Action Jackson

Hold onto your hats – or maybe noses is more apropos for the occasion – because all decorum is about to be swept away with the sorry spectacle of two major networks sparring tonight over the ever-dwindling carcass of Michael Jackson. If there were ever a reason – alongside the other million or so already – to discredit the sweeps system, this would be it.

First up, at 8pm ABC gives us a new Primetime Special Edition “The Many Faces of Michael Jackson” on the life of Jackson, swift (by television turnaround standards) on the heels of its stunning February 6th ratings win with the 20/20 “Living with Michael Jackson” special, which it will repeat immediately afterwards from 9p – 11p. NBC jumps on the bandwagon with own Jackson material when it premieres an expanded two-hour Dateline NBC “Michael Jackson Unmasked” at 9pm, preceded of course by the appropriately sensational Fear Factor at 8pm. Both nets are desperate to blunt the impact of Fox’s Joe Millionaire two-hour finale, and honestly, this is one hairy three-way freak show. And if this isn’t enough, on Thursday night Fox airs Michael Jackson Take 2: The Interview They Wouldn’t Show You, MJ’s rebuttal to the 20/20 special.

Television is increasingly becoming our electronic version of the old sideshow, where human oddities always drew an enthusiastic crowd. But why, even today, is there such appeal? Because humanity has always known what constitutes the ideal human form, and though only a fluky few fit the bill, the rest of us muddle along somehow. Only once in a great while does nature really blow it, and an oddity is born, somebody whose very existence incites a fool to cruel mocking, but to the rest of us occasions an internal “thank you” for our good and undeserved fortune in dodging that particular bullet. Is it any wonder why Michael Jackson creates such interest? Not only is he a pop star, guaranteeing a certain amount of hooha right off the bat, but he looks strange. Really strange. In a hype-filled, media-saturated world where the standards of beauty are set, and where only minor variations of good, better and best are allowed, how amazing it is to gaze upon a celebrity whose quest for facial orthodoxy has instead resulted in quite the opposite.

Michael Jackson started out as a cute kid – aren’t we all, really? – and talented to boot; imagine the disillusionment when kiddie cute reworked itself into an awkward and unsymmetrical adolescent exterior (join the club!). Would it be enough to motivate someone with the means to take control of the process to do just that -- change yourself before Mother Nature gets another crack at it? No mere outlandish obsession, Jackson’s one-time fascination with the Elephant Man, and his alleged attempt to purchase Joseph Merrick’s poor old bones. How could he have not been moved by the tale of an unblemished boy who was transformed, by cruel and inexorable nature alone, into a monstrous example of the human form. Even Merrick, in those grimy Victorian times and without a farthing to his name, underwent rudimentary plastic surgery to remove some of his most offending tumors. What would he have done, do you suppose, with unlimited funds and a medical profession a hundred years more advanced, if not always more ethical? Possibly just what Michael Jackson has done, with the unfortunate and presumably unintended result for which there is no easy remedy.

Not to say, of course, that a grieving self-image is any excuse for creepy and inappropriate fixations that people close to him should have the decency to stop enabling. We already know that absolute power corrupts, and an absolutely loaded bankbook does (with too few exceptions) also. Bottom-line, do we really need to watch anything about Michael Jackson? Is he anything more than a self-indulgent nut with outlandish peccadilloes? I think he’s our oddity, our modern Merrick, someone we should gaze upon and then count our own blessings. Would anyone exchange their existence for his? How can someone with so much talent make so many wrong decisions? Watch and ponder these questions, so something good might come out of this untoward network ratings ramble.

The Many Faces of Michael Jackson airs on ABC, Monday 2/17 at 8p.
Living With Michael Jackson (encore) airs on ABC, Monday 2/17 at 9p – 11p.
Michael Jackson Unmasked airs on NBC, Monday 2/17 at 9p – 11p.
Michael Jackson Take 2: The Interview They Wouldn’t Show You airs on Fox, Thursday 2/20 at 8p – 10p.