He was a music legend and a legendary oddball. Now that he's gone, perhaps we can finally answer the question: who was Michael Jackson

他是個音樂奇才，更是個帶有傳奇色彩的怪咖。如今他走了，也許我們終於可以試著回答這個問題：麥可傑克森到底是何許人？

True, for a while he was the king of pop—a term apparently originated by his friend Elizabeth Taylor—and he's the last we're ever likely to have. Before Michael Jackson came Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and the Beatles; after him has come absolutely no one, however brilliant or however popular, who couldn't be ignored by vast segments of an ever-more -fragmented audience. Not Kurt Cobain, not Puffy, not Mariah Carey, not C晹line Dion, not Beyonc晹, not Radiohead—not even Madonna, his closest competitor.

沒錯，他有好一陣子是「流行樂天王」，這個封號顯然是好友伊麗莎白泰勒最早發想，他可能也是我們最後一個流行樂天王。麥可之前，有「瘦皮猴」法蘭克辛納屈、「貓王」艾維斯普里斯萊和披頭四；但他走後，空無一人，不管多才華洋溢或多受歡迎，再也沒有那種可以被日益分眾的廣大樂迷普遍重視的天王。科特柯本、帕妃、瑪麗亞凱莉、席琳狄翁或碧昂絲都望塵莫及，前衛的電台司令合唱團也不夠看，連他最強勁的競爭對手瑪丹娜也難望其項背。

As the prepubescent frontboy of the Jackson 5, he sang in a cherubic mezzo-soprano of sexual longing he could not yet have fully felt. As a young man, however accomplished and even impassioned his singing was, he never had the sexual credibility of a James Brown, in part because of his still-high-pitched voice, in part because he seemed never to fully inhabit himself—whoever that self was. In middle age, he consciously took on the role of Peter Pan, with his Neverland Ranch and its amusement-park rides, with his lost-boy "friends" and with what he seemed to believe was an ageless, androgynous physical appearance, thanks to straightened hair and plastic surgery.

青春期前，他是Jackson 5樂團主唱，他以天使般的女中音，一知半解唱出對性的渴望。長大成年後，不管他的歌唱生涯成就多高，甚至多麼狂熱激情，他從未展現詹姆斯布朗（靈魂樂教父）那種陽剛的男子氣概，部分因為他仍高亢的歌聲，部分因為他似乎從末完全進入自己，不管那個自我是誰。中年後，他刻意扮演小飛俠的角色，創造他的夢幻莊園及主題樂園式的遊樂設施，陪伴他的是迷失的小男童「朋友」，同時拜直髮和整容之賜，他似乎相信自己擁有永遠不老的中性外表。

Which was the more imaginative creation: his music or his persona

哪個展現出較有想像力和創意：他的音樂還是他這個人？

In retrospect, so much of what Jackson achieved seems baldly symbolic. This was the black kid from Gary, Ind., who ended up marrying Elvis's daughter, setting up Neverland in place of Graceland, and buying the Beatles' song catalog. He made trademarks of the very emblems of his remoteness: his moonwalk and robot dances and his jeweled glove—noli me tangere, and vice versa.

回首前塵往事，麥可傑克森的成就帶有象徵意義似乎昭然若揭。他是來自印第安納州蓋瑞城的黑人小子，最後娶了貓王的女兒，創建夢幻莊園以取代優雅園，還買下披頭四詞曲著作權。他獨創代表他疏離冷漠的註冊商標舞步：月球漫步和機器人舞蹈及鑲飾珠寶的手套：代表禁止觸摸，反之亦然。

He morphed relentlessly from the most adorable of kiddie performers to the most sinister of superstars: not by adopting a campy persona, but in real life, dodging accusations of child molestation, one of which led to a trial and acquittal in 2005. One shrink concluded at the time that he was not a pedophile, but merely a case of arrested development.

他徹頭徹尾地蛻變，從一個極天真可愛的童星，一下變成最邪惡的超級巨星，但不是經由一種做作的個性，而是在實際生活中逃過猥褻兒童的控訴，其中一項指控導致他接受審判，但2005年被判無罪。一位心理醫師當時曾下結論說，他沒有戀童癖，他只是個發展停滯的個案。

The 2002 episode in which he briefly dangled his son Prince over a balcony in Berlin, above horrified, fascinated fans, seemed like a ritualized attempt to dispose of his own younger self. And eventually his several facial surgeries, a skin ailment, serious weight loss, and God knows what else made him look like both a vampire and a mummy—Peter Pan's undead evil twins. That is, like the skeletal, pale-faced zombies he danced with in John Landis's 14-minute "Thriller" video. When you watch it today, it appears to be a whole stage full of Michael Jacksons, the real one now the least familiar-looking, the most unreal of all.

2002年發生一個插曲，他在柏林旅館陽台上對著下面一群崇拜他的粉絲短暫懸晃他的兒子王子，眾人大驚失色，這似乎有如某種儀式，企圖擺脫他年少的自我。接著是他幾次整容手術，皮膚病變，暴瘦，以及天知道其他什麼玩意兒，使他最後看來既像吸血鬼又像木乃伊，這也是小飛俠永遠不死的邪惡雙胞胎，就像他在約翰蘭迪斯14分鐘的「顫慄」影帶中一起跳舞的那群骨瘦如柴 、臉色蒼白的僵屍。今天重看那支帶子，好像整個舞台都是麥可傑克森，而他真正的本尊，現在大家反而最不熟悉，也最不真實。

But whatever strictly personal traumas Jackson may have reenacted and transcended—and then re-reenacted—he performed his dance of death as a central figure in America's long racial horror show. To take the uplifting view, enunciated after his death by the likes of the Rev. Al Sharpton, he was a transracial icon, a black person whom white Americans took to their hearts and whose blackness came to seem incidental—along with Sammy Davis Jr., Sidney Poitier, Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, and, inevitably, Barack Obama.

但不論麥可傑克森可能再度經歷哪些純屬個人的創傷，克服超越創傷後，也許再度走過，他是以美國長期上演的種族恐怖秀中的核心角色表演死亡之舞。從正面觀點看，他去世後像民權領袖夏普頓牧師等人宣示，他是跨種族偶像，也是美國白人願意放在心上的黑人，他黑色的皮膚似乎是不經意的偶發事件，就像小山姆戴維斯、薛尼鮑迪、麥可喬丹、歐普拉溫芙蕾、老虎伍茲，還有絕對不能漏掉的歐巴馬總統。

Yet Jackson, always the artificer, surely knew that part of his own appeal to white audiences—who contributed substantially to the $50 million to $75 million a year he earned in his prime—lay initially in his precocious cuteness, and when he was a grown man, in his apparent lack of adult sexuality. He neutered himself racially, too: his hair went from kinky to straight, his lips from full to thin, his nose from broad to pinched, his skin from dark to a ghastly pallor. No wonder Jackson chose to remake himself as an American Dream of innocence and belovedness. No wonder, either, that the artifice eventually turned scary, and the face of the icon came to look more and more corpselike.

但永遠的唱將麥可傑克森內心很清楚，他自己吸引白人樂迷的地方，一開始在他童年時的天真爛漫，成年後則在他顯然缺乏明顯的男人性徵，麥可全盛時期每年所賺的7500萬美元中，白人大幅貢獻了5000萬美元。他在種族上也閹割了自己，以保持中性；他把一頭卷髮燙成直髮，豐唇變薄，壓縮寬大的鼻樑，膚色從黑變成恐怖的慘白。也難怪傑克森選擇重塑自己成為美國夢想中純真可愛的偶像；也難怪一代藝人最後變得十分恐怖，偶像的臉孔越來越像行屍走肉。

Even if he had succeeded in making it back to the top for a while, however, it would have always been difficult to imagine Jackson, the eternal child, in old age. It was hard not to picture him as ever more eccentric and secluded, like Howard Hughes. The Michael Jackson we prefer to keep in our memories is the man-child at the height of his phenomenal powers. That's the man whom the future will take to its heart.

即使他一度成功復出攻頂，很難想像傑克森這個永遠的孩童年華老去的樣子；也很難不去想像他像休斯一樣變得越來越古怪疏離。我們記憶中的麥可毋寧是那個在巔峰時期具有呼風喚雨力量的男童。未來，我們也會永遠把這個人放在心上。（取材自《新聞周刊》）

In this January 31, 1993 file photo (REUTERS) Michael Jackson performs during the halftime show at the NFL's Super BowlXXVII in Pasadena, California. The sudden death on June 25 of the "King of Pop," touched off tributes from fans.

在這張1993年1月31日的檔案照（路透）中，麥可在加州帕沙迪納第27屆職業美式足球超級盃比賽中場表演。「流行樂天王」6月25日猝逝，引爆樂迷哀悼。