Peter Pan Speaks

By RICHARD CORLISS

At 34, Michael Jackson is still the world's most fragile child star. When he was 11, the Cupid and Kewpie doll of the Jackson 5, he had three No. 1 hits. He did O.K. on his own too: the two best-selling albums in history (Thriller and Bad) and a contract with Sony Entertainment valued at a billion dollars. For most of the '80s, long before anyone felt compelled to dub him the King of $ Pop, he was that and more.

Yet, as he revealed in his 90-minute TV chat last week with talk-show empathizer Oprah Winfrey, Jackson is at heart as vulnerable as the handicapped children he generously welcomes to his ranch near Santa Barbara, California. He calls it Neverland, an allusion to his status as pop's Peter Pan. But Jackson may feel more kinship with another English outsider, John Merrick -- that sweet-souled, tragically deformed creature, the Elephant Man. "I love the story," he told Winfrey. "It reminds me of me a lot . . . It made me cry because I saw myself in the story."

Jackson can cry out loud; that is his agony (displayed to Winfrey) and his art (in performance). These days he is doing both: the world's most reclusive exhibitionist -- or most exhibitionistic recluse -- is everywhere. For the Clinton Inauguration, he led an all-star reunion of his 1985 We Are the World chorale. He spurred the Super Bowl to the largest U.S. TV audience ever, supervising a 98,000-person flash-card promotion for his Heal the World charity for inner-city children. He appeared at the N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards and the American Music Awards ceremonies.

Cynics can find a reason for this. He is no longer, quite, Michael Jackson. The Thriller album sold 21 million domestic copies (and 27 million more worldwide); Dangerous, his latest set, has trudged along at 4 million since its release in November 1991. In a Los Angeles Times survey of music moguls, Jackson ranked just 14th on the list of stars deemed worth signing to long- term contracts. Last year, according to Forbes, he made less money than Winfrey ($51 million to $88 million).

Pop music is a fickle muse; anyone can lose the knack. But Jackson lost touch. Not as a performer -- his falsetto and his footwork still dazzle -- but with his audience. His career went stratospheric, and he went extraterrestrial. He seemed like one of the exotic animals he keeps in his backyard habitat. For some imaginary Madame Tussaud's, he transformed himself into his own waxed, blanched figure.

Last week Jackson tried for mass-media redemption and went megaplatinum. Part grand Oprah, part soap Oprah, the Winfrey show was at the very least great TV: live, reckless, emotionally naked. For his first television interview in 14 years, Jackson won a huge audience -- the largest, excluding Super Bowls, in a decade -- and a forum to counter some of the zanier rumors that have swirled around him. He rebutted the charge that he sleeps in a , hyperbaric chamber; the photo suggesting that he did actually showed him, he said, testing equipment at a burn center he founded after being "burned very badly" while shooting a 1984 Pepsi spot.

He claimed he has had only minimal plastic surgery, referring viewers to his 1988 biography Moonwalk, in which he admitted to having had his nose removed -- sorry, remodeled -- and a chin cleft made. And he denied he bleached his skin to its current Kabuki whiteness as a renunciation of his ethnic roots: "I am proud to be a black American." He said (and his dermatologist has confirmed) he suffers from a "disorder that destroys the pigmentation of the skin . . . It's in my family. . . . Using makeup evens it out, 'cause it makes blotches on the skin." The disease, vitiligo, is "more visible with those with black or brown skin," says Dr. Madhu Pathak, a professor of dermatology at Harvard. "There is treatment. Michael Jackson may die of other diseases but not from this one. He will have a normal life."

That last prognosis is, alas, faulty; Jackson's life has never been normal. For a celebrity of his magnitude, to be seen is to be smothered, to be loved is to be abused, to be a star is to be a freak. His childhood story is as poignant for what he says he missed ("slumber parties") as it is pathetic for what he endured. During rehearsals, he recalled, he would look out and "see all the children playing . . . and it would make me cry." Before a tour of South America, "I hid, and I was crying while I was hiding, because I did not want to go." In puberty -- "very sad, sad years for me" -- his abusive father routinely called Michael ugly, "and I would cry every day."

Responding to Winfrey's question "Did your father ever beat you?," Michael tried to smile as he said, "Yes." Then, in an aside to his father, "I'm sorry. Please don't be mad at me." With that wincing smile, Jackson was like a wounded orphan who has walked through fire and has booked a return trip. How strong is the bond, the bondage, of victim to victimizer? Dangerous is "dedicated to my dearest parents, Katherine and Joseph Jackson."

Asked if he was a virgin, he smiled and said he was "a gentleman. You can call me old-fashioned, if you want." He has dated Brooke Shields, but the actress says, with a smile in her voice, "He has not asked me to marry him. Maybe that's going to be on the next Oprah show." Shields, 27, also grew up naked before the camera and understands the slash and burn of early fame. "It is very hard," she says of Jackson, "when your family turns against you, and when anyone you befriend slaps you in the face. It would amaze you the way people hurt him. What amazes me even more is his willingness to forgive. He acknowledges their frailty, and he allows it to eat away at him. Can you blame him for wanting to be surrounded by the innocence and purity of children? The light in their eyes is what he wants to keep alive in his own soul."

"In a way," Shields says -- meaning the best way -- "Michael is not of this world." But as a child aching for love, even from those who can abuse his trust, he resembles most other people on earth. And in daring to do battle without the armor of guile, he is something else old-fashioned: a hero on an impossible quest for innocence.

With reporting by Daniel S. Levy/ New York