a note on Michael Jackson
By Maewyn | June 27, 2009
I am sore and grieving now, not because Michael Jackson is dead — but because his death ripped open a scar I’d thought had healed.
As longtime friends know, I was raised by fundies. Mom and Dad sheltered me from (then-current) pop culture as much as they could; I grew up watching old 50′s and 60′s shows on Nick at Nite, and listening to the local Christian or oldies radio stations. My dad thought MTV was immoral and called the cable company to turn it off before it even reached our house, and he did it every time the channel lineup changed. My best friend was sheltered like I was, and I had no siblings. Not knowing what I was missing, I merrily went about my church-focused childhood. It wasn’t even a problem until I got to middle school, and especially high school, when my classmates would ask “Did you see the Simpsons last night?” No, I didn’t; I wasn’t allowed to watch. “Did you hear that new song on the radio?” No, I didn’t; I didn’t even know how to find the rock stations. In fact, one of my first acts of rebellion came after I learned to drive, because I was sick of not hearing what everyone was talking about: I found one of those rock stations and kept my car’s radio tuned to it.
But this was after the damage had been done. I didn’t hear Nirvana until the summer of 1999, after Kurt Cobain was dead but not long enough for most people’s nostalgia to kick in. And I didn’t hear Michael Jackson until after the accusations of child molestation hit the news, when he was the butt of jokes, so I never attached a whole lot of significance to him. All this reverence for the “King of Pop” is, frankly, a little shocking to me: Wait, we liked him? A legend? WHAT??
Unlike Jill at Feministe (who was born two years after me!), I vividly recall a world without Michael Jackson, though maybe it’s not the same 80′s she participated in. I don’t know the lyrics people are using in their RIP posts. I can recognize the song “Thriller” (mostly from recent SoBe ads), but I don’t know that I’ve ever heard the whole thing; unlike Mark Morford, I can’t say when I “first witnessed … ‘Billie Jean,’ the ‘Thriller’ video” — because I haven’t seen them at all. (And I won’t now, so don’t bother linking.) Actually I was just skimming the tribute post at Shapely Prose and got mad because someone talked about part of the Thriller video, and she might as well have said “Dumbledore dies”, because now I can’t watch that video and be surprised or scared by it. I can’t have the experience that everyone seems to be so nostalgic for … though I arguably couldn’t anyway, because I was so far out of that pop-culture milieu when it came out. I can only see it now in the context of catching up on what I missed.
I was telling The Hubs yesterday that I can kind of understand why my parents made those decisions. They were trying to raise the best Christian kid they could, and structured my upbringing in line with their beliefs, the same as any crunchy parent expects to be able to. They didn’t hedge in case I chose not to be Christian, in case I chose to join the world they left; they didn’t raise me to make that choice. I did anyway — and it left me with this scar, this sensitive place, in which I feel like an outsider all over again and begrudge them for it and underestimate the work I’ve done to feel normal, to forget how I was raised, to get to a point where I can confidently choose not to participate in some aspect of pop culture without feeling too paranoid about it.
For too long, I’ve defined myself in terms of what I haven’t done: don’t have a passport, married the only person I ever had (adult, consensual) sex with, never lived alone, didn’t have my name on a car until 2007, the list goes on. Because I hate that I haven’t had certain, seemingly common, experiences — ones like dating, that a lot of contemporary writers define as universally human experiences — I haven’t been able to value the ones I’ve had. Like, I’ve had many people tell me that they wish they could have found the love of their lives so young, to have avoided the whole dating business altogether (or maybe just a couple of horrible boyfriends/girlfriends), to have gotten married right away and not had kids … to have what I have. It’s hard to see my experience in that light, instead of seeing it as a lack of relationship experience or sexual experience or independent experience.
Eventually, I think, I will get to a point of integration, of understanding that a perceived lack is still a part of myself and who I am, and that I don’t have to defend missing out on 80′s pop culture any more than I have to defend not being in the Craft in the 70′s. Eventually, time will pass, and I can talk about pop culture (and the Craft, for that matter) in the early 21st century, where I was and what I experienced and what people around me said, did, and felt. Eventually the scars will heal and I can own all of my experiences. Eventually.
Today is not that day.
