Michael Jackson was once universally acclaimed as a song-and-dance man of genius; Wacko Jacko is now, more often than not, dismissed for his bizarre race and gender transformations and confounding antics, even as he is commonly reviled for the child molestation charges twice brought against him. Whence the weirdness and alleged criminality? How to account for Michael Jackson's rise and fall? In "On Michael Jackson"--an at once passionate, incisive, and bracing work of cultural analysis--Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for ...
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Michael Jackson was once universally acclaimed as a song-and-dance man of genius; Wacko Jacko is now, more often than not, dismissed for his bizarre race and gender transformations and confounding antics, even as he is commonly reviled for the child molestation charges twice brought against him. Whence the weirdness and alleged criminality? How to account for Michael Jackson's rise and fall? In "On Michael Jackson"--an at once passionate, incisive, and bracing work of cultural analysis--Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for "The New York Times Margo Jefferson" brilliantly unravels the complexities of one of the most enigmatic figures of our time. Who is Michael Jackson and what does it mean to call him a "What Is It"? What do P. T. Barnum, Peter Pan, and Edgar Allan Poe have to do with our fascination with Jackson? How did his curious Victorian upbringing and his tenure as a child prodigy on the "chitlin' circuit" inform his character and multiplicity of selves? How is Michael Jackson's celebrity related to the outrageous popularity of nineteenth-century minstrelsy? What is the perverse appeal of child stars for grown-ups and what is the price of such stardom for these children and for us? What uncanniness provoked Michael Jackson to become "Alone of All His Race, Alone of All Her Sex," while establishing himself as an undeniably great performer with neo-Gothic, dandy proclivities and a producer of visionary music videos? What do we find so unnerving about Michael Jackson's presumed monstrosity? In short, how are we all of us implicated? In her stunning first book, Margo Jefferson gives us the incontrovertible lowdown on call-him-what-you-wish; she offers a powerful reckoning with a quintessential, richly allusive signifier of American society and popular culture. "From the Hardcover edition."
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Add this copy of On Michael Jackson Audio Cd to cart. $19.99, good condition, Sold by Meadeco Media rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from VINE GROVE, KY, UNITED STATES, published 2006 by Books on Tape.
That a Pulizer author would mix what is at times a perfect depcition of cultural influences and ananysis with personal psychological struggles is disappointing.
Had she stuck to highlighting the cultural impact rather than resort much of the time to her own projections onto a man she never knew and didn't research well, this might have been a worthy read.
She cites his turning white as deliberate when the man had VItiligo (as listed on his autopsy) and said as much his whole life.
This inaccuracy and lack of research brings the rest of her disecting essay into question and that is unfortunate.
This appears yet another attempt to capitalize with the ka-ching of coin as motivation. What a pity.
And speaking of pity-- is seems her motivation is to have us pity instead of admire the genius of this one-of-a-kind and ahead of his time artist. It's because she has to pity him to accept him. It's her need, not ours. Too bad for the literary world.
