Zombie Michael Jackson Was Really Effing Weird and Also Sad

Last night's Billboard Music Awards—the latest entrant in an increasingly crowded méleé of trophy-studded pseudo-events—were de facto headlined by a guy whose most recent album came out last week. He's also been dead for about five years now.

A holographic reproduction of Michael Jackson, who passed away on June 25, 2009, performed the excavated track "Slave To The Rhythm" accompanied by a five-piece band and a small army of dancers. Moonwalks were performed; tears were shed.

To say that the whole enterprise was a little bit weird would be an understatement. It wasn't bad in the literal sense or in the Michael Jackson sense; instead, it had a vacuum-packed oddity about it that made it seem like it had been beamed in from the Uncanny Valley Arena—not Las Vegas, where the show was taking place. Jackson's (or somebody's) mouth convincingly contorted along with the (fairly decent!) track's lyrics as the holographic image replicated some of his most memorable moves. The opulent backdrop recalled the artwork for 1991's Dangerous and the accompanying video for "Remember The Time"; the other dancers mostly succeeded in not getting in the hologram's way; the requisite moonwalk was received with a smattering of applause.

The impressive recreation of Jackson's dancing by choreographers Rich and Tone Taluega and the substantial cuts to weeping audience members, however, didn't make the performance itself seem less strange—Jackson's kineticism was an essential part of what made him such an appealing live performer, and his holographic form had an unnerving sterility about it. The entire performance, after all, had been mapped out in advance—and even if every "Hoo!" and hip-thrust in Jackson's own performances was as calculated as his movements last night, his energy made them seem like spontaneous eruptions.

This is hardly the first time the Jackson estate and those who stood to make money from his music have dug up his legacy in order to make a posthumous buck. Jackson's 2009 death came right before he was scheduled to embark on a lucrative 50-show residency at London's O2 Arena; the shows didn't happen, and neither did a pair of tribute concerts that were supposed to coincide with his 51st birthday. Instead, the film This Is It—made from footage of rehearsals for the O2 shows—landed in theaters that fall and eventually grossed $72 million in the U.S. and $261 million worldwide. A year later came the first posthumous album from Jackson, Michael. It had assists from Akon and Lenny Kravitz and sparked a controversy over whether or not Jackson was actually singing on "Breaking News"—a song about media-borne controversies.

The most crucial exploitation of Jackson's visage, however, debuted in late 2011, when Cirque du Soleil debuted Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour. The two-hour performance brought to the stage high-flying acrobats, clips from the Jackson 5 Saturday-morning cartoon, spectacular staging worthy of Jackson's elaborate music videos, and a dancing glove, with Jackson's biggest songs blaring throughout. It was the sort of pop spectacle where the star at its center was both the point of the entire thing and entirely beside the point: Since Jackson had already recorded and released "Billie Jean" and other milestone tracks, and since his estate had given Cirque du Soleil permission to use them, Michael Jackson the person was not necessary to make the art happen, or to make the cash registers ring.

Last night's performance by the hologram gave me a similar feeling, although you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in an official capacity to say otherwise. John Branca, who is a lawyer and adviser for the Jackson estate, told reporters that "it's so important to experience Michael Jackson in a live setting. This is something where we wanted a live performance in front of a live audience and nothing speaks to that more than an awards show." There are earlier quotes where it's clear Branca realizes he's talking about a hologram, but that statement's conflation of Michael Jackson the human being who could shock an audience by, say, debuting a new dance move in the middle of a live TV show and "Michael Jackson" as pre-programmed sleight-of-AI exhibit trotted out to boost ratings is unnerving to those people who think about the humanity of pop stars, and how that corporeal self at the middle of the maelstrom affects the eventual end product.

And once you bring that humanity into the equation, you realize that of all people, Michael Jackson is the most curious case for this sort of post-human experimentation, which if it's successful might open the doors for more estate-padding experiments in holographic entertainment. Yes, from his time in the Jackson 5 onward, Michael Jackson produced some of the giddiest moments pop music has to offer—"I Want You Back," "Beat It," "Bad," even the slightly paranoid "Leave Me Alone." But his decline and fall were also larger than life, from the allegations about child abuse that swirled around him all the way to TMZ's reporting of his death five years ago. This revival seems like a way to bring the "good" Michael—his songs, his dancing, his ability to make a lot of people a lot of money—back into the public eye, but the cost to the legacy of the real, human Michael, who wrote all those unforgettable songs in the first place, might suffer as a result.

Maura Johnston is doing this all live. She's on Twitter - @maura

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