The objectification of a childhood

[lostnfound]

The objectification of a childhood.
I don't know him now, and I didn't know him then. Or did I? Looking back on it now, I have an image in my mind of his innocence spilling out all over the stage, spilling out through the TV screen into our living rooms, all over America. Before he had a sense of an identity. There he was, just 5, and black, and given this grandiose stage on which to expand, with screaming fans all around. "What is this fantasy world into which I have landed?" "Is this all about me?" "How good it feels to be loved by ALL-THESE-PEOPLE!"

An egg which has no shell does not mature into a bird. A chrysalis cut open a bit prematurely, a slip of the knife: it will be a freak of nature if it survives. Childhood is Metamorphosis.

I am not excusing or forgiving -- I assume he is "innocent", per the jury. I don't know what he has or hasn't done. Wasn't he dismantled in public, though, when he was 5? BEFORE THERE WAS A HIM. What are the lessons a 5 year old is learning? A sense of self. Identity. Limits.

A 5 year old mind whose limits were extended out into our living rooms. Off stage, beaten by his father. On stage, was he larger than 5? How could he contract, into a shape he couldn't define? How could he squeeze back into the special box of being a black man in America (which Arthur Ashe once said was the hardest thing he ever faced in his life, not dying of AIDS)?

I haven't followed the case. I haven't followed his career. So to me, it is easy to remember him as the smallest member of a singing band. I do believe in adult responsibility and in free will, but it is impossible to judge what kind of worse man or what kind of better man he might have been, if he made different choices. The media circus has been all about playing up a sense of outrage, and ironically blind to the topic of child abuse at the hands of pop culture. His Peter Pan references seem to be his attempt to mythologize the only life he has lived.

Shapes in this Salvador Dali world get twisted and warped by the background. We on the outside don't know what it is to be on the inside of that bizarre world. Moreover, we don't care at all about the inside. He is still only an object, mocked as a freak. "Hey look! That butterfly never sewed its severed legs back together, never mended its wings!"

How society laughs at and mocks its broken people.

[Blue_In_AK]

1. Very well written and worth remembering...

Thank you.

[rodeodance]

2. i agree with most of what you say. well said also.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Jackson was twisted and distorted by the "love" of his fans and the

taint of American celebrity/popularity. It stunted his growth as a secure and mature person, it gave him fear of relationships save for a demographic that would not demand more than a smile and gifts, and it isolated him from himself.

This is a very sad Greek tragedy. Killed by love all around.

[Dora]

9. Ain't nothin' Greek about it...

I understand what you mean, but this is a bitterly American fable - one for which we haven't learned the moral of.

[Triana]

4. I am sick of the MJ flap but this is very well said...

...and very compassionate. thank you.

[mopaul]

5. boo frikkety hoo, i had a rotten childhood

i get a free pass to do anything now. poor poor pitiful michael.

he had it all, and he threw it all away.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. Does that same sympathy go for poor George W. Bush?

Should we try to "understand" his childhood as the son of a president and the terrible burdens that he had to endure? The expectations placed on him by demanding parents? The forces that shaped and warped his life and made him into the misunderstood victim of his past? His strugges to achieve success in the eyes of his parents? etc, etc, etc.

I have no idea whether MJ is guilty or innocent. But, my sympathy for him is somewhat lessened by the fact that he is an extremely wealthy individual who has done nothing for the society that has so lavishly rewarded him.

Had he been a black janitor who slept with children he would now be behind bars whether it was an innocent act or not and relegated to page 36 of the local newspaper.

All people are shaped by their childhood. Ultimately, they grow up and make choices for which they are responsible.

Last I heard both MJ and Boobya are adults.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

11. The last time I looked, Herr Busch never had the talent for anything....

...when he was younger except heavy drinking, smoking dope, and snorting anything that could be cut with a razor blade. The closest he ever got to anyone living in poverty was when he was doing community service work in Houston. Georgie-porgie grew up wealthy and well-connected to the children of other wealthy and well-connected families.

In contrast, MJ and his family pulled themselves up by sheer willpower and the God-given talent to sing and perform. As far as your comment that Jackson "is an extremely wealthy individual who has done nothing for the society that has so lavishly rewarded him", perhaps you should review the link below that discusses some of 39 charities that Jackson has supported over the years:

HIStory of Michael Jackson
<http://www.m-jackson.com/jackson/history/midden.html>

QUOTE:

Charity: Michael has been supporting charity all his life. Best known charities are: The Ronald Mc Donald children foundation, The make a wish foundation, Childright, etc., etc. In 1984 Michael opens his own burning center after he suffers severe burns to his scalp during a commercial shoot for Pepsi. In 1985 Michael writes the song "We are the World" to help the hungry people in Africa. In 1992 Michael starts with the "Heal the World foundation". A foundation that helps the needy children of the world. "The Guinness Book of World Records 2000 Millennium Edition" includes the following entry: Most Charities Supported By a Pop Star Michael Jackson has supported 39 charitable organizations either with monetary donations through sponsorships of their projects or by participating in their silent auctions. The charities involved include AIDS Project L.A., American Cancer Society, BMI Foundation, Inc., Childhelp USA, United Negro College Fund (UNCF), YMCA - 28th Street/Crenshaw, The Sickle Cell Research Foundation and Volunteers of America.

[burythehatchet]

7. quite eloquent

I'd like to recommend a book for you, it's called The Sibling Society by Robert Bly. You may find the thesis quite interesting.

[lostnfound]

17. I loved Iron John! I will definitely check out the other one. nt

[FizzFuzz]

8. I'm saving my sympathies for women whose lives are broken

by a childhood of sexual, mental and or physical abuse in a country that blames women for being sluts and makes consideration for the vacation plans of the middle aged men who molest them.

"In my opinion the victim encouraged it. It doesn't make it right, no way. It cannot be tolerated, but it makes a big difference as to whether someone goes to prison."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1540993&mesg_id=1540993&page=

[mopaul]

10. MJ's whining about his awful childhood cheapens the sufferings of those

who REALLY had rotten childhoods.

[FizzFuzz]

12. I've heard some awful awful ones, some that made mine look like a picnic

and mine was pretty rough, at least in some ways.

I'm STILL learning and overcoming old stuff, but one thing I do know now--YOU make a choice about what you will do with what happened.

Now I have to backtrack a little--there are many women I've known, read or heard about who were SO damaged, and so unprotected by ALL individuals and institutions supposedly responsable for protection, they sought sanctuary in ways I can barely imagine--a life on the street, multiple personality disorder, heroin addiction, suicide....the list goes on and on. I have heard many many stories of women whose childhoods literally made me sob at the willfull cruelty joyfully inflicted on them.

But one still makes choices as to whether to struggle to improve, treat others decently etc., or not. I remember moments myself where I clearly felt the moment where I had to choose--let myself sink into the negative spiral that starts with thoughts, or choose to push back. We ALL have that choice as adults, even if its only in very small ways and I believe its those choices in every moment that affect our destiny.

Some people go the other way too, and take very minor incidents from childhood and make that their excuse to have temper tantrums and demand the world cater to them.

I'm sorry MJ had pain, but he has also made a series of choices that sink him further and further in the muck.

:hi: hey mopaul...ohh! look at that!, I rambled again, but you probably knew that about me by now. :dunce:

[lostnfound]

13. Actually, the two concepts are linked.

I once read a statistic that 80% or more of prostitutes were sexually abused as children. The sympathy which I had always felt for such people changed and deepened. No longer did I simply see them as adults in unfortunate and dangerous circumstances.

It is equally accurate to recognize them as misshapen survivors of yesterday's tragic child-crimes. Our collective hearts go out -- in a pure form, always sober way -- to the little girls and boys whose faces appear on the "have you seen this child?" cards. Ten years or so later, if they survive, they are transformed into flotsam, outcasts, the subject of jokes and the nearly-invisible or less-valued victims of still more crime.

How our society mocks its broken members.

[Dora]

14. We either laugh at our broken ones, or elect them to office.

People are thinking, and that's good.

A couple posts have compared Jackson to Bush, and with sarcasm, wondering if we are expected to have the same compassion for him as we are for Jackson, thereby implying that Jackson deserves no such compassion - because we would never open our hearts to Bush.

However, WHAT IF we have compassion for Bush?

If we considered his childhood trials as if they were our own...
- growing up under the thumb of a bitterly angry, oppressive, and possibly drunk mother
- having a father who was consistently absent and consummately disappointed in you
- enjoying the companionship of a beloved sister who died, and then watching your parents deny their grief and yours
- understanding that the expectation is that you excel at any cost, and the only tools given to you are your family name, money, and tutelage in lies and cheating (vs. hard work, diligence, and personal accountability)

I'm sure the list could go on. I am a new parent, and each time I gaze into my child's eyes I see the ecstatic algebra that makes our son so much greater than his father and I together. As we all are, he is but the sum of his parts.

Jackson... Bush... you... me... The similarities are there, but so are the differences:

Jackson has his celebrity to both imprison and comfort himself with in these post-verdict times, not to mention ownership of the Beatles' song catalogue (coming soon to an auction block near you). Everything is impermanent.

Bush has his phalanx of yes-men and black-magic workers to spread the cancer that is the Bush DNA, asserting dominion over the poor, the sick, and the pious in a quest for money and oil. The wells will dry up, the money will blow away. Everything is impermanent.

You and I have our hunger, our wish for a better day. We aim our eyes at silent flat-panel displays, into aping televisions, through the window on the bus as it belches its gaseous way across town. Our eyes are empty sometimes, and sometimes our hearts are heavy. Everything is impermanent.

:rant:

[elehhhhna]

15. well done. slapped me off my high horse. thank you.

[yodermon]

16. Compassion does not Excuse.

Many people, on this board and elsewhere, conflate Compassion for a person with Excusing that person's behavior. It is a near-automatic response. Once a human being has been identified as 'bad', we are not allowed to have compassion for him/her. We are not even allowed to analyze their childhoods to try to figure out what happened to cause their "badness".

Would it make a difference to know that when 7-year-old George's little sister Robin died of leukemia at age 3, "his parents dealt with Robin's death by squelching any expression of grief; there was no funeral and they played golf the day after she died. This, according to Frank, is a key example of the family's approach to all such painful emotions, and the result was to distort and cripple the psyche of their firstborn son." (http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/06/16/bush_on_couch/ ) ?

Would it make a difference to know that "Hitler's childhood had been so abusive--his father regularly beat him "with a hippopotamus whip," and he said he once endured 230 blows of his father's cane without a murmur that he was full of rage toward the world. When he grew up, his sexual feelings were so mixed up with his revenge fantasies that he believed his sperm was poisonous and might enter the woman's bloodstream during sexual intercourse and poison her.4 Obviously Hitler's rage against "Jewish blood-poisoners" was a projection of his own fears that he might become a blood-poisoner. ... He then accused Jews of being "world blood-poisoners" who "introduced foreign blood into our people's body."5" ( http://www.primal-page.com/ldfetal1.htm )?

Would it make a differece to know that "Saddam Hussein, like so many dictators, had an unbelievably traumatic childhood. His mother tried to abort him by hitting her abdomen with her fists and cutting herself with a kitchen knife, yelling, "In my belly I'm carrying a Satan!" She gave the infant Saddam away to his uncle, a violent man who beat the boy regularly, calling him "a son of a cur" and training him to use a gun and steal sheep. Saddam committed his first homicide at eleven. His political career centered on the murder of his fellow countrymen, and he particularly enjoyed watching the torture and execution of officers who had fought with him. Saddam would obviously make an ideal enemy to whom America could delegate the task of starting a new war so that we could remain guiltless." (http://colorado.indymedia.org/newswire/display/8432/index.php ) ?

No, it makes no diffence at all. It upsets our view of these people as Evil. Magically evil. To Explain is to Excuse, even though a proper explanation / understanding is key to preventing future occurances.

:shrug:

[Marnieworld]

18. Two words-Donny Osmond

Contemporaries with completely different outcomes. I'm sure all of the child molesters in prision were once sad abused children but no one ever cries a river for them and reaches out with compassion.

[mondo joe]

19. My sympathy for all practical purposes ended when he began

to put children at risk through his own poor judgment.

Certainly he had a rough childhood. But at some point we must be accountable for our own actions, and that includes how we handle the effects of our youth.