Michael Jackson's shocking physical transformation makes it hard to ignore the role race, color and stereotypes may have played in his life and tragic death.
Over the course of 50 years, Michael Jackson's skin went from a medium chocolate brown to pale white. His nose went from stereotypically-black wide and flat to nearly-impossible-to-breathe-through-narrow (a shape his sister, Janet, also sports). His checks became hollow. And his hair went from 'fro to Jheri curl to a relaxed straight (or was it a wig?).
On the surface, it looks like Michael was running from his blackness.
According to Maureen Oath's ridiculously in-depth Vanity Fair article covering Michael Jackson's 2005 molestation trial entitled C.S.I. Neverland, race weighed heavily on Jackson's mind. One of his closest personal and religious advisers was Jesse Jackson, a man always conscious about color. In a radio interview aired on interview Jackson's radio show Keep Hope Alive with Reverend Jesse Jackson, "Michael said ..what was happening to him was the result of racism. He told Jesse Jackson in the radio interview, 'I'm totally innocent, and it's just very painful. This has been kind of a pattern among black luminaries in this country.' He told him he got strength from the examples of Nelson Mandela, Jack Johnson, Muhammad Ali, and Jesse Owens. Novel told me he had said to Michael, 'You can either be a victim or a warrior.' In his interview, Michael told Jesse Jackson, 'I'm a warrior.'"
Being from Gary, Indiana, starting his musical career with black artists in Chicago's black theaters, then skyrocketing to fame on Barry Gordy's Motown label, blackness was inevitably a part of Jackson's upbringing.
According to people.com, the son of one of Jackson's long-time doctors and spiritual advisers, Gotham Chopra reported that Jackson suffered from lupus, an auto-immune condition. One side-effect of lupus is vitiligo, a condition that caused Jackson to have white patches all over his body. According to Chopra, Jackson's lightening skin was then an attempt on Jackson's part to even out his skin tone, and any accusations otherwise upset Jackson: "It was very disturbing to him that people thought he always wanted to be white and he was bleaching his skin. [But] he identified as being a black person and so it was troubling to him that everyone thought that he was a hater of his own race" Gotham explains.
Themes like the importance of looking past race were also included in songs Jackson wrote such as "We are the World" (co-written with Lionel Ritchie) and "Black or White". But was Jackson's obsession with color about a sociological reality or more personal demons?
The answer seems to be complicated. In an interview aired on Chicago's NBC evening news, Quincy Jones remembers asking Michael why only blond-hair, blue-eyed children were painted on the walls of his house. Reportedly Jackson told Jones he thought they were pretty and did not understand why Jones would find his opinions strange. Almost as if Jackson thought it was a fact that blond-hair, blue-eyed people were naturally the most beautiful people.
According to Orth's Vanity Fair article, the unpublished book Michael Jackson: The Man Behind the Mask alleges that "Jackson's estrangement from his family, especially his father, has been such...that he did not use his own sperm in conceiving his children. 'He hates dark-skinned people,' [the book's author] Brown says. 'He did not want to take the chance that a child of his would look like [his abusive father] Joseph.'"
So truth is never one dimensional. And realistically, the world will probably never know the inner-workings of Jackson's mind for sure.
But this conversation also raises questions about the role of children, entertainment and tokenism in our culture. At what expense did the world get to enjoy the amazing musical genius of Michael Jackson? And is it even fair or productive to use a cultural icon like Michael Jackson to talk about the every day problems of the average Joe?
Maybe it is productive, but what the conversations "produce" is different than we think. What the outcome of these conversations are may take some time to reveal itself. When I figure it out, I'll let you know.
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Like many genius magicians (Beethoven, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Winehouse), Michael Jackson was a nut case. He should have had a shrink instead of a pill prescribing doctor by his side. I think there is little to learn from someone who was at the 34th standard deviation of music talent-ness and the 34th standard deviation of mental stability.
ReplyDeleteOk, clearly the sanity of Michael Jackson isn't something I can be certain about.
ReplyDeleteThe reason I think he is important to talk about, as a culture critic, is because he affect so many people. The outpouring of grief over his death meant that he, as a performer, spoke to people. What was it that captured people? Why was his song "Black or White" so popular? Etc, etc.