Lightbulb Over Head Blog

Does the world really need another article about the death of Michael Jackson?

Probably not, yet here I am on the eve of his memorial service and I can’t get him out of my head.

Earlier today, my cousin, Wendi, suggested that I tackle this complex, over exposed topic and ever since, I’ve been wondering what I could possibly contribute to this massive international dialogue.

The day Michael Jackson died, I was at my family reunion in Tennessee. In one of the few and far between moments when my golf and LSU Baseball-crazed cousins weren’t hogging the television to watch sporting events, the news of Michael Jackson’s heart attack flashed across the screen. I paused, unable to register what I was hearing. The rest of my family went about their business drinking a glasses of chardonnay, piecing together jigsaw puzzles, or reading quietly by lamplight.

“Michael Jackson? What? How? What? The Michael Jackson is dead?” My voice was high and squirrelly as I looked around the room for a response.

My father was the only one to take note of my outburst. He was reclining on a large, white, leather couch with his feet up on a pillow. He chewed on the inside of his mouth, making the familiar sucking noises that accompanied this strange habit. “Yup,” he simply said as he starred up at the screen.

The rest of the room remained the same. The news correspondent explained that Jackson had collapsed in his home earlier in the day due to a heart attack and could not be resuscitated at the hospital.

Make no mistake, I was shocked by this news.

But:

A few minutes later I was cutting myself a piece of pineapple upside down cake and life was continuing as usual.

I have an odd sense of detachment from this event. I’ve felt like a fly on the wall for the last two weeks with no relation to the giant emotional upheaval that’s been going on regarding the loss of this celebrity. On one hand, I see Michael Jackson, pop sensation and dance visionary, and on the other hand I see Michael Jackson, probable (yet unproven) pedophile and plastic surgery addict. I just can’t reconcile the two images I have in my head. Its like I’m watching him split into two entirely different people every time I watch a televised documentary of his life. He was some kind of bizarre, freaky genius. I suppose it makes sense that a recipe that unstable was bound to explode at some point.

In the weeks following Michael’s death, I received messages on Facebook from random people announcing that “Michael never touched those kids. If you had a son and you truly thought he’d been sexually abused, would you settle for cash or see the deviant put behind bars where he belonged?” My immediate response was that I would see him put behind bars. However, I can imagine if I were a private person and my face and my son’s face were being plastered in all of the tabloids that it would wear on me emotionally and physically. It must have been a terribly stressful ordeal for the mother of Jordan Chandler and if she was offered an unimaginable sum of money from the King of Pop, I could imagine how she might have brought herself to take it as a means of getting her family out of the spotlight and away from the scandal.

It cannot be denied that Michael was an addictive man. From the augmentation of his skin color and facial reconstruction to his publicity stunts, he lived for the lime light. Despite his famous song’s title, it did matter to him if he was black or white, or at least it seemed to, based on the physical evidence. At the age of 50, his eyes were pretty much the only recognizable feature linking him to his birth-given face. He went from revolutionizing the dance and music video industry to jumping on the hood of his limo before a court appearance. For me, he reached the limit when he hung his baby out of a hotel window in Berlin. In the pictures, his face is oddly excited, mouth wide to accept the shouts and protests from below as if they fell on his ears like praise, his eyes slightly deranged.

It makes me sad to see this plethora of misplaced showmanship when I think back on this man’s remarkable life. He was so talented and inspired so many people that he really didn’t need any of these desperate plays for attention.

Tonight I watched the coverage of MJ’s memorial service on VH1 with my friend, Greg. Besides the fact that we were surprised by Brooke Shields’ description of her close friendship with Michael (Who knew?), the evening was filled with adulation for Michael as a friend and artist. Even his friend’s questioned some of his minor eccentricities. My favorite example of this was when Shields described when she had asked Jackson, “What’s with the glove?” Between speeches, those in attendance yelled and shouted in worship to their fallen king and idol. It only took a changing slide to set them off repeatedly and unstoppably. It is undeniable that Michael left behind millions of fans world wide. More than all of the scandal and speculation about his eccentric life, Michael was an innovator, and more importantly, and inspiration.

That was his greatest gift. For the last two weeks there has been an outpouring of dancers and singers who all swear they started learning their craft because of watching Michael Jackson perform. That is Jackson’s true legacy.

I hope that is what people remember in years to come. I hope dancers learn to moon walk and I hope music videos get bigger and better at story telling. I hope children watch videos of The Jackson 5 and believe that their dreams are possible. Where is there love for music and dance, Jackson will be there to continue to inspire.

If you haven’t seen Disney Pixar’s Up, then you are a bad person. You need to accept your faults and find the nearest toddler you can get your hands on and use him or her as an excuse to go to this movie. Or if you’re secure enough in your inner child, go by yourself.

The film is extremely layered and more complex than most Disney movies. Sure, it has its fair share of adult jokes to entertain parents and the most perfect portrayal of what dogs would say if they could talk that I have ever witnessed (I won’t repeat any of it here because it will truly ruin it for people who want to see the movie), but the themes in this movie are what make it so special. I will be discussing parts of the film in detail, so SPOILER ALERT for anyone who cares, but honestly I think reading this would only provide a lens through which to view the film.

Firstly, it contains a poignant vignette detailing the childhood and relationship of Carl Fredrickson and his wife Ellie. As children, they vow to adventure together to Paradise falls in the footsteps of their hero, explorer Charles Muntz. The children grow up and end up getting married and building their dream house, all the while saving up for their adventure. But life often comes with curve balls and they never quite get around to seeing their goal through before Ellie dies and Carl is left with their house full of fond memories and dreams of Paradise Falls. This part of the movie could honestly stand on its own. The story telling is winning and perfect. Bright and funny, you fall in love with the children versions of Ellie and Carl before they fall in love with each other. The depiction of Ellie is particularly articulate. A firecracker, she helps a stifled young Carl to come out of his shell and includes him in her adventurer club.

When I was younger, my best friend Pam and I used to create clubs just about every day. We had soccer clubs and spy clubs and God knows what else. I know we would have had a great relationship regardless of these childish enterprises because we’re like sisters, but I think those clubs did have a very special way of keeping our imagination and impulsive sense of adventure at full throttle. It was very believable to see the relationship between Carl and Ellie bloom from the seeds of their adventurer club to the full bloom of life long love because in my own life, I have grown into such intimate sisterhood with my friend Pam. By intimate, I mean to say honest self deprecation and the examination of the soul rather than some torrid lesbianic affair that the word “intimate” brings to mind for some people. So keep it in your pants, gents.

During the montage of the relationship between Ellie and Carl and her ultimate end, the story tellers gave us specific visual cues to hold onto; the way Ellie always has to set the little, red, ceramic bird on her mantle at the right angle, the mail box that Ellie and Carl put their hand prints on, and most importantly, Ellie’s adventure book which she shares with Carl on eve of their first day as club-mates and presents him with on her last day on Earth.

The first half of the book is filled with Charles Muntz idolatry and drawn pictures of her dream house resting at the top of Paradise Falls. The second is labeled with a title page that reads:

“The Things I’m Going to Do.”

During the powerful montage, Ellie and Carl strive to do those “things” but other things always get in the way and Carl is wracked with depression when he realizes that his wife will never get to fill in those pages. I think we all dream about the things we’re going to do. When we’re children, we’re allowed, encouraged even, to dream up elaborate lives and goals for ourselves. I often think about where I am as opposed to where I thought I’d be. I’m not old enough to be a sage, but I do know that life takes you places you didn’t necessarily think you would go. I also have my journals from my clubs with Pam and they are similarly half full. I never did join the CIA or play soccer in the Olympics so after a while I ran out of things to record from my life as a Secret Agent with a cover as a famous professional athlete.

I was surprised to find that the screenplay writer, Bob Peterson, was not afraid to touch the subjects of Ellie’s miscarriage and personal tragedy at the very outset of the film. I knew I loved this film during the transition from the sepia tones of the sensitive and tender scenes of their wedding and renovating the house and colorful shots of the couple painting the nursery for their expected child, to the stark shot where Ellie finds out she’s miscarried, followed by the shot of a concerned Carl watching her from the window as she is seated in the yard. There was something about the oddly placed wooden dining room chair sitting on the grass and her hair gently wafting in the breeze that was so sad and so intimate. There was also a collective gasp when Ellie died. A little girl sitting in front of me poked her mommy in the arm and exclaimed in disbelief, “She died!?” It brought to mind the first time I saw Bambi. However, when Bambi’s mother dies its a good way through the film. This was within 10 minutes of the start, and yet we as the audience had already felt the weight of a lifespan of love and loss.

For Carl, Ellie lives on in their house through her pictures and the chairs sitting side by side that the couple had enjoyed in their living room, her picture on the wall, and her adventure book. Unfortunately, as is the case with many lonely, elderly folks these days, he ends up facing the reality of a nursing home. Rather than cave and leave his beloved house behind (which he talks to as if it is an incarnation of his dead wife), he opts to spend his last dime and use every remaining helium tank and balloon from his balloon cart to fly his house and his memories far away from his hometown and the waiting nursing home attendants.

This image was so gorgeous and poetic to me. He packs all of his grief, loss, and stubborn habits into his house and takes off with them, leaving the world behind and ready to live cloistered in them for the rest of his life in solitude and peace. When he escapes, he’ll be able to dwell as much on the past as he desires rather than facing the changing modern world springing up around him.

Little does Carl know, his nemesis, a young “eagle scout” who constantly tries to give unsolicited aid to the elderly is stuck on his front porch.

The two characters embark on an adventure to Paradise Falls where they nurture and enrich each other in ways I certainly didn’t expect. Of course it was predictable that the kid would breathe new life in Carl’s stale existence, but what I didn’t expect was the portrayal of the boy named Russell.

He wasn’t just a lively kid that reminded Carl of his wife and how they had acted together as children. Russell was the victim of a broken home. His mother was dead and his father left. Russell describes his memories of his father pinning on his scouting badges and how he hoped that getting this final “Aid to the Elderly” badge would bring him back. I was struck by the brilliant writing of this monologue that exposed how memories of someone aren’t always exciting. They’re just the little important boring things about existing with a person that you remember after they are gone, whether they leave you by choice or they are taken from you.

I relatively recently got out of a long term relationship where I was truly in love with someone. The things I remember and miss aren’t necessarily trips we took or the highs and lows of our time together. I remember waking up next to him and snuggling close, or the way he draped his arm over may waist when we watched Lost on my laptop at night, knowing that I would almost immediately fall asleep- Just the little things that make a house a home.

When they land at walking distance from Paradise Falls, the man and the boy begin dragging the house towards that “promised land” as it floats above their heads. In a moment, instead of being a vehicle, it becomes an obstacle that Carl must contend with and eventually let go of. I found that it was such a perfect metaphor for loss.

You let loss carry you for a while. Then you carry it until you’re ready to let it go.

Watching this play out on screen was such a joy, both in the sense that I giggled and in the sense that I cried. I truly recommend this movie, and for me, seeing it in 3D at the Regal Union Square was worth every penny.