Baby Michael Jackson

My son is obsessed with Michael Jackson. He is studying him like you study a book, like you do close reading of passages. Like a movie critic seeing a foreign film. Everyday, he barely takes off his school clothes before he sits in front of his TV for yet another viewing of the DVD entitled “Michael Jackson: Number Ones.” Every day he has new and more interesting observations: “did you notice that at the end of Smooth Criminal, he winks?”

I recently enquired whether it was not time to return the DVD to Netflix (ostensibly to order say, Moonwalker, so he can better appreciate the Smooth Criminal video) and he just wept. He literally cried at the mere suggestion that he might come home one day and not have his object of research, delight and worship. Michael Jackson is his God. He proudly declares it:

“I watched the Dirty Diana video 14 times in a row!” or “I wish he was my dad!”. MJ is his only topic of discussion. In fact Michael Jackson is now popular in his first grade class, purely because of him:

“When Eliana tried to do the thriller dance, she totally messed it up.”
“You know Moses said Michael Jackson owns a monkey?”
“Today at lunch when we were playing Baby Michael Jackson, Joseph kept squeezing my cheek extra hard on purpose.”

Hold up, hold up, hold up. Say again?
“Today? At lunch? Well, we were playing Baby Michael Jackson and…

What the hell is that?
“It’s a game we play--that I made up.”

(No shit Sherlock. Who else could make up such a game?). Oh. And what is the game like?
“Well, I am Baby Michael Jackson”
(Duh)
“…and I throw a birthday party and all my friends come.”
Wow. Ok.

It started innocently enough. It started with one listen of Billie Jean on my friend’s Ipod. It was amazing to see someone who never heard that intro, you know that funk guitar popified to death intro which we all associate with a walk and a finger snap and a whole lot of what cool means, have their little minds rocked for the first time with that intro. From there he quickly became obsessed with learning the lyrics. He’d just play the song over and over again, extremely loudly and sing fake lyrics off key. All of this love was happening without a visual, but he already was entertaining what it would be like, as in the one time he was overheard ad libing to a listening of “Bad” by sounding like a baby Travis Bickle:
(mumbling): “You’re bad? I’m bad. Are you talking to me? What did you say?”

So I thought well he should see what the MJ thing was all about and suggested we get the videos. Famous last suggestion. He is currently very close to a full memorization of the main choreography in Bad and Thriller. He also likes to have the video playing in his room and imitating in (from memory, and verbally) in the kitchen:

“Right now, he crossed his legs, then he kicked. Then he did this thing. Then right now, he’s still doing this thing. Now he’s turning and boom, this thing. And then like that.”

An interesting contextual truth is that even despite his obsession, he couldn’t say if Michael Jackson or Justin Timberlake was better (before the MJ crack happened, there was the What Goes Around crack which involved him blasting that song while pretending to sing it and play it on his keyboards, all very loud). Of both he said they are both “the best.”

My son, let's be frank, couldn't dance for shit three weeks ago. I mean he didn't think so, he thought he was a great impersonator of Chris Brown, Usher and Justin Timberlake but he was not at all. He looked like Jackie Chang at the club--which if you know Jackie Chang you know he knows kung-fu, but not funk. Suddenly, as he worships in the church of Michael Jackson, his dancing has been completely “recreated” by his encounter with the funk-flamenco-musical theatre inflected MJ style, to a hilarious degree and he is now moving much better. I think MJ dances like everyone wishes they could dance--with drama. I think my son's current inclination for self-generating free movement and pseudo jazz dance is great but I am seriously concerned that next time he’s at a kids party, he will terrify his peers who will be *just* trying to stick to the Chicken Noodle Soup and the Walk It Out...

People who have children will know what I mean when I say this: an obsession with Michael Jackson may just be the most provocative, evocative, and mysteriously open-ended interest your child can display.