‘King of Pop' More Like a ‘God'
Our Adulation of Michael Jackson Unstinting

While the facts in the criminal case against Michael Jackson have yet to be tried in court, the fantasy life of Neverland Ranch presents a clear indictment of America 's cultural idolatry, said a scholar who studies religion and culture at Iliff School of Theology in Denver .

“One way to think and talk about this theologically is to talk about the way in which our cultural celebrities become gods,” said Jeffrey H. Mahan, professor of ministry, media and culture at the United Methodist seminary. “We treat them in that way. We are fascinated with them. We give their lives a level of meaning that is expanded and beyond the human.”

The public projects this image onto celebrities, but the celebrities also encourage it , he said.

“We know that ( Jackson ) has embraced a bizarre fascination with childhood so that he has taken on this kind of childlike self-identity—the voice, the costuming, the fascination with toys and play, with the need to surround himself with children,” said Mahan. In addition, he said, Jackson has a history of relationships with children that appear to be sex-laden.

The theological implications point to “not just his idolatry, but our own cultural idolatry,” said Mahan. “Once you frame it that way, then what you have is the sacrifice of the children to the god.”

Parents bring their children to Neverland Ranch to experience the divine, if only for a short time, said Mahan, who is co-editor of the book, Religion and Popular Culture in America .

“To be close to the god, one appeases the god, one makes offerings to the god, one sacrifices to the god. And clearly people have sacrificed their children to this god. Whether he is in fact a child molester or not, to allow young children to be unsupervised in the presence of any adult the family doesn't know well—but certainly an adult about whom there have been significant public charges and questions—seems just bizarre. One can't imagine that these parents would make these choices for the strange man down the street.”

In December 2003, prosecutors charged Jackson with seven counts of child molestation, accusing the 45-year-old King of Pop of having “substantial sexual conduct” with a boy under 14 in February and March. His accuser is a cancer-stricken boy who appeared with Jackson in a documentary in February. Jackson also faces two counts of administering an intoxicating agent for the purpose of committing a felony .

“I think it is helpful to begin to say that celebrities become the gods of this culture,” said Mahan, “and particularly when they are the gods of a consumer culture in which appearance is everything, possession of things is everything, and so to be rich, to be famous is the cultural goal.”

Jackson 's defense attorney Mark Geragos presents a different view of the ranch and its visitors.

On Dec. 18, he told CNN's Larry King: “You have to see this Neverland facility. This place. It is wonderful. It's idyllic. It is 2,700 acres … nestled in the mountains up there. It's got an amusement park, it's got a miniature Disneyland train station there with the train that goes around. It's got a lake with swans in it. People come up—he opens his doors, busloads of disadvantaged people and it's the most exciting thing in the world to them.”

To become a god also requires immortality, Mahan noted, and the denial of death has surrounded Jackson since 1986 when the National Enquirer published a photo of him in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber designed to extend his lifespan.

While a series of surgeries have made Jackson appear more and more white, these operations have also allowed a man in his mid-40s to present himself as a hairless adolescent who is resistant to aging.

Jackson 's brother, Jermaine, recently conceded to Larry King that his brother is “child-like,” but Mahan believes that “childish” is a more accurate term and that the star's self-identity “is in part about having no limits.”

The “little-boy-innocence voice” is a denial of the possibility of Jackson 's own death, said Mahan, who is also an ordained clergyman in the United Methodist Church . The financial debt that Jackson carries and the $30 million that was spent producing his latest CD are additional indications of his denial of limits, he said.

The denial of limits also “brings you to the possibility of sexual interaction with children,” said Mahan.

“For somebody who has no limits, who is unwilling to hear the counsel of others where there ought to be boundaries and limits in life, all kinds of sexual transgressions become possible,” he said

Indeed, sexual activity was evidence of the power of ancient gods. Such gods were unfaithful to their wives when married, came down to earth to have sex with mortals, crossed over traditional boundaries about available sex partners, and proved their godliness by suffering no consequences.

But when certain lines are crossed, the broader culture invokes its own boundaries on our contemporary gods, said Mahan.

“They turn on the celebrity,” he said.

The cultural attack on the celebrity starts “when we begin to be kind of too aware of all of this and begin to say, ‘no, no, that's not appropriate. We don't want to participate in that.' We want to deny our participation in it and make the celebrity entirely the villain.”

Think of pioneer film star Fatty Arbuckle, said Mahan. He was paid the unheard-of salary of $1 million and given unlimited artistic freedom. But when he was charged in the death of a young actress in 1921, his audience retreated in horror.

Distancing ourselves from fallen celebrities is a way to maintain our own sense of moral superiority, said Mahan. We tell ourselves that we could be that celebrity, but we have made better moral choices.

“I am allowed to be fascinated for a period with somebody like Michael Jackson, to see what it would be like to simply live on an estate like Neverland, to be able to fulfill any fantasy that you have, to perpetuate this child-like identity, to be admired around the world,” he said. “And then I'm allowed to step back and say, ‘Oh, these transgressions. I would never do that. And in fact the reason I'm not successful and famous and wealthy is because I have made superior moral choices.'”

Mahan said that tensions about celebrity and our cultural ambivalence toward success come together in such stories. On the one hand, we hold fast to the American dream that anybody can be successful, that anybody can be president or be Michael Jackson. On the other hand, we wonder why this has not happened to us or to our children.

Lastly, Mahan draws parallels between celebrities imbued with god-like qualities and the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham offers up his child to be consumed by God. But the biblical story says that ultimately God does not require that of us and that God provides a ram so the child does not have to be sacrificed.

“The tragedy about making Michael Jackson a god,” said Mahan, “is that then the child has to be consumed.”