ABSTRACT
Michael Jackson never made a secret of his spirituality, yet never fully articulated his religious beliefs in public. This chapter philosophizes about the ways in which religion played out in the person of Jackson, pointing to the ways in which religiosity and cultural performance are inextricably linked when celebrity, disgrace, and death are brought together by art. Through Jackson's own stage directions and the reminiscing of his collaborators, a vision of his sense of calling, the cultural task he viewed as ever before him, forms. As he envisioned it, the show was to begin with various images of landmark moments in world history projected on orbs, one of which would eventually land in the hand of a giant robot reminiscent of Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still. The struggle of Jackson's existence was a live demonstration of the damage our fixations do.
