If I stretch my imagination waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in time to 1991, I can recall some controversy and hubbub over the “new” Dangerous album. It rode the crest of the tidal wave of hostile speculation over Michael Jackson’s increasingly unusual appearance. The world was not ready for a shape-shifter who defied all racial and gender stereotypes- regardless of the reasons he was denying those rigid role expectations.
Since the years he endured such heinous torture in the courtrooms, falsely accused of child abuse, the earlier blitz of controversies is a distant murmur. But I recall conservative religious upset over the apparently occult symbols on the Dangerous album cover. I recall some passing indignation over the Black or White video sequence, which “promoted” a child acting “bratty” and “defiant” to “parental authority.”
Yeah, like that scene where the cute Home Alone kid ignores his dad’s order to “turn that noise down” would lead to society’s downfall.
But I had just moved out into my very first apartment and hence, it was the first Michael Jackson album that I bought without defying my own parents. I was on my own at last, and eighteen years of stringent fundie Christian rules no longer applied.
The world I came from was so damn weird that I didn’t really see anything terribly disconcerting about some of The King’s unusual transformations or habits. That, and I admit I’ve always been extremely attracted to a slightly effeminate aesthetic. There was something so ethereal and feline about him when he unveiled his dramatically different look on the cover of Bad. It was stark and thrilling. The juxtaposition of heavily buckled gear with that soft, painted visage wasn’t as much shocking as it was exciting. This new Michael made me hot under the collar. I was all of 19, so imagining Michael Jackson singing “Give Into Me,” directly to me, begging me, commanding me, had me all fired up.
I was wrapped up in my own little reverie, but it seemed as if the rest of the world was going ballistic over the dangerous Dangerous.
First, some nostalgia over the good news: this is the album that gave us killer tracks like “Jam,” “Keep the Faith,” “Give Into Me,” and “Will You Be There.” It was the first Michael Jackson album recorded with the world’s new CD format in mind- making it much longer than previous recordings. The album debuted at number one. It won a Grammy Award and was nominated for four. Slash played guitar in the “Give Into Me” video. Fight Club’s David Fincher did the “Who Is It?” video. All the videos were lavish short films. The album went seven times platinum in the States and six times platinum in Canada (going platinum multiple times in many countries.)
The bad news: only for Michael Jackson could these feats feel like a major step down.
No matter that staggering amounts of people were absolutely devoted. No matter that the album was innovative in every way and showed creative growth in a brilliant artist. No matter that Michael’s voice
was earth shatteringly beautiful. The tide had nonetheless begun to turn. In his mind, and according to sales, he was not AS popular as he had been, even though he was still breaking records and never stopped. One simply cannot maintain the same momentum of public praise.
Some personality types may simply pick themselves up and dust themselves off. Others, like Eminem, say “I don’t give a damn what you think so fuck the world.” But Michael Jackson was extraordinarily sensitive. On top of having a situation of famousness that had never been topped save by Elvis, he also happened to be one of the most sensitive persons of all time. The worst was yet to come, but Michael was already feeling tremendous pressure and anxiety. Heaped onto this heavy burden was the fact that Michael was facing unpleasant personal transformations with his vitiligo and head burns. More, Sony and the rest of the bigwigs were, of course, expecting this album to save the music industry. They had always expected nothing less of Michael Jackson, and always will. And he always delivered the damn goods.
But not without raising a few billion eyebrows. I’d forgotten the hype with the full length “Black or White” video. Jackson was taken to task for, ahem, grabbing his crotch. The Grab and related twists, turns, and pats were staple moves for all rock n roll sex gods- Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison, Elvis. But Michael’s mass appeal included children and that rankled the so-called moral majority who thought sexuality of any kind was a most hideous stain. Let war and disease and poverty rage: the worst sin is the sexy kind.
It is these indignant do-gooders who were later so fervent to crucify an innocent man. That a less rigid masculinity and a vulnerability and inner torture was sooooooooooo sexy to young girls. old ladies, and delightful sluts like Madonna only added fuel to their fire. Those who assumed an innocent man was guilty were desperately trying to protect their own children, kids who had already been ruined by Grandpa or by Dad’s fist. They were brought into a heartless world of crack and genocide and greed and abuse. But the fragile illusion of control is always soothed by redneck men bellowing “faggot” at anyone who doesn’t conform to their narrow standards of masculinity.
Surely our wives, indeed our sons, should not have been going gaga over a man who was so pretty? Jealousy toward Jackson inserted itself permanently into the American psyche. Someone who is different is always a “freak” and not only was the guy wearing lipstick, but it looked like he was turning white. The enthusiastic “Black or White” was a heartfelt, fun way of telling the world that Michael thought race was a non-issue. But in retrospect, the approach seems terribly naïve. Michael’s detractors didn’t want goofy, upbeat explanations, even if it came with a killer groove. What they wanted was to know what was what the hell was going on with the hair, the skin, the makeup.
Michael was too gentle when he explained things. I think people had a hard time believing what he was saying because they had a hard time hearing what he was saying. Eminem or Fifty Cent might have looked squarely into the camera and said “I have vitiligo. V-I-T-I-L-I-G-O. Think I’m painting myself just for the sheer fun of it? I’m gonna sew your fat white ass to your big black eye.”
And someone like David Bowie could get away with wearing makeup and blending gender roles all the time: everyone knew he was the cosmic rock god, transcending traditional mores of gender expectations because he was doing rock ‘n’ roll sci fi theatre stuff.
There was simply a kind of assertiveness lacking, a je ne said quois that, say, Pink or Keith Richards, are not lacking. And by lacking, I don’t mean “defective.” Jackson is and was and always will be a sort of post-human guy. His sensitivities lacked the brute, primitive reflexes nature gave us millions of years ago. I think he simply didn’t have the rougher hewn tools of survival of the savannah in his hands.
He was fine tuned instead to post-post-modern ideas and ideals. The post-racial world that will exist if we don’t kill each other getting there is where Michael already lived. A heart and brain filled with genius creativity and hair-trigger sensitivity were products of an evolution where dreams of unity and peacefulness are real. And in that world, violence and predatorial instincts and ferocious, jealous tribalism and sexism are all a distant hum from the far past.
Jackson couldn’t read the darker emotions or intentions of others very well- not because he was “childish” or “underdeveloped” but because he didn’t share those emotions. He couldn’t recognize them.
Michael Jackson was part human, and part whatever it is we have the potential to be. He did not come equipped with the things that limit us and help us to function in this world. He lived in a future, a fantasy future where colour and gender and other culture and other isms only matter because they enrich and deepen our experience of one another.
I am speaking metaphorically, but also perhaps, tentatively, literally. After all, it is wrong to assume that human beings are the end result of evolution. All species change and most die off, but if we survive, we will absolutely evolve from being human in the way we are human now. If anyone “post-human” has yet existed, if anyone “part angel” has actually walked the earth so far, it is Michael Jackson and others like him.
Language and technology and art have already transformed us beyond all belief. Just think about it- not that long ago, we were scooping each other’s brains out of our skulls for dinner. Now we’ve invented language and translation and devices to transmit that language, so communication with other groups is possible. The world has become much smaller and we have become much more intimate with other human groups the past few decades. That affords us an unprecedented access not just to information but to understanding. Not that long ago, to get a letter to your aunt might take several months by ship. Not long before that, if your kids moved to a new country or even city, you would likely never see or hear from them again.
Shrinks and counselors always talk about “communication breakdown” ruining a marriage, or “communication problems” inhibiting fuller relationships. This problem is so literal and so pervasive in our human history that it is at the root of our warring ways. Consider how difficult it would have been to understand the intentions or customs of another human group when there were no language translators. The result was racism and feudalism and fear of the others. Today we have a unique opportunity and ability in all of history to communicate with people from every pocket of the world and every walk of life, and learn more about them, and discuss together our traditions and our differences and our stories.
I venture that if we have time and enough clean water to survive as a species, we might eventually realize Michael’s world. Simplistically, that means a world where black and white doesn’t matter. More accurately, the world he saw had room in it for all variations of personality and culture, but no room for violence, prejudice, exclusion, and misunderstanding.
If war and racism and sexism and ignorance are primitive manifestations of fear and survival, the future might include purer values expressed by Jackson: absolute creativity, generosity, education, artistic devotion, dress-up as expression, sharing, acceptance, dancing, love, literacy, and fun.
These are not simply Michael Jackson’s values, but the best traits of humanity. We become more enlightened as our world policies reflect a deeper commitment to easing human suffering and espousing peace and equality and great art. This evolution is agonizingly slow. For sensitive souls who can’t take the heat or the hate, like Michael, it was torture. But progress has nonetheless been made. After all, a black man is President. I can vote even though I’m a woman. More and more people are less and less afraid of gay people, and their cultural contributions to classical music and art and fashion and medicine and human rights advancement are recognized by many. We are becoming less afraid- less afraid that women are witches, less afraid that native people are the “devil’s children” (to quote puritan missionary Jonathan Edwards). Less afraid that mentally ill people are possessed by demons. With less fear, the unafraid humans are no longer burning women at stakes, hunting Africans to act as slaves, beating up gay people, or torturing schizophrenic people.
If anyone treated Michael Jackson as less than human, it was because he was so fully human and yet a very new kind of human at the same time.
And while the saccharine ballad “Heal the World” was musically one of the weakest cuts on the Dangerous album, the message within epitomized Michael Jackson. “Love is strong, it only cares for joyful giving, if we try we shall see …we cannot feel fear or dread…we stop existing and start living…”
It was essentially for this that he was so dangerous.
Lorette C. Luzajic
Since the years he endured such heinous torture in the courtrooms, falsely accused of child abuse, the earlier blitz of controversies is a distant murmur. But I recall conservative religious upset over the apparently occult symbols on the Dangerous album cover. I recall some passing indignation over the Black or White video sequence, which “promoted” a child acting “bratty” and “defiant” to “parental authority.”
Yeah, like that scene where the cute Home Alone kid ignores his dad’s order to “turn that noise down” would lead to society’s downfall.
But I had just moved out into my very first apartment and hence, it was the first Michael Jackson album that I bought without defying my own parents. I was on my own at last, and eighteen years of stringent fundie Christian rules no longer applied.
The world I came from was so damn weird that I didn’t really see anything terribly disconcerting about some of The King’s unusual transformations or habits. That, and I admit I’ve always been extremely attracted to a slightly effeminate aesthetic. There was something so ethereal and feline about him when he unveiled his dramatically different look on the cover of Bad. It was stark and thrilling. The juxtaposition of heavily buckled gear with that soft, painted visage wasn’t as much shocking as it was exciting. This new Michael made me hot under the collar. I was all of 19, so imagining Michael Jackson singing “Give Into Me,” directly to me, begging me, commanding me, had me all fired up.
I was wrapped up in my own little reverie, but it seemed as if the rest of the world was going ballistic over the dangerous Dangerous.
First, some nostalgia over the good news: this is the album that gave us killer tracks like “Jam,” “Keep the Faith,” “Give Into Me,” and “Will You Be There.” It was the first Michael Jackson album recorded with the world’s new CD format in mind- making it much longer than previous recordings. The album debuted at number one. It won a Grammy Award and was nominated for four. Slash played guitar in the “Give Into Me” video. Fight Club’s David Fincher did the “Who Is It?” video. All the videos were lavish short films. The album went seven times platinum in the States and six times platinum in Canada (going platinum multiple times in many countries.)
The bad news: only for Michael Jackson could these feats feel like a major step down.
No matter that staggering amounts of people were absolutely devoted. No matter that the album was innovative in every way and showed creative growth in a brilliant artist. No matter that Michael’s voice
was earth shatteringly beautiful. The tide had nonetheless begun to turn. In his mind, and according to sales, he was not AS popular as he had been, even though he was still breaking records and never stopped. One simply cannot maintain the same momentum of public praise.Some personality types may simply pick themselves up and dust themselves off. Others, like Eminem, say “I don’t give a damn what you think so fuck the world.” But Michael Jackson was extraordinarily sensitive. On top of having a situation of famousness that had never been topped save by Elvis, he also happened to be one of the most sensitive persons of all time. The worst was yet to come, but Michael was already feeling tremendous pressure and anxiety. Heaped onto this heavy burden was the fact that Michael was facing unpleasant personal transformations with his vitiligo and head burns. More, Sony and the rest of the bigwigs were, of course, expecting this album to save the music industry. They had always expected nothing less of Michael Jackson, and always will. And he always delivered the damn goods.
But not without raising a few billion eyebrows. I’d forgotten the hype with the full length “Black or White” video. Jackson was taken to task for, ahem, grabbing his crotch. The Grab and related twists, turns, and pats were staple moves for all rock n roll sex gods- Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison, Elvis. But Michael’s mass appeal included children and that rankled the so-called moral majority who thought sexuality of any kind was a most hideous stain. Let war and disease and poverty rage: the worst sin is the sexy kind.
It is these indignant do-gooders who were later so fervent to crucify an innocent man. That a less rigid masculinity and a vulnerability and inner torture was sooooooooooo sexy to young girls. old ladies, and delightful sluts like Madonna only added fuel to their fire. Those who assumed an innocent man was guilty were desperately trying to protect their own children, kids who had already been ruined by Grandpa or by Dad’s fist. They were brought into a heartless world of crack and genocide and greed and abuse. But the fragile illusion of control is always soothed by redneck men bellowing “faggot” at anyone who doesn’t conform to their narrow standards of masculinity.
Surely our wives, indeed our sons, should not have been going gaga over a man who was so pretty? Jealousy toward Jackson inserted itself permanently into the American psyche. Someone who is different is always a “freak” and not only was the guy wearing lipstick, but it looked like he was turning white. The enthusiastic “Black or White” was a heartfelt, fun way of telling the world that Michael thought race was a non-issue. But in retrospect, the approach seems terribly naïve. Michael’s detractors didn’t want goofy, upbeat explanations, even if it came with a killer groove. What they wanted was to know what was what the hell was going on with the hair, the skin, the makeup.
Michael was too gentle when he explained things. I think people had a hard time believing what he was saying because they had a hard time hearing what he was saying. Eminem or Fifty Cent might have looked squarely into the camera and said “I have vitiligo. V-I-T-I-L-I-G-O. Think I’m painting myself just for the sheer fun of it? I’m gonna sew your fat white ass to your big black eye.”
And someone like David Bowie could get away with wearing makeup and blending gender roles all the time: everyone knew he was the cosmic rock god, transcending traditional mores of gender expectations because he was doing rock ‘n’ roll sci fi theatre stuff.
There was simply a kind of assertiveness lacking, a je ne said quois that, say, Pink or Keith Richards, are not lacking. And by lacking, I don’t mean “defective.” Jackson is and was and always will be a sort of post-human guy. His sensitivities lacked the brute, primitive reflexes nature gave us millions of years ago. I think he simply didn’t have the rougher hewn tools of survival of the savannah in his hands.
He was fine tuned instead to post-post-modern ideas and ideals. The post-racial world that will exist if we don’t kill each other getting there is where Michael already lived. A heart and brain filled with genius creativity and hair-trigger sensitivity were products of an evolution where dreams of unity and peacefulness are real. And in that world, violence and predatorial instincts and ferocious, jealous tribalism and sexism are all a distant hum from the far past.
Jackson couldn’t read the darker emotions or intentions of others very well- not because he was “childish” or “underdeveloped” but because he didn’t share those emotions. He couldn’t recognize them.
Michael Jackson was part human, and part whatever it is we have the potential to be. He did not come equipped with the things that limit us and help us to function in this world. He lived in a future, a fantasy future where colour and gender and other culture and other isms only matter because they enrich and deepen our experience of one another.
I am speaking metaphorically, but also perhaps, tentatively, literally. After all, it is wrong to assume that human beings are the end result of evolution. All species change and most die off, but if we survive, we will absolutely evolve from being human in the way we are human now. If anyone “post-human” has yet existed, if anyone “part angel” has actually walked the earth so far, it is Michael Jackson and others like him.
Language and technology and art have already transformed us beyond all belief. Just think about it- not that long ago, we were scooping each other’s brains out of our skulls for dinner. Now we’ve invented language and translation and devices to transmit that language, so communication with other groups is possible. The world has become much smaller and we have become much more intimate with other human groups the past few decades. That affords us an unprecedented access not just to information but to understanding. Not that long ago, to get a letter to your aunt might take several months by ship. Not long before that, if your kids moved to a new country or even city, you would likely never see or hear from them again.
Shrinks and counselors always talk about “communication breakdown” ruining a marriage, or “communication problems” inhibiting fuller relationships. This problem is so literal and so pervasive in our human history that it is at the root of our warring ways. Consider how difficult it would have been to understand the intentions or customs of another human group when there were no language translators. The result was racism and feudalism and fear of the others. Today we have a unique opportunity and ability in all of history to communicate with people from every pocket of the world and every walk of life, and learn more about them, and discuss together our traditions and our differences and our stories.
I venture that if we have time and enough clean water to survive as a species, we might eventually realize Michael’s world. Simplistically, that means a world where black and white doesn’t matter. More accurately, the world he saw had room in it for all variations of personality and culture, but no room for violence, prejudice, exclusion, and misunderstanding.
If war and racism and sexism and ignorance are primitive manifestations of fear and survival, the future might include purer values expressed by Jackson: absolute creativity, generosity, education, artistic devotion, dress-up as expression, sharing, acceptance, dancing, love, literacy, and fun.
These are not simply Michael Jackson’s values, but the best traits of humanity. We become more enlightened as our world policies reflect a deeper commitment to easing human suffering and espousing peace and equality and great art. This evolution is agonizingly slow. For sensitive souls who can’t take the heat or the hate, like Michael, it was torture. But progress has nonetheless been made. After all, a black man is President. I can vote even though I’m a woman. More and more people are less and less afraid of gay people, and their cultural contributions to classical music and art and fashion and medicine and human rights advancement are recognized by many. We are becoming less afraid- less afraid that women are witches, less afraid that native people are the “devil’s children” (to quote puritan missionary Jonathan Edwards). Less afraid that mentally ill people are possessed by demons. With less fear, the unafraid humans are no longer burning women at stakes, hunting Africans to act as slaves, beating up gay people, or torturing schizophrenic people.
If anyone treated Michael Jackson as less than human, it was because he was so fully human and yet a very new kind of human at the same time.
And while the saccharine ballad “Heal the World” was musically one of the weakest cuts on the Dangerous album, the message within epitomized Michael Jackson. “Love is strong, it only cares for joyful giving, if we try we shall see …we cannot feel fear or dread…we stop existing and start living…”
It was essentially for this that he was so dangerous.
Lorette C. Luzajic
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