No fairytale ending here

OPINION: So Michael Jackson's soul has taken wing and, with a backing choir of angels, is now dancing on the right hand of God (if you don't like that version of the fairy tale, choose your own. There are heaps available.), writes Joe Bennett this week.

Meanwhile, his body has been buried in a cemetery called Forest Lawn. I've been there.

In the early 80s I hitched down the west coast of the States, my eyes stretched wide by the marvels of the country and the kindness of its people. I fetched up in LA on Christmas Eve. I didn't have much money but I did have distant relatives somewhere in the suburbs. They were a pair of retired real estate agents called Crook. I rang them.

"You must stay with us," they said, which was the correct response. They came to fetch me in the plushest car I have ever ridden. Its upholstery had upholstery. We drove an hour on the freeway to their house, without leaving the city.

When I woke in their annexe on Christmas morning there was a stocking full of gifts on my bed. They had sent the maid out to shop after I'd gone to sleep. I felt embarrassed by their generosity.

We spent Christmas Day eating. The Crooks were fat and they planned to stay that way. On Boxing Day they asked me if there was anywhere in LA I would like to visit. Beverly Hills, perhaps, or Universal Studios. I said I'd like to see a cemetery called Forest Lawn. They looked unnerved.

"It's just,' I said, "that someone once wrote a book about it. It's a very famous book."

That convinced them. They drove me there.

What I didn't tell them was that the book was by Evelyn Waugh and it was a bitter satire. Waugh was a pompous English snob, but he wrote prose like sugar-coated razor blades. The Loved One is among the blackest and funniest and truest books of the 20th century.

The narrator is a young Englishman who falls in love with a beautician at the fictional equivalent of Forest Lawn. Her job is to prettify corpses for viewing. The corpses are referred to as Loved Ones. But the Englishman has a rival, an embalmer called Mr Joyboy. I won't tell you how the book ends because you may not have read it. All I will say is that things don't go well for Joyboy. For the beautician they go worse.

In Waugh's Forest Lawn everything is a veneer. It resembles a Hollywood set, apparently substantial but with nothing behind it. The cemetery consists of nice bits of human culture snatched from wherever and reproduced in Los Angeles, divorced from their origins. There is, for example, a Robbie Burns kissing stone, and an artificial Lake Isle of Innisfree, complete with honey bees as in the poem.

Until, that is, mourners complain of being stung, whereupon the bees are replaced with an artificial hum. There are replicas of Renaissance paintings, and of churches from all over the world, and the place offers services of all denominations. In other words, the customer can buy whatever consolatory fairy tale he wants. I was keen to see how the original compared with the fictional.

It compared well. While the Crooks took a motorised tour of the place, I went to the welcome centre. In the foyer was the world's biggest oil painting. I asked whether I could see an embalming room or a viewing room for corpses but I was politely refused. I mentioned Waugh. They hadn't heard of him.

The place was immaculate. Huge lawns like fairways were dotted with discrete brass plaques. I found an exact replica of a little English church and a vast plinth on which The Builder's vision for Forest Lawn was carved. "I believe," it began, "in a happy eternal life." Hell got no mention.

Numerous movie stars were buried there but there was no public access to their graves. They are shielded from riff raff even in death. It was the right place to bury Michael Jackson.

For Michael Jackson lived the fairy tale. The poor little black boy gained global fame and unlimited wealth. He could have or do anything he wanted. He fulfilled the prescription for happiness. And it brought him misery. He died sick, frightened, friendless and young.

His fame and money were meant to liberate him. They imprisoned him. He could go nowhere and do nothing. He withdrew from the world that he had apparently conquered. He fled reality and embraced drugs and children. He grew to hate himself. He spent millions trying to look like someone else. The dream we are all sold, the oldest fairy tale of them all, the Cinderella story, the dream voiced in despicable Lottery ads, proved a lethal nightmare. Just as it did for Princess Diana.

It would be nice to think we might learn from Michael Jackson. But I've no doubt we'll continue to prefer fairy tales.

» Joe Bennett is an English-born travel writer and columnist who lives in New Zealand with dogs. His columns are syndicated in newspapers throughout New Zealand.

- © Fairfax NZ News