Four seconds to hyperstardom

This is one case where a trick of memory reveals a higher truth. For those four seconds not only transformed Jackson’s career, they were a cultural moment whose like we shall never see again.

To appreciate the impact of that performance you really had to have been there - “there’’ meaning either in front of a TV during the broadcast or, perhaps even more telling, hearing about it the next morning from friends or co-workers. It was that rarest kind of media event, one with a massive multiplier effect, where afterward the many who had experienced it feel compelled to share it with the many more who hadn’t.

That Sunday night Jackson put on display his full repertoire of moves as he lip-synched to “Billie Jean’’: the pelvic thrusts, the crotch grabs, the spins, the freezes, the foot shakes, the kicks, the running in place, the dips. Taking everything he’d learned from the Nicholas Brothers and Jackie Wilson and James Brown and Bob Fosse (Brown and Fosse especially), he’d added bits of his own and unleashed himself. Could this be the first human being to have had his cartilage replaced with quicksilver?

The audience in the theater was already going wild. Their response helped fuel the moment. They knew they were getting something special, and you can see Jackson feeding off of them. Then came the moonwalking, and wildness became frenzy.

There was an almost-shocking intensity to Jackson onstage that night; you can still feel it watching the performance today on YouTube. But today we have 26 years’ worth of Jackson’s subsequent career as preparation for watching. Back then, to most viewers, he was just that kid from the Jackson 5. Or the Scarecrow in “The Wiz.’’ Or the singer with that recent album, “Thriller,’’ that had been No. 1 on the charts for a long time. But not many network TV viewers kept up with the charts, let alone watched MTV. (Music video? What’s a music video?) So now Jackson was like a rocket whose launching pad was every eye watching his every move. And the takeoff came when he moonwalked.

The obvious comparison is with the Beatles’ debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show’’ 19 years earlier. That had been a revelation. This was something different. This was an explosion. The Beatles had been new, unknown - literally foreign. Jackson, as noted, was already well known. What the Motown special did was take him to a place beyond stardom (he had achieved that long ago) or even superstardom (which “Thriller’’ was well on the way to achieving for him). It brought him hyperstardom. After that, there was nowhere to go but down, and so he did - artistically, commercially, personally.

A similar cultural moment long ago ceased to be a possibility. There were only three TV networks then, and cable had yet to make serious inroads in their viewership. (The Motown special was the top-rated program the week it was broadcast, watched by maybe 40 million viewers.) And if you missed it, you were out of luck. There was no Google to track it down on the Web - there was no Web. No DVD version could be expected in the stores the next week - there were no DVDs. The combination of enormous initial audience followed by complete unavailability is a recipe for media legend, even myth. That recipe no longer obtains. Once, though, for four seconds, it worked to perfection, then moonwalked away.

MARK FEENEY