the girl is mine

"A star can never die. It just turns into a smile and melts back into the cosmic music, the dance of life"

29 August 1958 - 25 June 2009

Through it all, he changed our entire history and culture. He took on so many pressures and the effects of other people’s actions, since he was a child. But he will forever be defined by the love and unity he brought to us all. A humanitarian, a father, a brother, and a creative genius. No matter how famous he was, his humbleness and authenticity was always apparent. At his core, he was a man who strived to understand and to be understood. He was music and love personified. A once in a lifetime human being who is immortalized through his gifts and legacy. There will never be another. 🖤

I mean, it would depend what you mean by aura I guess? Personally, I think the easiest way of putting that sort of shift you’re talking about into words as somebody who’s looking at it all in hindsight is by looking at how he wanted to portray himself and how that changed after the first round of allegations and especially the trial. It’s no secret that Michael prided himself on maintaining a certain level of mystique and magic about him throughout his life, but, like you said, it seems like that aura was especially prevalent during thriller and bad, which I’d be inclined to agree with. I mean, he was fresh off the heels of creating the best selling album of all time for one. He was untouchable, he was almost magical, he was an enigma, the Peter Pan of Pop. Everybody knew who he was, and at the same time, didn’t know a thing about him, at least not personally. Ironically, I think that mystique eventually worked against him. During the allegations and the years that followed, people began to realise how little they actually knew about him, and what had once been fascinating suddenly became unsettling or questionable to some. But in the early days, I’d say that even things like the early tabloid stories, however stupid or untrue they were, added to this eccentric, larger than life image the public perceived of him, and the idea that he existed in a world completely separate from everyone else, thus creating this aura.

He was also a very good illusionist. You only saw him when he wanted you to see him, and alway in perfect, dazzling motion. The tabloids weren’t fully out of his control yet either, so those could be manipulated to work in his favour to some extent as well. Also, I think that because there was so little access, people filled in the blanks with their imagination. For better, or for worse. But, what little people did get spoke volumes. I agree that he was always very level headed, a great orator, so full of emotion and passion. Whenever Michael spoke at length, it was always with sincerity that cut through the mythology. It’s a bit off topic, but there’s this weird dichotomy surrounding his public perception that is pretty fascinating to me. On the one hand, at the time Michael was often perceived as unrelatable to the general public. How could he not be? His reality consisted of sold-out stadiums and security teams. He couldn’t walk down the street without being swarmed. He existed at a level of fame that very few human beings have ever experienced. But, if any average person who felt they couldn’t relate to him were to actually meet him, they’d probably walk away and say the opposite: that he was down to earth and sincere and shockingly easy to talk to. He was simultaneously the most relatable and unrelatable person on the planet. He was always such a walking mess of contradictions. It’s so interesting. Anyway, I digress.

Then 1993 rolled around. I actually (kind of tragically) think that the start of this year for him was a huge step in the right direction. He was on the up and up it seemed, especially after the Super Bowl. on top of the world but not so unreachable or elusive that it was impossible for the average person to understand like the thriller and bad years. I’m thinking mostly about his Oprah interview. It was probably the most vulnerable he had been with the public for a while (that I can think of), especially when addressing his vitiligo. He was, in a way, extending an olive branch, the first stepping stone for the public to begin to understand him, and I think that with a little time they could’ve gotten there. I really, maybe naively, do. Because, ultimately, he was finally toeing the line between Michael the myth and Michael the man. It’s also evident in his Grammy legends speech. He seems….. himself. Like. Fully. He was charming and easy to empathise with, so different to the bizarre caricature the tabloids had painted of him, but still an icon in his own right. It was the perfect middle ground.

And then? Well. I think we all know what happened next.

You’re so right to compare it to a train crash. I don’t think I could compare it to anything else, anything less devastating. I wasn’t alive to witness any of it, but to have what I imagine felt like the entire world turn on you overnight? It’s already painful. Then considering the steps it seemed he was taking to be understood beforehand?? Even worse. Because this media storm, the public outcry wasn't happening after years of openness, rather, It happened immediately after he had begun opening up. After he had finally sat down and said, in effect, "This is who I am."

And the things that had still gone unanswered, shielded by his aura of mystique, the very thing that had made him fascinating—that nobody quite knew who he was—soon enough became a liability. People wanted explanations. Why? How? Was it true? It must be, right? I always thought he was off. I always thought he was strange. He was always strange, right? Curiosity soon enough became critique, which became condemnation, which the media, of course, drained for every penny they could get. It was the first crack in his composure.

I think another important thing that needs to be taken into account surrounding the first set of allegations was Michael’s drug use and subsequent rehab visit in November of 1993. Going to rehab is already a difficult process for some, but having to announce it in front of damn near the whole world is unfathomable. That level of vulnerability, especially for a man who had found refuge in a very intentional image for the last 10 years, who had already had his vulnerability weaponised and turned against him? It was probably devastating. Addiction takes a physical toll, an emotional toll, and often a psychological toll as well. When you're trying to heal while simultaneously remaining one of the most scrutinised and ridiculed and bullied people on Earth, I imagine these effects feel even stronger.

So, I think that the mystique and aura he had spent his entire life building to protect himself had clearly and quickly become the very cage that trapped him. His transcendence though, was still undeniably there, even if it was irreversibly cracked. Even if there was the impending risk that it could shatter completely. I think this is ultimately what catalysed a lot of HIStory and its vibe. In my eyes, we see a man very clearly trying to re establish the transcendence and grandeur that marked his previous eras. The imagery became larger, grander, almost imperial. There was an emphasis on legacy. It was almost the complete opposite of the vulnerable, introspective Michael who sat down with Oprah earlier in 1993. Rather than inviting the public closer, he seemed to be re-establishing distance. Because the aura, the mystique, the sense that Michael Jackson was somehow larger than life? They were his shield. They gave him distance. They gave him control. Most importantly, they gave him somewhere to hide.

And yet…….. there was still always the need to be understood . I don’t want to analyse HIStory in the context of just Michael’s psychology, because it also goes much deeper than that (his best album imo 👀) and this is just my interpretation, but it’s clear as day in songs like childhood and stranger in Moscow.Part of him seemed desperate to restore the mystery, while another part still wanted people to understand him. That is the contradiction, like so many others, that made Michael Jackson Michael Jackson.

What's interesting is that moving into the early 2000s, there are these moments where the fog seems to lift and you catch glimpses of an incredibly level-headed, self aware, relatable person. Michael’s 2001 Oxford union speech is one of the most beautiful, heartfelt, well spoken ones I’ve ever heard. It’s him at his most human, most vulnerable. It is, simply put, him baring his soul. He is both ordinary and extraordinary.

For all the mythology surrounding him, for all the decades of spectacle and superstardom, what strikes me most about that speech is how recognisable he feels. He's speaking as someone reflecting on childhood, compassion, loneliness, responsibility, and the experiences that shaped him. There is a maturity and self-awareness there that often gets lost in discussions from the mass media about Michael. You come away from it with the impression of someone who has thought deeply about his life, his pain, and what he wants his legacy to be.

It's one of those rare moments where the gap between Michael the man and Michael the myth seems to disappear completely, and I so wish more people had heard it at the time.

And what's remarkable is that the magic doesn't disappear when that happens. If anything, it becomes stronger. The speech proves something I think Michael spent years struggling to believe: he didn't always need the mythology to be compelling. The person himself was enough.

I also see in that speech a crossroads. A heart wrenching reminder, a crystallisation of what his life from 2001 onwards could have been like. I get so caught up in sometimes. What if, instead of Bashir, he had worked with somebody more compassionate, more understanding. What if that version of Michael Jackson was the one that the public had seen- fully seen- and brought with them into the future…………

But we didn’t. We get to living with Michael Jackson. The second peak before the second fall. It is Michael, again, trying to do what he hasn’t since the 90s: explain himself.

One of the things that has always broken my heart in two and made me so upset and angry about this doc was how profoundly hopeful Michael seems throughout it.

hopeful in the sense that he genuinely appears to believe that if people could just spend enough time with him and see his life for themselves, and hear him explain things in his own words, they might finally understand him. I've always thought of this belief as one of Michael's greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses. The problem was that by the early 2000s, Michael's life experiences had become so radically different from everyone else's, so entrenched in the controversy that had followed him in the years before, that he often failed to recognise how his words and actions might appear to an outside observer.

which makes it sting even worse!! Because,If you watch him throughout the documentary, he doesn't come across like someone trying to hide anything. He seems to be trying, to the best of his ability, to be vulnerable. He was trusting. That was something he had every right not to give away by that point.

So psychologically, the public reaction to the doc must’ve felt awful.Because if you look at the trajectory of his life, this wasn't the first time it had happened. In 1993, he had not only sat down with Oprah and allowed people to see a more vulnerable side of him, but he had also let June Chandler and her family into his life because he trusted them. Shortly afterwards, his world collapsed. A decade later, he once again opens the door and invites people inside. Once again, the result is a public relations disaster.

At some point, a person begins to internalise that pattern.

You begin to wonder whether Michael came away from Living with Michael Jackson feeling that there was simply no version of himself the public was willing to accept. The myth was criticised for being too distant. The man was criticised for being too strange. The mystery created suspicion. The honesty created controversy.

And still, there is a final attempt at reaching out, at bridging the gap. You're watching someone extend an olive branch that they genuinely believe might finally, finally be accepted…..and it’s snapped right in two.

That’s one of the reasons the years after 2003 feel so much heavier than the years after 1993. In 1993, the shock was devastating, but perhaps there was still some belief that things could eventually be explained or corrected? By 2003, after everything that had happened, this felt like another failed attempt at connection. Another confirmation that the gap between Michael's intentions and public perception might never be bridged.

what followed seemed to reinforce this ten fold. I don’t like talking about 2005, but I will briefly

In short, I believe that the 2005 allegations stripped him almost entirely of whatever semblance of his myth making was left. In my opinion, one of the reasons the trial was so awful for him, among many many other things, is that the veneer of mystery and that larger than life energy he had been clinging on to ever since 1993, the one he had so meticulously cultivated and held together, that he had put on the line during that documentary, was stripped down in an instant. There’s a quote from an article I read a while ago that sums it up better than I ever could. I don’t like how crude and unsympathetic the writer is about Michael, nor do I agree that he was ever fully humanised, (and I’m pretty sure the part about the forensic observers is plain wrong), but I think I mostly agree with their interpretation of things:

“Despite this outcome, and despite the victory sign he gave to his fans outside the courthouse during his trial for allegedly abusing Gavin Arvizo in 2005, Jackson was effectively destroyed by these scandals. His downfall came when the police, investigating Jordy's reports of genital blotches, photographed his private parts. He called the ordeal "humiliating" and "dehumanising"; …..in fact the examination humanised him, humbling him by unpeeling illusions and reducing him to parity with the rest of us - odd, imperfect, but miserably unmysterious, with mottled testicles, patchily discoloured buttocks, wispy pubic hair, and a peekaboo penis that may or may not (the forensic observers disagreed) be circumcised. Jackson forfeited his divinity at that moment”

Every court appearance, every detail, every crude joke, every headline about his finances, appearance, or personal life chipped away at the distance that had once existed between Michael Jackson and everybody else. And mystique, magic, aura—whatever word you want to use for it—all rely on a degree of distance.They require space for imagination, for projection and for the unknown. The more every aspect of a person's life is examined, debated, photographed, analysed, and reduced to headlines, the less room there is for any of those things to survive.

And nobody's private life was magnified quite like Michael Jackson's.

that trial, it seems, was the final culmination of that.

After 2005, i think it became increasingly difficult for the public to view Michael in the same way they once had, regardless of what conclusions they reached about the trial itself. The image had been subjected to too much scrutiny and too many curtains had been pulled back. And once the curtains have been pulled back that far, it's almost impossible to draw them shut again.

That seems like the main reason his aura seemed to change, at least to me, as somebody who is apart of the younger generation, and who’s only experiences with Michael are seeing the span of his life all at once rather than being there to witness all of this in real time. I also don’t think the increased drug use after 2005 helped either, especially with the level headedness. I do think though that this is it could’ve been some attempt at reclaiming that larger than life energy. Maybe it would have worked. Maybe it wouldn't have. Knowing the tabloids, it's difficult to imagine a world where the trial wasn't held over his head for the rest of his life in some capacity, especially with how prevalent discussions of it still are, years after his passing. The shadow of it was simply too large.

We’ll never know for sure, though.

We do, however, know that the fascination remained. It’s why I’m typing all this out in the first place, why people are still having these conversations nearly two decades after his death.

So, to circle back to your original question: yes, I do think something changed. But i think it probably had to. No one could go through what he went through and come out the other side untouched. But the fact we're still discussing it all these years later suggests that for whatever was lost, there was also still something compelling left behind.