The photo is 
hauntingly ironic to me, because at the time it was taken, the photo probably just smelled of advertisement–obvious a publicity photo promoting the movie, an album and pepsi or something. Michael pictured with E.T. (perhaps the most Darkly Comedic photograph to have ever been flippantly appropriated by the DCH for a post), is special having seen Michael get less handsome and become more extra-terrestrial looking. Another ring of irony is that the children, perhaps the only critics that meant anything to him, saw him much like the kids in E.T. would have experienced E.T.; like some sort of cartoon character, since kids have the curse of believing in popular idols from television, as well as the knack of easily dismissing things about people and not judging them for whatever may be too much for an adult, such as an addiction to plastic surgery.
My roomate and i, as the armchair cultural theorists we are, have been thinking about the guy quite a bit since he passed. We did a podcast (link to come) from a bar the night he died while we were at a karaoke bar where people were obviously doing MJ songs–by now, upwards of half the country have had the very uniquely american cultural experience of being in a bar or at a party amongst the people paying tribute to his disco. It was certainly ‘in’ to ‘raise your motherfuckin glass for Michael’. His death has also been a holiday of jokes, some of which have been sharper. It was funny to hear some of them more than once and begin to experience the looks on the faces of the folks that told this one for a high five: “only in America can you be born a poor black man, and die a rich white woman”.
I may not feel anything anymore when anyone dies. That’s like psychology 101 for having someone inordinately close to you die as you’re coming of age. I’m not alone as a person that has thought he was a big, big, deal and eventually was numbed by all of the scandal and pretense and bullshit piled so high around him which eventually outnumbered all the measures of music he made especially as folks had already become adept at hijacking his schtick with more all-american faces and less controversy. He is an extraordinary american index of celebrity, the mention of his name makes for a splendid litmus test type of conversation.
Remember that old white lady that changed her name to Michael Jackson in the nineties? Maybe her child or neighbor or something is this Harmony Konine that has made this wildly compelling film which I felt wildly compelled to rent now that he had died and had been on my mind so much.
The cover of Mister Lonely boasts a Michael Jackson impersonator in a paddle boat with a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. The movie is initially all about this particularly thorough MJ impersonator, (Diego Luna as Michael Jackson) and eventually is about a commune, yes a fucking commune, of very committed impersonators.
The first very poignant monologue is from Luna about the desire to not want to be oneself–though the ideas aren’t new and though the viewer sees them coming a mile away, it was still very compelling because it’s so central to MJ, the stanzas are heartbreaking; ‘not wanting to be you’, ‘to hate your face’, to ‘always want to be better than we are’.
It’s important to let kids in depraved situations believe in idols. Michael may have knew that better than any celebrity, he may have known it too deeply, into obsession, but he knew it.
We’re supposed to grow out of what’s childish which afforded us strength as we grow old. We are to drop santa, then MJ,maybe god, then spoon feed our children the same shit so long as we can.
In this movie, i had imagined there’d be a scene of practice, a montage of the routine of being someone else, the sweating, the sighing, the arc of obsession and mission, not a house of cards but an eventual shapeliness, an eventual dexterity, an invariable delirium– hours of muscle memory. These are the mathematics that inform our gait.
Buckets and buckets of balls hit by ballplayers,
Finger calluses, ballet toes
Diego luna wearing sweats practicing that high kick from ‘Beat It’ in a mirror.
The film has a gorgeous soundtrack too, spearheaded by Bobby Vinton’s Mister Lonely (burglarized by the sparsely talented wankster Akon) in the opening shot as Diego/MJ rides in to the shot on a child’s motorcyle toting a monkey kite. The introduction to the other impersonators is also gorgeous. They are all very compelling, but the Sammy Davis Jr. poem and dance was really tasteful and got my attention as to that this was truly not quite over the top.
I think the movie says
find a hobby,
don’t hurt nobody.
Faux michael is a moral superhero
who skips everywhere and dreams of butterflies
and moonbeams,
though he points out whenever possible that he’s
“feeling confused
alien and disconnected”
I was so delighted by the movie as it neared the climax I was suspended by the classy execution, and was really impressed with the way its gaudy allegorical firepower doesn’t alienate the very organic plot that ensues.
A fucking lamb famine? It comes off organically,
it feels unbelievable at first, maybe too much
and eventually, unsurprisingly, the acting and the cinematography is too compelling.
I wonder what Mike would have thought.
Matter of fact, all my roomate and I probably surmised in considering him as a cultural phenomena round the clock since he died was half wondering who he really was, who really has the handle on who he is, and whether something tasteful will ever come that has any more depth to stand alone without a baseline and some vodka.
I always felt, though i was never pressed to seriously consider it until now, this very bald sentimentality about him as the controversy stacked itself, that everything he passed through his body was from this earth, that we were brothers, he and I, Charles Manson, mother Theresa and all your country cousins in the same room.
This movie is so sunny, its like the sunny side of schizophrenia,
A house the faux pope blesses with a tongue stained toast,
Where the three stooges atone a whole day to put down a herd of famined lambs.
The climax to me was I became aware of the fact that these characters will be presenting a ‘one night only’ variety show, the greatest thrill was knowing there’s more delightfully odd movie left.
consume this!
Michael Jackson, RIP as they say
Tags: akon sucks, allegory, Diego Luna, e.t., harmony korine, Michael Jackson, mister lonely, phone home, plot