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Magic Books by Talia Felix

Pop Culture Conjure: Michael Jackson's Magic Murder, Ghosty Biopics and Mama Odie

Michael Jackson Murdered by Voodoo! (EDIT 2023: dead link) Or Candomblé, rather.

This story isn't exactly new but some haven't heard it yet. Admittedly, it may be with good reason -- only about half of this lady's story sounds plausible, if that. A lot of it sounds like she's either trying to get attention for her business or trying to get attention for selling her Jackson memorabilia, or trying to get attention for both.

It sounds like he may have really been a client of hers; but the claim that he promised the elephant man skeleton to her sounds like total crap given it's well known by most people -- including Jackson himself one should hope -- that he was never in possession of the thing. (Joseph Merrick's skeleton has been at the Royal London College of Medicine Museum ever since the fleshy part died more than a century ago. Museums usually don't sell off their collections.)

The report of how she did it is an interesting one, worth examining:


Furious, De Souza turned back to her voodoo roots, praying morning, noon,
and night to the fearsome Candomblé god of disease, Obaluaiye. One night, she
says, he appeared to her in a dream and urged her in a voice like thunder to
seek revenge. The rest apparently was stunningly easy for a woman who grew up
practicing a form of witchcraft.

"It's called sympathetic magic, the
oldest known to man," she relates. "An initiate in Candomblé, macumba, or just
plain ol' Haitian voodoo need only believe that a doll or object is the person
in question. Photographs from the victim, as well as nail and hair clippings,
focus one's energies. I had collected these from Jacko as mementos. There was no
intent to harm him until he crossed me."

As for the dead puppy, De Souza
explained that real evil must accompany desired evil, and that she had to
sacrifice a life dear to her in order to rob Jacko of his. The dog was hers, a
4½-month-old pup she'd brought home from the pound and dubbed Cerberus, for the
canine that guards the gates of Hades in Greek mythology. She sliced his neck
and held him as he jerked, allowing his warm blood to spill into the bowls
beneath her feet. She drank from one to set the ritual in motion, turning with
blood-stained hands to the voodoo doll.

The same day that De Souza
plunged several pins into that doll's chest, Jackson, it's reported, died of
cardiac failure at the age of 50. Speculation has since centered on a private
physician and rumors that Jackson had been injected with a drug such as Demerol.





Three black candles are set on a high, rickety table next to the far wall.
On the table is a photo of Jackson onstage during a concert that seems, judging
by his clothing, from the time of the HIStory album, in the late 1990s. Though
the photo has been turned upside down, the inscription is legible, "Thank you
for everything, Dr. De Souza. Michael."

In front of the photo in a tin
ashtray are a lock of jet-black hair, a small mound of nail clippings, and what
look like skin shavings, all purportedly from Jackson. On the floor are three
wooden bowls from which blood has spilled over. The rotting carcass of a baby
Rottweiler lies before the bowls, its throat slit, a bloody knife next to it. In
the corner of the room is a plain, white, voodoo-type doll with pins in its
chest. Scrawled over the walls in the dog's dried blood is the phrase "JACKO
DIES."

Framed still, with its glass casing smashed to bits and diagonal
rips torn through it is a movie poster for David Lynch's 1980 film version of
the Tony award-winning play The Elephant Man. It rests on its side against one
wall, thrown there in a fit of rage.

De Souza's nostrils flare in anger,
as if in memory of the deed.

"God, I loved that movie!" she gasps,
before turning away from the room and walking back into the house's main
corridor.
Yeah, I like how she just kind of kept it around like that just in case any reporters should happen to stop by.

Wasn't sure whether to put this here or on my other blog The Hoodoo Review, since it wasn't strictly on-topic for either blog yet seemed a topic of interest to the crowd hereabouts. It's obvious if you are reading this I did make a decision, in any case.

TV medium Ian Lawman was contacted, to ask various dead celebrities what they thought of the Hollywood portrayals of their lives. (As a screenwriter myself, with an interest in history, I've often wondered about this sort of thing.)

Biggie Smalls was angry over Tupac's portrayal in Notorious, and also revealed the initials M and D in relation to the man who really killed him.
Johnny Cash complained that his biopic Walk the Line was too much about drugs, and he was disappointed with how he was portrayed personlitywise by Joaquin Phoenix.
Jim Morrison was actually rather pleased with The Doors, though he made a point of telling Lawman that his fatal overdose wasn't self-administered.
Amusingly, the author of the article speculates that Kurt Cobain had little to say about his portrayal in Gus Van Sant's Last Days, because "it was so arse-gnawingly boring that even Kurt himself didn't sit through the whole thing." Edith Piaf and Sid Vicious also kept silent about any opinions on how thy were portrayed.

You can read the whole article here on The Guardian's website.


The Princess and the Frog is one of those films along with Corpse Bride and Doom Generation that everyone seems to think I ought to like and yet I really despise. The very nonsensical depiction of Voodoo was the least of its problems.

Nevertheless, I love 2-D animation and recently stumbled on the blog of animator Andreas Deja, who worked on that film among many others. 

On his blog he reveals that the character of Mama Odie is secretly a 2-D animator as well. Let's hope she's better at it than she is at problem solving (seriously, why didn't she just tell them to get married -- by her --to break the curse, they could always get divorced later?) 

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