How The Iconic Figures of Our Childhood Navigate the Tension Between Wonder and Disillusionment: Thoughts on Michael

In one of those surreal moments that anchors a specific memory in a time and place you don’t forget, it was on a road trip from Winnipeg to California when news broke of Micheal Jackson’s death. Even more specific, a mere hour after we had been traversing a mostly empty Hollywood Boulevard (back before it made its turn into inevitable decline). What was empty suddenly filled with a seemingly endless stream of people, all looking to snag a picture at his star.

It struck me in that moment how our relationship to these iconic, usually from our childhood, figures can become such an enigma. On one hand a necessary part of our lives. We are in many ways bound to the ways in which their creations become the soundtrack to our lives. And, at least back before the social media age, these figures have a way of becoming larger than life precisely because they appear to occupy this space we never could ourselves.

And yet to grow up with these figures is also to encounter them in our adult lives, where the seemingly unreachable inevitably come falling back down to earth. And one of the most pertinant questions that usually follows this cognitive disonnance is, what do we then do with our memories? Do these memories stand as witness to the ways we were formed in the soil of such delusional constructs, or do they reveal something more fundamentally true, and thus worth preserving, than our weathered eyes might be able to conjure from this kind of “pull back the curtain” form of cynicism.

I was reflecting on this thought as I watching the recent biopic Michael. A film which i saw heading into it’s fourth week with a packed crowd (quite literally, I bought the last available seat, and subsequently rained on the parade of the guy using it to hold his stack of boxed left overs). I was very aware at this stage in the game of the much publicized criticism of the biopic’s decision to steer clear of the controversy surrounding his complicated history. This was, I was told, going to be our childhood memory, not our adult cynicism, and in truth that is exactly what this film is. It taps into the reason these iconic figures mean anything to us at all, which is precisely why this film is hitting on such a different level with actual flesh and blood audiences.

It will of course be the critics whom will say that such an exercise in fealty to the power of memory is somehow a negative thing. That tapping into that innocence and that wonder is somehow reflective of an anti-intellectual pursuit. That such a film is, by it’s nature, a lesser thing for treating this as an important and necessary part of our lives, of how it is we know and experience truth in this world. To me, the fundamental thing these critics miss in this conversation is the simple fact that most people watching this film are fully aware of the adult figure that co-exists alongside our memory. We haven’t punted that to the side. We aren’t failing to see the nuance. We aren’t giving into shallow reconstructions. We are simply understanding that life cannot be reduced to that one thing. What we find in Michael is an important and vital part of what it means to be human, and to pretend as though that’s anti-intellectual is in fact to cater to a delusion.

I would push this further. Beyond the crafts of the film, which I think are worth analyzing and talking about and even celebrating (and yes, I watch a lot of film across a wide spectrum- why i feel I have to qualify that is simply pointing to the larger problem), is the story itself. This hits at another aspect of modern film criticism that bugs me. There is a sense in which the only true form of intellectualism is one which is tied to a certain conception of justice. We find this rampant through much of the present state of academia, but perhaps no more so than in the arts. We live in a world that not only loves its scapegoats, but it needs them. To see past the moral constructs that allow us to preserve our hierahcies is to somehow lose our hold on certainty. When it comes to Michael, for these same voices the fact that two things can be true at once, that a person can have a problematic childhood that feeds into later struggles and similtaneously have that struggle open up a desire for something more, is simply not something willing to be entertained. A Michael who had his innocence stole from him at such a young age. A Michael who had an abusive and controlling father. A Michael who sought refuge in childhood stories and animals in a world where adults and people just seemed to be so much harder to relate to. A Michael whom genuinely responded to the suffering he was encountering around him, and who paved a way through a world dominated by the system (ultimatley against that system). A Michael who’s own craft produced songs which spoke to the angst of an entire generation in the same way.

This is the true foundation for which to frame and understand those adult struggles. As it is said at one point in the film, wanting to grow up into adulthood and being prepared to grow up into adulthood are two different things. This is something the film genuinely leaves on the table for us to consider, even as we celebrate what he meant to our childhoods. The complicated mess of his adult life that follows is just that- another part of what it means to be human. Lest we forget that our childhoods are more than just an elongated march towards a knowledge that it was all a lie, Michael is a reminder that perhaps what our adult lives need more than anything is that childhood wonder. The freedom to sing again when life threatens to steal the songs that once formed us.