Was I in denial? Margo Jefferson on Michael Jackson’s legacy
How does a critic and fan come to terms with the fall of an icon? Ten years after his death, the Pulitzer-winning writer revisits her book on Michael Jackson and confronts her own denial
In the first year of the 21st century my American editor and I sat in a restaurant talking about Michael Jackson. We hailed his uncanny brilliance and mourned it too – 30 years of making music, dance, film; crisscrossing styles, genres, types and tropes; confounding cultural codes. We brooded over the rumours and scandals that were turning him into an object of derision, even revulsion. We wanted, we said, to give him his due before (my editor’s words) “he self-destructs … Before he’s destroyed,” my editor qualified, “and self-destructs.”
Events moved too quickly: I couldn’t finish the book before he was arrested in 2003. He was indicted in 2004; he was found not guilty in 2005; he was found dead of an accidental drug overdose in June 2009. We hoped death would restore the measure of his greatness as an artist.