So this is the question I find myself asking myself on this balmy March afternoon: What is the cultural significance of Earvin "Magic" Johnson? (If it surprises you that I entertain myself, on balmy March afternoons, asking myself questions about the cultural significance of 6’9” former NBA stars who contracted HIV and went on to build movie theaters and Starbucks in the ‘hood, then you obviously don’t know me very well. Hi, I’m Dexter. I do pop cultural criticm. Nice to meet you. Welcome to my Encyclopedia of American Celebrity Project. It’s balmy in here too.)
How much of the "Magic" brand is composed of his big toothy smile? What part is constituted by his revolutionizing of the art of passing? What about that game in the finals when he took over as center because Kareem was injured and stuck it to the Sixers? And the rivalry with Larry Bird that was like the kindler, gentler version of earlier, more politically charged black-white rivalries like the one between Jesse Owens and the nation of Germany or the one between Rocky Balboa and Clubber Lang? And what significance is contained in that final comeback or two which were so amazing not because he was particularly great anymore but because he had the HIV and we knew that all those HIV-phobic players hated having to bump and sweat up against him but they had no choice because, even though he wasn’t a superstar anymore, he was still a pretty good player and he also owned part of the Lakers and the bottom line, which was the bottom line, was that he was Magic Johnson (whatever or whoever that is) and they weren’t?
What part is played in our national love affair with Magic by his obsessive, absurd, addictive promiscuity that took him on a magical mystery tour, during his NBA years, of 1,000 or so women’s secret bits?
"I enjoyed making women’s fantasies come true but you have to draw the line somewhere," he writes in his 1992 autobiography. "One woman wanted to take me into a little phone booth at the back of a restaurant. That might be all right for a jockey, but a 6ft 9ins basketball player has certain limitations. I had my own fantasies, too. Like many men, I wondered what it would be like to be with more than one woman at a time. There were times when I was able to arrange such an evening with two women."
Magic is rich with significance, in other words, because he’s all that and then some (tall, dark and handsome/ bust a nut inside your eye to show you where I come from), but what’s really fascinating is how all of that symbolisme has somehow merged into this one seamless smily persona that makes almost everyone in the global village in which we all "exist" feel all warm and gooshy about themselves. As Jesse Katz, a fellow member of the Pop Culture Critics of America Association Organization (PCCAAO), writes in his definitive essay on Magic in Los Angeles Magazine:
With that smile–the feature for which he is so widely praised–he is white America’s ideal of a nonthreatening black man, an image integral to his canonization, alongside the ultra-pale Larry Bird, as one of the NBA’s twin saviors. As an entrepreneur, he is attempting much the same for minority communities; if he can show them to be safe and profitable environments, the corporate world might just shed its fears and follow him in. “We don’t franchise our stores, but we decided to give it a test primarily because of Earvin’s deep sense of compassion and sensitivity,” says Howard Schultz, the chairman and CEO of Starbuck, which has opened 48 inner-city coffeehouses with Johnson, the company’s only outside partner. “The thing Magic has that you can’t buy is a level of trust and confidence that people have in his name and what it stands for.” It could be argued that a $ 3 latte is not exactly what black America is longing for, but Johnson insists that his fare is symbolic–of quality, of respect, of untapped potential.
Despite all of the diverse resonances, signifiers, and semiotics that Magic seems like he should reflect and represent, in other words, he’s somehow become Oprah. He’s a non-threatening, non-partisan black embodiment of the American dream (or delusion) that everyone, no matter where and who they came from, no matter their color or gender, can be great if they just play the game the way it’s supposed to be played. So even if you want to dismiss him because you’ve heard this lullaby before (it’s the one that says, ‘It’s okay, baby, you did good today just looking after yourself and your kin and making the kwan. You’re good enough. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault’) somehow you can’t dismiss him. You can’t even dislike him. After all, he gives so much money away, and he has that book club that gets middle-aged suburban white women to read Toni Morrison, and he donates his smile to the cause of AIDS education. Most of all you can’t dislike him because he used to be so goddamned beautiful. And for other reasons too.
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