24
Jun
Jackson is a biological conundrum. For a while it seemed he might be what Darwinian science called the missing link. He exists halfway between ape and angel, tenuously attaching us to our primitive origins while evolving towards a post-human future. His best buddy in the 90s was Bubbles the diapered chimp, who slept in a crib in his bedroom. But he also smoochily bonded with a mascot who seemed like a preview of a future when our sordid internal organs will be replaced by electronic gadgetry. Recording a song for a spin-off from Spielberg’s E.T., he cosied up to the gnomic robot: “I kissed him before I left. Next day I missed him”. One of his concerts in the 1980s concluded with a rocket launch, which made it look as if Jackson were being propelled out of the arena in a burst of pyrotechnics. Fired upwards into the night sky, he was, like E.T., headed home; the moonwalker belongs in outer space, unencumbered by the gravity that tethers the rest of us.
[Who stole the soul of the boy from Indiana?]
The Observer | Peter Conrad
