The Obligatory Michael Jackson Column

The Obligatory Michael Jackson Column

The opening credits appear over footage of cattle in the yards at a freezing works, identified by a large roadside sign. Their breath mists in the cold morning air. We follow one animal as it progresses to the point where RAPI, a freezing worker in his early 20s, slits open its stomachs. The title “Paunch” appears over a shot of the thin green fluid that pours out of the stomach into a 44-gallon drum.

Same day, midday. Inside a jerry-built implement shed with a lean-to smoko room on a market garden work scheme. About a dozen people, mostly late teens, early 20s, wearing swannis, workboots, wet weather gear or the like are loading 20kg plastic bags of brussels sprouts onto a trailer.

“Beat It” is coming from the radio in the smoko room. As the last bags are loaded, most people jump on the trailer – they’re going into town to play spacies ’cos it’s pay day. The midday news comes on, including an item about Ansett wanting to come into New Zealand, setting the scene as the early ’80s.

KAZ and MA, still in their gears, get their lunches and sit at one of the tables, one each side. They start playing check patience, a game in which each player has a pack of cards and if caught out making a mistake the other player calls “Check!”and claims all the loose cards until one player has them all.

Ah! The Eighties, the now-mythical heyday of MJ! Hardly needed to put in the bit about Ansett now did I in my unsuccessful script for a competition TVNZ held in 1994. As an aside: although the network was only going to choose and make 12 short films, they made a 13th—by the Other Jackson. (Jeez! Any excuse to drag this forgotten sliver of a previous ambition out of the bottom drawer, eh!)

But honestly, my time on that work scheme—best job I ever had, even if I did have to stand on the back of a moving truck pouring paunch out of drums to fertilise the ground—was what immediately came to mind when a workmate called out to me yesterday to look on SFGate because Michael Jackson had been taken to hospital and it was rumored he was dead. His music was the soundtrack for that decade, even at the arse-end of the universe Down Under.

And just down the road, in another freezing works town, where jobs were being lost faster than Ma could lose at check patience, Jackson’s influence led to a unique combination of breakdancing and hip hop with Maori culture in the 1984 hit by the Patea Maori Club, Poi E! (Keep your eye out for the guy in the waka about 1:30 minutes in.)

Perhaps because all I know about Michael Jackson could be written on the fingers of one glove, there’s just one word I can think of to describe him: touchstone.

Rosalea.barker@gmail.com

--Rest in Peace—

(PS: It’s not just a publicity stunt is it?)

ENDS

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