Childhood’s End: MICHAEL JACKSON Tribute

7 July 2009 :: Lauren Eldridge :: This Just In!

Kindah Mardam Bey, Publisher and Senior Editor of Press+1, writes a stirring tribute to the King of Pop, explaining our sense of loss by exploring her recollections of Michael Jackson throughout her childhood. See the original article on Press+1.

Quite possibly one of the hardest pieces I will ever write is this tribute to Michael Jackson. The reason I am a part of the entertainment industry has a great deal to do with the King of Pop. I was five years old when the album Thriller was released and a subsequent two years later singles were still being released off the album until its final single was released with the music video that would change history. In total, between the age of five and ten for me, Michael Jackson was the most popular man on earth. Boys wanted to be him, girls wanted to marry him, I simply adored him. Too young to comprehend love for a boy, I just knew I adored everything about him and by everyone’s standards, Michael was the coolest person ever born.

The red jackets, the pink shirts, the short pants and that predestined sparkling glove were an odd combination that we all seemed to become enamoured by. All of his fashion sense and dance moves were distributed by the largest scale music video releases; you could find “Beat It”, “Billie Jean” and “Thriller” on any channel at anytime. Boys would dance in the mall parking lots to ghetto blasters belting out Michael’s pop chants. I distinctly remember seeing the “Beat It” music video one day and dissecting every moment of it as I watched; which is the exact moment I started to analyze entertainment and appreciate its structure.

I had two T-Shirts, one pink and one white that had Michael Jasckson’s Thriller album cover printed on the front. I would make my Mother wash one at a time so that I could wear these shirts on a daily basis. When we moved from Canada to England I would be on my bike outside my house and people would stop their vehicle, and in a drive-by Michael enquiry, would run out and ask me where I got my T-shirt from; “Canada” was not quite the answer they were looking for.

When Jackson took the stage at the Motown 25 on March 25^th 1983 to debut the moonwalk and the sparkling glove in his “Billie Jean” number we all felt like the floor had dropped out from beneath us. What had just happened? How did he do that? Did the stage move? We knew in that moment we were watching history, and it was one of those fun moments of history as well; not a war being announced, or some tragic incident, but one of those rare historical moments where the history involved magic.

For me, for everyone, it would ultimately be about the music video Thriller. We had a satellite dish and would watch the video every night, followed by “The Making Of Thriller” which showed how they used little pumps and hours of make-up to change Michael into a werewolf, or how the zombies clothes had been weathered by being thrown in puddles and dirt rubbed in. We had to do this ritual nightly as I was terrified of werewolf Michael until I had seen “The Making Of Thriller”. What I discovered in watching these two things over and over again, was how films were made, and I was hooked. I wanted to be a part of that world, a part of Michael’s world.

Of course, these are my memories and thank yous to a living legend that so recently left us with a deep amount of regret and sadness. Where did it all change? When did we jump ship and abandon him? We can probably blame the plastic surgeries, the slander, court cases, and general mass confusion at this tragic and misunderstood man who was vetted and lived in the spotlight since being five himself. What seems to be happening on a global level is people remembering Michael Jackson now he has gone; like we all temporarily lost or misplaced those memories of a bright-eyed boy who connected many of us to an irreplaceable joy.

A lot of people are still attempting to take their pound of flesh from Michael Jackson, but many are finally allowed to break their silence and give him a voice. Finally, all those celebrities he interacted with over the years speak about being friends with him, or knowing him for a brief interim and understanding he was complex, lonely and genuinely good-hearted. A protective community spirit, those fifty years worth of fans, are making a point of protecting his memory as they never did in his lifetime and I for one, am pleased with the respect that is being shown to him. Craigslist and EBay taking scalpers tickets off their sites for the tribute, people celebrating his memory in joyful celebration outside the Apollo theatre, and hundreds of other acts of kindness Jackson would have most likely been surprised by are taking place.

Many people won’t “get” this outpouring of emotion by millions, and that’s fine; they don’t have to. For those who have been inspired by Michael Jackson, from his humanitarian efforts, to his indescribable influence on music and dance, we can all commune together on Tuesday in our remembrance and respect of an icon, a son, a father, a brother, a singer, a dancer, and our childhood.