Daddy's Little Girl Gives MJ the Human Touch

Jessica, I saw nothing cruel or exploitative about allowing Paris Jackson to speak about her dad and I’m inclined to believe the Jackson family didn’t force her to do so. According to several news reports, Janet Jackson was slated to speak but let Paris speak instead because she wanted to say something about her father. I watched the whole thing and found the memorial to be tasteful and well-executed, not the bizarre spectacle you describe.

Perhaps after seeing such an outpouring of emotion for her dad, Paris was moved to be more than a just a front row spectator. I'm glad she got that moment. Hopefully it will serve as an emotional touchstone for her and not as a source of deep pain and embarrassment when she’s grown up and looks back on that widely broadcasted day. Maybe she’ll be reminded that despite all the things, good and bad, that have been said and written about her dad, regardless of the media’s obsession with his bizarre and tragic life and the public’s schizophrenic fascination and repulsion toward him, at the end of the day she was the one person who reminded everyone else that he was a human being. That he was her dad and he loved her, and as importantly, that she loved him too. On that stage, her love for him seemed pure and simple. There were probably not many people in MJ’s orbit that the same could be said of with any certainty. Paris and her siblings gave MJ something that not even his most committed fans could give him and that his clearly dysfunctional family never gave him, but he seemed to always crave — unconditional love. As heartbreaking as her moment on stage was to watch, Paris was able to profoundly humanize MJ with just 26 words and in a way that no one else could.

Yes, allowing her to speak was risky but prohibiting her from speaking could have hurt her too. Children are much more resilient than we give them credit for. When my mother died last fall, my little niece and nephew spoke at her memorial service. My niece was 9, my nephew 13. I was afraid they would fall apart but instead they spoke lovingly and in surprisingly great detail about how their grandmother touched their lives. It was very cathartic for them and for us adults too. I know that’s not the same as being on stage in front of 20,000 people and hundreds of television cameras, but my point is that speaking allowed my niece and nephew to take part in the celebration of my mother’s life and helped them to understand that that her death was part of the cycle of life and was not something to fear or despair inconsolably over but something to accept and understand. Children are often sidelined at funerals and memorials because adults want to protect their feelings. As a kid, I was always very scared and sad at funerals. I felt like I an outsider at a very adult ritual of grief and regret.

Now that MJ is gone, I think it’s possible for his kids to eventually have somewhat normal lives—albeit not in the short term and not during the next few years of custody and other legal battles expected over his estate—absent of round-the-clock paparazzi and outside the constant glare of the media spotlight. That is if their guardians protect them and they don’t grow up to be scandal-prone musicians, movie stars, attention-seeking children of once famous parents or, heaven forbid, freakish media magnets like their father.

Photograph of Paris Jackson at her father's memorial service by Mark Terrill-Pool/Getty Images.

Tags: Michael Jackson memorial, Paris Jackson

VIEW THIS CONVERSATION

Marjorie Valbrun is a contributing writer at The Root where she writes about the intersection of race, gender and politics.

Comments

Re:Daddy's Little Girl Gives MJ the Human Touch

By: Izaiah | Sat, 09/12/2009 - 00:30

Apple announcement is another breaking news. Oh boy – another Apple announcement or "media event" for stuff we can buy that, if iTunes is any kind of reference point, will work slowly if at all, and people will pay a lot of money for it because they're that unfulfilled as people. At any rate, the Apple announcement is that they're unveiling a few things. There's Apple iTunes 9, and iTunes LP – which will include visual aids like liner notes for downloaded music. Steve Jobs was there, and he also announced updates to the Apple Store, which will tell you what applications to get. There's new iPods and other products to get, too, and each payday cash leads to people getting payday cash to buy more stuff.

Developing Children Do NOT Need Favoritism In Grief

By: Usama3 | Thu, 07/09/2009 - 08:03

The problem with this occurence and those who project their now adult reminescences is that they neglect the delicacies of internal family dynamics.

Why was the daughter asked to speak while apparently the sons were not? Girls mature emotionally faster than boys and today, and in the meritocratic society girls are increasingly favored over boys. Why did Janet ask the daughter to speak?
Will the sons grow up and wish they had the chance to speak too? Or are their sensibilities less important because, after all, they are just boys?

Celebrate 'daddy's little girl', but what of his two sons will undoubtably watch the videos of this occasion one day and ponder about their own relationships with daddy?

This is why children should NOT engage in such memorial/funeral events. Because they are still developing, selecting one child to participate while ignoring or denying others undermines the reality that each child is at his or her own stage of development and should be shielded from pressure to 'perform' up to certain mature standards unless there is uniform expectations previously set, ie. a family culture. It serves as an unhealthy dynamic between siblings.

Their emotional needs are to be met by parents and family, not by grand public events staged for public consumption. Its quite telling that the youngest Jackson, Janet, selected the daughter to speak. It appears Janet was acting on her own family upbringing to select the young daughter out to perform. It should be noted that Janet has no children and has failed to maintain a family her entire life, including hiding her marriage for years. Yet she has amassed a $100 million dollar fortune of her own. One could argue that Janet is poorly equipped to parent the emotional needs of the daughter at this time ecspecially. Perhaps she is merely following her inclination to encourage the child to 'perform' as a part of her development, a result of Joe Jackson's parenting.

Ultimately, grief is a complex emotion which children need to be taught to understand and manage. Its quite likely that the Jackson family will indeed 'exploit' the children as they were 'exploited' by father Joe Jackson- it being a family affair. Favoring certain children in their emotional development while neglecting others may also be a Jackson family affair. But its inconsistent with sound parenting- it should not be accepted out of idiosyncratic interests.

I recognized that moment

By: LRohde | Thu, 07/09/2009 - 07:14

..because as it so happens, something similar happened to me almost 30 years ago. When I was eleven, my father died and in an unplanned moment, I felt compelled to speak up at his memorial service. Of course, my father was not famous but the church was packed with people I didn’t know, relying stories about my dad that sounded and felt unfamiliar. I don't know where the compulsion came from, but I suddenly and absolutely had to say something, anything. I had to do it for my father; I owed him that somehow. The words I was able to get out before melting into tears were also similar to what Paris Jackson said about her father, but perhaps in that situation, under that kind of pressure, there isn’t much more an eleven year old can do. I don't often think of that evening all those years ago, but when I do, I feel quietly proud of that sad, brave girl. I’m sure one day, Paris Jackson will feel the same way.

I was surprised to find that

By: mcboat | Thu, 07/09/2009 - 01:02

I was surprised to find that this young girl's brief moment attracted so much comment, though I suppose I shouldn't have been. The longer the media focuses on any current event, the more likely people are to seize upon the tiniest thing and make an issue of it. To echo much of the commentary already made about the previous three posts, I was touched by Paris's decision to speak--which to my normally cynical self appeared unplanned--and by the simplicity of her message.

Admittedly I know nothing about the degree to which these children were insulated from the general public. I haven't followed much of the news coverage after the initial announcement that Michael Jackson had died. What I do know is that children pick up on far more than we give them credit for, both good and bad. The family could have banned all mention and criticism of Jackson's medical procedures, his financial difficulties, and the accusations of pedophilia. Even lacking in specific information, those kids know that while there are people who reacted to their father's death with genuine sadness, there are others, including certain U.S. Congressmen, who continue to demonize their father for something that he may or may not have done. I agree that those few words from his daughter did the most to humanize Michael Jackson--and I expect that is enough to make the entire situation suspect to some.

Whether the family encouraged her to speak or not is not relevant to me. If they deny doing so, it wont change the minds of those who already believe they did. That Jackson's daughter spoke at the public memorial when a private family memorial was an available alternative is not relevant to me. The only thing that matters for me is my perception that Paris Jackson wanted to speak. This was her only chance, perhaps for a very long time, to personally offer any kind of response to the people who continue to focus on the evil deeds they presume Michael Jackson committed, and to bring to the forefront the most tragic part of this whole affair--not that the world lost a musical genius, not that his reputation was either justifiably or unjustifiably tarnished, but that three children lost their father whom they loved and who loved them.

thank you

By: aprjoy | Wed, 07/08/2009 - 22:59

for being the only poster on this thread to have any common sense, by rebutting two ridiculous arguments: 1) that the Jacksons were exploiting Paris by allowing her to express her grief, and 2) that a memorial service should be a bashing of the deceased's legacy. I wonder what kind of funerals the others have attended. Not very good ones, evidently.