It was pretty groovy, rehearsing the steps alongside corpulent ex-high school football players, a mom or two and teenagers from the church drama group.
We performed our Thriller routine for both Sunday services. The darkened sanctuary became strangely sepulchral while a narrow overhead light beamed from the projection booth to the stage. Silence was interrupted by the sound of a creaking door, a noise like something out of that Vincent Price movie we saw in Mrs. H’s English class in junior high, House of Usher. Edgar Allen Poe, you know. At the third wolf howl, we arose slowly like corpses from a tomb and hobbled Frankenstein-like to the stage where we transmogrified like Lazarus into living people.
Our dance moves were comically herky-jerky in contrast to the fluid motion of the mutant beings in Jackson’s iconic video. Bu it was cool, good for a laugh. Having practiced those steps, I can say my respect for Jackson as an artist has risen significantly. No doubt, he was agile and fit. He was a dazzling performer and when I was in junior high, Michael Jackson was the most popular person on the planet.
Join the Pepsi generation
The first Jackson song I remember hearing, other than I Wanna Rock With You, was Billie Jean. Heard it on Casey Casem’s American Top 40. It had just slipped from the charts that summer in 1983 when Jackson’s next hit supplanted it in popularity. During the summer, I would go to weight lifting at the high school at 7 a.m. Monday through Friday. Then I would stay for an hour of aerobics, in which spandex wearing woman leading us played Beat It on a jam box. I was surprised to hear the rock guitar (which I later learned was from Eddie Van Halen) in a black disco star’s music.
On Christmas Eve at my Grandma Mac’s house I opened a present from my cousin Dean. It was Jackson’s Thriller album. I was more into stuff like AC/DC and Ozzy Ozbourne. AC/DC songs like Hell’s Bells and Ozzy Ozbourne’s possessed looking eyes glaring from album covers featuring lightning bolts and upside down crosses. Now that was Halloween, the dark side. Not Jackson’s pop horror.Open-minded guy that I was, though, I gave Jackson’s Thriller a chance. I liked some songs from it, didn’t like others. Still I recognized that the album as a whole was polished and professional. Jackson also revolutionized the video industry. Music videos had previously been crude and primitive, but Jackson and the production team working with him elevated them to an art form.
Approaching Los Angeles gang members and teaching them the sophisticated choreography for the Beat It video – that was brave and innovative. Thriller was hands down Jackson’s best video, the music video equivalent of an epic motion picture. While I may have written off the video’s scare factor, watching it today as a parent, I can see how Thriller, with its growling werewolf and demonic looking dancers, could be disturbing to small children.
All I understood at the time was that Michaelmania had taken over the world. Everything he touched was a media event. Michael Jackson made a Pepsi commercial. MTV produced a documentary about it. Michael and his brothers went on a world tour and you could buy their signatures on a Pepsi can. Michael Jackson moonwalked through a door Little Richard, Jackie Wilson and James Brown had opened and kicked it out of the solar system.
My mom took my siblings and I to Worlds of Fun in Kansas City the next summer and every kid there was wearing a Michael Jackson T-shirt. Sure he was over-exposed, but the media tentacles of the time didn’t stretch over a million brands of smart phones with a bunch of slobbering babies, homeless karaoke singers and obese Americans farting the alphabet and going viral every 15 seconds. Jackson's media presence was still massive and gluttonous.
I rummaged ravenously through my grandma Guy’s collection of National Enquirers, Stars and Globes where there was always hot stories about the day’s celebrities – Liz Taylor, Dolly Parton, Frank Sinatra (was he hosing Nancy Reagan or what?) and of course Michael Jackson. Long before the tabloids made him a fixture with lurid tales of sexual perversion, excess and mental breakdown, the gossip was innocuous. Was he sleeping with Brooke Shields? Jackson was a Jehovah’s Witness and there were all these accounts of the sect’s elders riding his back about his worldliness. That summer in 1984, reading those tabloids, I concluded that the JW leaders were a bunch of stuffy old men.
Earlier that year, I’d felt more magnanimous toward the sect. I had receThe Love You Make. Read how they went to India and studied meditation from a guru. One day in math class I said to my friend, Drake, who wore a red jacket, sleeves pushed to the elbows and sported perm-gelled hair like Jackson “Hey, wouldn’t it be neat if Michael Jackson’s religion becomes popular just like the Beatles’ did?” I was naïve as hell then.ntly read Peter Brown’s sensationalized biography of the Beatles,
Years later I would look out my window, spot these sharp dressed people with their book bags and Watchtowers, approaching my house and I’d answer the door in my underwear, holding a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
I don’t know, maybe they were going to talk to me about the approaching end of the world. A lot of religions have jumped on that crazy train, mixing Armageddon theology with extremist right wing politics. Torosian isn’t emphasizing the end times with his Zombie Apocalypse sermons. I’d say he’s more concerned with the personal apocalypse that haunts people – depression, schizophrenia, meth addiction, broken dreams, failed relationships, job loss. Stuff like that. Torosian cares about broken people and telling them about Christ’s grace.
Back in junior high, I didn’t realize how temporary the world is. Didn’t know my particular youth culture was not the apex of Western civilization. Didn’t realize how scary fame can be. Michael Jackson’s final years were tragic. Even worse than Elvis's.
It’s mentally conflicting, contemplating broken lives. Forced to rehearse, record and perform throughout his childhood, Jackson missed out on playing outdoors and doing the normal things kids do – something he lamented for the rest of his life. Yet Jackson loved performing with a passion. Most likely he wouldn’t have been the performer he was, had he not slaved away as a child. Great things can spring from sorrowful origins. And that's hell to accept.
I’m trying to get through life. My wife, Maria, tells me to go out and have fun. Discuss classic books. Go bowling. Be in some skit at church. Trick or treat with the kids. My friend Jackson (no relation to Michael) – if I call him (can't text because he has no cell) and say I’m bored, he’ll reply, “So write.” When I do, it’s like I’m channeling something good, kind of spiritual.
