Of Distance and Desire: The Many Metamorphoses of George Michael and the Origins of his Creativity

Abstract

This paper argues for George Michael's significance to contemporary culture, a significance that requires a radical reinterpretation of his life. My discussion suggests that what is at stake in understanding Michael's life is a pattern of internalized homophobia. The method of this paper is to trace the double structure of his consciousness – his awareness of his role as icon and his private state of despair – by isolating moments in both parts of his life. From these, I attempt to extract an understanding of Michael's inner world that found expression in his lyrics. These encounters I explore in light of Kohut's theory of narcissism and Winnicott's ideas of transitional objects. In addition, George Michael's later years were defined by two losses, that of his lover and that of his mother. Michael's relationship to his grief is the focus of this essay. Drawing upon the biographies that have been written about George Michael and the interviews he gave over his career, I attempt to trace the origin of his depression to his early encounters with loss. These losses, I maintain, were reactivated at the peak of Michael's fame and led ultimately to withdrawal and artistic silence in his final years.