Pop king's strange transformation

By FRANCES GRANT

Over the past 20 years pop star Michael Jackson's face has undergone an astonishing and disconcerting transformation.

Even those with no particular interest in Jackson's music or celebrity cannot fail to have noticed his startling metamorphosis from a normal-looking African American child to the pale, freakish, mask-faced individual, subject of the recent controversial interview by British celebrity TV interviewer Martin Bashir.

Tonight's documentary Michael Jackson's Face (TV One, 8.35) was made before the Bashir interview and Jackson's own counter-documentary but it screens as part of what appears to be open season on Jackson on the telly.

This documentary was made for Britain's Channel 5 and was one of the station's highest-rating shows, bar films and football. It treats the visage of the "king of pop" as a kind of topographical study of Jackson's career and the effect of his celebrity on his image.

In pictures and clips from the Jackson Five days, we see the young star Michael has the normal, negroid features of any African American child.

But, we are told, "the day Michael Jackson realised he could change his appearance was the happiest day of his life".

The programme tracks the changes in his appearance from cute child star, through adolescence to the peak of his career with the Thriller album and on into the increasingly bizarre looks and antics of the 1990s.

Commentators include psychologists, plastic surgeons and a paparazzo photographer who has followed Jackson throughout the pop star's career.

According to the plastic surgeons interviewed, including an assistant to the doctor who did most of the work on Jackson's face, the star has obviously had a multitude of operations. This makes a mockery of Jackson's claim in the Bashir interview that the only surgery he had had on his face was two nose operations to help him to breathe and sing more easily.

The cosmetic surgery, coupled with alleged skin bleaching, cosmetic tattooing and hair-straightening, have altered Jackson's face dramatically.

If you're wondering who Jackson might be modelling his face on, the documentary includes some telling footage of a young Elizabeth Taylor at the height of her movie career.

The programme traces this race and gender change from male, African American features to those of a white woman. However, questions are left unanswered, for example, whether a medical condition can actually do that to a person's skin or if it is in fact possible to dye or bleach a brown face white.

And be warned: the documentary comes with a cheesy, tabloid-style narrative from actress Fay Ripley, with lines such as, "superstar Jacko may have sacked Daddo but he hadn't exorcised all his demons". Expect some annoying, pop-video-style editing, as well, and far too much filler footage of noses going under the knife.

Although several psychologists are interviewed about what they believe has driven Jackson to alter his appearance in such an extreme way, there are no new revelations about the star's life.

From the unhappy childhood to the paedophile accusations and bizarre parenting ... it's all a familiar tale.

One of programme's saddest moments, however, comes courtesy of a Jackson double, who has had to have nine cosmetic operations to keep up with his prototype.

Perhaps it's telling that we get a stronger impression of this strange impersonator than of the man himself, who, as one observer notes, is "not quite there".