Advance publicity for the Michael Jackson trial promised a melange of celebrity and controversy that would look like some star-spangled version of Jerry Springer. The kind of magazines that sit at supermarket checkouts would be filled with paparazzi shots, the rolling news networks would gleefully stuff their bulletins and everyone would be spellbound.
Give or take the spasm of hysteria surrounding the verdict, however, the public seems to have been less excited than planned. If you believe that the postmodern condition involves gormlessly fixating on TV, this may have solely been down to Judge Melville's decision to bar cameras from the courtroom.
But in both the US and Britain, there were distinct signs that viewers and readers consciously recoiled. The celebrity magazine Heat, that lightning rod for the part of the zeitgeist where glitz meets twitching curtains, stayed well away. On Sky News, the daily syndicated courtroom reconstructions quickly looked like a burden on the schedules. Celebrity culture, that prurient force that supposedly knows no bounds, may have finally hit its outer limits.
"There hasn't been a great deal of appetite for some of the quite graphic nature of the evidence that's been coming out," reckoned one CNN executive. "People have been inclined to switch off because it's been a bit too sordid."
moral murk
That's all undoubtedly true, though it rather neglects another repellent aspect of the trial: an all-pervading moral murk, which left most of the central cast looking just short of grotesque.
Who, really, would want to follow the fates of Jackson himself, his ex-wife Debbie Rowe, or his father Joe, whose allegedly brutal treatment of his son may lie at the root of all this mess? What of the ethics of the ex-Neverland staff who had never seen fit to take their stories to the police -- or parents such as Mrs. Arvizo, who apparently had no problem allowing their kids to spend the night with one of the world's most famous child-abuse suspects? When the jury sat for their post-trial press conference, this was raised as a plus for the defense, an illustration of how morally contorted even the verdict turned out to be.
However, even if you wanted to affect an interest in the case as some crystallization of wider social currents, there wasn't much to hang on to. Likewise, the theory of the Jackson trial as American microcosm, however, seems like a non-starter. Whether the freakish world into which it peered says anything about Main Street USA seems doubtful. Certainly, there are no potent racial narratives as there were with OJ Simpson; at most, events have simply underlined the truism that dysfunction gets passed down the generations, and that money serves to inflate it.
Characterizing the trial as either twisted showbiz spectacular or social parable seems also to overlook the miserable story at the case's core.
Over the last 14 weeks, Gavin Arvizo has been variously maligned as a precocious trickster, a serial liar, and an uncontrollable tearaway. There must be plenty of 15-year-olds who once answered such a description, only to find their way. He may once have had that chance, but in the wake of the verdict he has rather the doomed look of someone whose travails end up in TV exposes.
PROSPECTS
When it comes to Jackson's post-trial prospects, the picture may not be much brighter. Monday's news bulletins occasionally made references to rumored plans to reform the Jackson 5, or establish the erstwhile King of Pop as a staple attraction in Las Vegas, but both schemes look improbable. The least morally relativist nation in the industrial world seems unlikely to rekindle affection for a 46-year-old man whose acquittal was apparently secured on the basis that his fondness for small boys could not be proven to have a sexual aspect.
Judging by his recent appearance, Jackson's own health may prove to be a more pressing impediment. The best he can hope for, it seems, is for the historical importance of his best music to be secured, and the world to leave him alone.
Off The Wall and Thriller, then, will play on. But will they drown out the sound of the mangled lives that followed in their wake?
It's doubtful.
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