text:
I am the One who will Dance on the Floor in the Round
Willa: A few weeks ago, Raven Woods joined me for a fascinating discussion of "Scared of the Moon," but we began with a short discussion of Michael Jackson's concerts and how they were structured. Specifically, we talked about how his performances from the Dangerous tour on tended to follow an arc that began with him appearing in a rather militaristic, authoritarian persona but ended with a much softer, more nurturing persona. That arc was punctuated by a series of set pieces that he performed in an almost ritualized way: "Beat It," "Thriller," "The Way You Make Me Feel," "Smooth Criminal," and especially "Billie Jean."
Today, Raven is joining me again to talk about "Billie Jean" as one of the signature pieces of a Michael Jackson concert. Thank you so much for talking with me, Raven!
Raven: Thanks for inviting me back! This discussion is actually quite timely, considering that as I'm typing this, Motown 25 has recently been re-broadcast on PBS in its entirety for the first time in over thirty years. As we all know, this special was a historic moment in that it marked the first public performance of "Billie Jean" and the first of what would become a classic staple of Michael Jackson's live performances.
Willa: Wasn't that incredible? Watching the full Motown 25 broadcast was like witnessing the birth of a cultural phenomenon, one that would reverberate throughout his concerts and the culture at large for decades.
Raven: That performance really was incredible. I watched the Motown special last Sunday. For starters, I was really interested in seeing the program in its entirety because I don't think I watched it in its entirety even back in '83. I was so young then, and like most teens/young adults, not prone to sitting around in front of the TV – especially if I had a date! My grandmother watched it, but I only remembered seeing bits and pieces of it during the original broadcast, as I was too busy that night coming in and out of the house. So I was really interested to watch it again and to catch some of the other performances, as well as Michael's. Marvin Gaye was just astounding, and probably would have stolen the show that night – if it hadn't been for Michael, of course!
Willa: I was really struck by Marvin Gaye's performance also, and how heartfelt it was. He truly wanted to open everyone's eyes to "What's Going On." Another thing that struck me was that Marvin Gaye and Michael Jackson's performances felt the quietest in some ways, yet ironically they were also the most powerful. It's kind of hard to describe, but they had a quiet intensity that is still palpable, 30 years later.
Raven: I have to say I didn't think it was possible to fall in love with Michael all over again, but I did watching that performance! I think that, through the years, I had gotten a little blasé about the original Motown 25 "Billie Jean" performance. Sure, it was the first time, and an iconic moment in TV history, but over the years I had seen so many "Billie Jean" performances that I thought were better. After seeing the piece evolve as it did throughout his Bad, Dangerous, and HIStory tours, it seemed odd to go back to Motown 25 and realize that his moonwalk was actually quite short, and you can visibly see him lose his balance on the en pointe. Michael himself was very upset about that afterwards, thinking his entire performance was ruined!
Willa: Yes, I remember reading about that. In fact, I think he said he felt like crying afterwards because he fell back and didn't stay up on his toes as long as he wanted. Looking back, it's hard to imagine he could be dissatisfied with that performance!
Raven: That's true. He only started to feel better about it after Fred Astaire called and complimented him. But in watching the whole show, and putting myself back in that moment, I realized anew why this performance was so magical and special. No one had ever seen these moves performed before, so there was no gauge by which to measure how flawlessly or smoothly he executed them. From the moment Michael stepped on that stage, you could feel the palpable electricity. He was young, vibrant, and on fire – ready to prove himself to the world.
Willa: You know, Lubov Fadeeva, a professional dancer and choreographer, talks about this in her wonderful article, "Michael Jackson: The Dancer of the Dream." Here's what she says:
It is obvious to me that his performance at Motown 25 in 1983 is different than all his later concert versions of "Billie Jean" in many ways. It is not yet perfect, and the moonwalk isn't performed as smoothly as in its later versions. Perhaps the floor was not slippery enough. Still, the emotional charge of the dance is so electrifying that it has never been matched by anything.
In the end of the Motown 25 performance, when Michael stops and looks into the audience … I don't know how to describe the expression in his eyes, but I understand all of it. It is the kind of moment when a couple of minutes can change everything. … I always watch this performance and think that Michael was passing an exam there. He didn't even have a spotlight. Just a performer on stage. But somehow it looks more spectacular than expensive shows with special effects.
I think Fadeeva captures this perfectly. His performance at Motown 25 may not have been as technically proficient as some of his later performances, where years of practicing the moonwalk, for example, enabled him to smoothly glide the entire length of the stage. But still, that "Billie Jean" performance was just "so electrifying," as Fadeeva says.
Raven: Fadeeva nailed it perfectly! That's exactly what I was trying to say. And although the piece did evolve somewhat through the years, Michael never really deviated drastically from this original performance of the song. All of the symbolic elements that would become identifiable with the piece and with the performance were already there.
Willa: That's true.
Raven: Something that has occurred to me is that, anytime we are discussing and analyzing a Michael Jackson song, there are at least three separate, distinct elements that must be considered – the recording, the short film (i.e., the video), and the live performance.
Willa: Yes, and some have a longer-format film also. I'm thinking of the 16-minute version of Bad, and the 40-minute version of Smooth Criminal from Moonwalker. And then there's the 38-minute film Michael Jackson's Ghosts as well.
And there's another element we may want to consider also, which is the lyrics as poetry. He actually published "Heal the World" and "Will You Be There?" as poems in Dancing the Dream, but many of his other songs can be viewed this way also. I've often thought when reading his lyrics that they scan like poetry. So you're right, Raven – with many of his songs there are different forms of audio and visual performance interacting dynamically to create meaning.
Raven: Although this may be true to some degree with many artists, especially those from the video age onward, I find it is probably more true in the case of Michael Jackson than anyone else, for I know of no other artist who so successfully merged all of those aspects of performance – the auditory and visual – in the seamless way that he did. Thus, to this day, it is almost impossible to discuss a Michael Jackson track without the associations of its accompanying visual imagery. It is almost impossible, for example, to discuss the track "Thriller" without also merging the discussion with that track's iconic video, or to discuss any aspect of "Black or White" as a track without also bringing in those important thematic elements from the "Panther Dance" sequence of the video.
Willa: Oh, I agree. I can't listen to any of his songs that have videos without seeing those visual images play in my head. And I think they are so connected because he conceived of them that way. His videos weren't just something he whipped up after the fact to market his songs – they were part of his vision from the beginning. As he says in Moonwalk,
The three videos that came out of Thriller – "Billie Jean," "Beat It," and "Thriller" – were all part of my original concept for the album. I was determined to present this music as visually as possible.
So apparently he was already thinking about the videos for these songs as he was creating the album, and I think he achieved his goal of "present[ing] this music as visually as possible." Listening to those tracks is a surprisingly visual experience, as you said, Raven.
Raven: Yes. It seemed that Michael, moreso than any other music artist of his time, was always thinking on at least three layers with every song he recorded. Through the art of visual imagery, he was able to add additional layers of theme and symbolism to the songs that the audio tracks alone could never convey. And on yet another level, his live performances allowed him to evolve the pieces even further. Contrary to popular belief, his live performance pieces were never simply recreations of his iconic video performances. In some cases, of course, they did not deviate much (the choreography of "Beat It," for example, remained consistently close to the video version) but what we were more apt to see were reworkings and re-stylizations of these numbers.
Willa: Yes, and sometimes the stage performances seem very different from the videos. I'm thinking specifically of "The Way You Make Me Feel," which always feels so light and upbeat in his concert performances … but no one would ever describe the video that way. It's much darker and grittier than the stage versions. So even though he often evoked the video on stage through his wardrobe – a loose blue shirt over a tight white T-shirt, and a white tie belt – the mood and the meaning is very different, I think.
Raven: Absolutely. And I think it goes back, again, to the idea that he was always sort of re-visualizing the concepts of his songs. He knew that what worked on the small screen might not necessarily translate well to the performance stage, and vice versa. I always liked the way he re-worked "The Way You Make Me Feel" with the slowed down, do-wop intro. I remember when This Is It came out, some reviews mentioned Michael's "new" re-working of "The Way You Make Me Feel." Obviously, they weren't very familiar with Michael's live performances. I thought, He's been doing "The Way You Make Me Feel" like that for years!
Once Michael found something that worked for him, he tended to stick with it for many years – his live performance motto seemed to be, "Don't fix what isn't broken!" But as we know, the best of Michael Jackson's set pieces usually weren't mere performances, in the way we think of entertainers simply getting onstage and singing or performing to a song. Michael's numbers literally became theatrical performance pieces, with as much emphasis on the narrative storylines of the numbers (as well as use of symbolic imagery) as on the singing and dancing.
Willa: Oh, I agree!
Raven: Much has been written about the song "Billie Jean" and there has also been much written about the video. But other than Veronica Bassil's excellent book Thinking Twice about Billie Jean, I don't think there has really been much in the way of interpreting his live performance routine of "Billie Jean" or analyzing its symbolic implications.
Willa: You know, what struck me most about Veronica's book is that she shows how the lyrics anticipate the 1993 abuse allegations. After all, "Billie Jean" is a song about false allegations of sexual misconduct, and how he is constantly under surveillance. In the video this is depicted by the photographer who shadows him, following him to Billie Jean's apartment and trying to catch him in a compromising position.
But that feeling of constant surveillance is there in the opening lines of the lyrics as well, in all "the eyes" watching him and the fact that he is dancing "in the round." That arrangement isn't nearly as popular now, but at the height of disco in the late 1970s, it was fairly common to have the audience surrounding a lighted, elevated stage, so spectators were watching from all sides and every angle. It was even common back then to have dinner theaters "in the round," where plays would be acted out on a raised platform with the audience seated at tables all around the stage. This means that, for the performers, there was no backstage to retreat to, no side that wasn't hidden from the audience, and no way to step out of the stoplight or retreat from the audience's gaze. Performers were entirely exposed.
Raven: Yes, and you know that has to be a scary feeling. I believe that Michael possibly became even more conscious of this symbolic element of the song as time wore on and his performance of it evolved (and possibly as he felt more and more that he was losing control of certain aspects of his life). The round spotlight which he steps into becomes a much more important part of the performance as time goes on.
Willa: Yes, it does.
Raven: For him, this seemed to emphasize the idea of being a lone figure in "the round." And whereas at the Motown 25 performance, he comes out as very confident from the beginning, by the time of the Munich performance in 1997, and the Madison Square performance, he comes out looking a little lost, almost bewildered – at least until he puts on the magic symbols of jacket, glove, and hat.
Willa: That's an interesting interpretation, Raven. In his later concert performances, he usually began "Billie Jean" on a darkened stage, with a blinding spotlight aimed straight down forming a round pool of light, as you say. And I think you're right – that light became or defined his stage "in the round." And then he would step into that spotlight, as you say, and it's so harsh and glaring it's almost like stepping into a prison searchlight. So he was literally performing "in the round" harsh glare of a spotlight – just as he did, metaphorically, throughout his life, from childhood on.
Raven: Coincidentally, we are embarking on this discussion just as I am scheduled to begin a unit on symbolism in class next week, and I had been considering the possibility of using clips of Michael's "Billie Jean" performance to discuss the concept.
Willa: Oh interesting!
Raven: I am only hesitant because they will also be looking at "Black or White" and "Earth Song" in a few weeks and I don't want to totally burn them out on MJ, lol! But as so often happens, these discussions seem to arise at just the right moment, when my thoughts are already channeling in that direction. In the process of trying to make this decision, I have been looking at a lot of live "Billie Jean" clips in the past few days. Regardless of whether I ultimately decide to include them in the symbolism unit, it has given me a good opportunity to really assess both how the piece evolved through the years, as well as an opportunity to take a fresh look at how Michael used symbolism in the piece to create a definite story arc.
Willa: Wow, I wish I could sit in on your class …
Raven: Thank you! I guess it's one of the perks of my job. I get to incorporate so much of what I love into it.
But getting back to "Billie Jean," virtually everything about that performance, from the choice of clothing and colors, the placement of the spotlight, to the props used – the glove, the jacket, and perhaps, most importantly, the fedora – all played a symbolic role in the performance. It was really the beginning of many trademark Michael Jackson "looks," including the single glove and fedora. And though he had sported the white socks and black loafers, paired with high water pants before, in "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough," it was here that the look really became formalized as a permanent and iconic fixture of the Michael Jackson "brand."
Willa: They really did. He used the high pants, white socks, and black loafers often after Motown 25 – in fact, they literally became his trademark. I'm thinking of this logo for MJJ Productions:
Raven: Yes. And in that logo, especially, he is using the en pointe stance, which became an iconic image for him. To my knowledge, however, I think that "Billie Jean" was the only performance where he used that particular pose.
Willa: You know, I think you're right.… I hadn't thought about that before, but I think you're right – I think it was a strictly "Billie Jean" move. That's interesting.
Raven: A lot of people don't realize that Michael had certain dance moves that were only reserved for certain numbers. Both the moonwalk and en pointe are uniquely associated with "Billie Jean." (There are brief shots of each in the Jam video as well, but even there, they are clearly not part of the choreography of that particular number. Rather, they seemed to be serving the purpose of cultural allusions – iconic MJ dance moves that everyone would instantly recognize.) And though Michael did variations of the moonwalk step in other numbers, the famous backwards glide was reserved exclusively for "Billie Jean."
Willa: That's true, and the black glittery jacket was reserved solely for "Billie Jean" also. Just as a white suit with a dark armband was reserved for "Smooth Criminal," or a red leather jacket with grey shoulder patches meant "Beat It," or a red leather jacket with a deep black V from his shoulders to his waist meant "Thriller," a black glittery jacket meant "Billie Jean." With the addition of a black fedora and a white sequined glove, the costume was complete.
Raven: "Billie Jean" was also one of the few numbers he did in concert where he always made sure he was in the full costume. During the Dangerous tour, for example, he would usually simply toss the "Smooth Criminal" jacket on over the gold leotard. In this way, he created a lot of hybrids of his iconic looks. There was a very practical reason for this, of course. It saved time! It would have been impossible for him to do a full costume change with every number, so the idea was to layer pieces that could work together, gradually adding and taking off pieces as the show progressed. Therefore, it was easy to make the transition into "Smooth Criminal," for example, simply by adding the iconic white jacket, armband, and white fedora. Those pieces were symbolic enough to carry the number; it didn't matter if he didn't have on the full suit. But with "Billie Jean" he always took the time to do a full, complete costume change.
Willa: It's also interesting that in his later performances, getting into costume – and into character – was itself an important part of the show, as you mentioned earlier. Here's a clip of his "Billie Jean" performance from his 30th anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden:
Notice how he plays with the audience as he slowly pulls out the black glittery jacket, then the fedora, and then … dramatic pause … the glove. And the roar from the crowd grows louder as each piece appears, so by the time he's fully in costume, they're on their feet and clapping wildly. It's like the act of becoming that character is part of the performance.
Raven: It is amazing, isn't it? All they have to do is see those iconic items come out, and they start to go wild because they know what's coming! So, as you said, getting into the character becomes a part of the ritual for the audience. A good place to start might be in looking at the origin of the "Billie Jean" persona, or character. It was clear early on that Michael was not so much performing here, as enacting a role. It was a unique character that he created specifically for this number. The character was an interesting blend of both "Mack Daddy" cool on the one hand, and a quirky, whimsical geek on the other. The transformation, or metamorphosis, was usually precipitated by plopping the fedora on his head. At that moment, the geek would disappear, replaced by the cocky and confident "Mack Daddy" persona.
It was obvious that the roots of this character came from Michael's adoration of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Here, for example, if we compare Michael's improv segment of "Billie Jean" to Chaplin's "Little Tramp" character, we can see that there are obvious parallels:
Willa: Yes, and while some of that is the costume, a lot of it is more abstract than that – a certain jauntiness mixed with pathos that really comes through for both of them.
Raven: And in this clip of Buster Keaton we can, no doubt, see some of the origins of Michael's improvisations with his fedora as a kind of virility symbol (note how Keaton's character transforms from geek to suave whenever a "cool" hat is placed on his head!):
And, of course, it has already been well noted that Michael's famous Smooth Criminal lean owes a lot to Buster Keaton's move in College, which Michael had no doubt seen:
Years later, Johnny Depp, who, like Michael, admired Keaton and Chaplin and brought elements of them to his own performances, blended the characteristics of both to create the character of Sam in 1993's Benny & Joon.
Depp's "hat trick," as seen here, will look familiar to anyone who has watched Michael Jackson's live "Billie Jean" performances. Go back, for example to the Bucharest "Billie Jean" performance posted above and look at how Michael similarly "plays" with his hat beginning at about the 5:54 mark, as if it is something live that is taunting and teasing him, or as if he can somehow cast a spell over it!
In later years, Michael would make this parallel even more blatantly obvious. For example, by the time of the HIStory tour, he introduced a new element to the performance which consisted of his "Little Geek" character walking onstage carrying a shaving case, looking rather lost and bewildered, as if he doesn't quite know where he is or what he's supposed to do. Again, this is a routine that obviously has deep roots in the pathos of the Chaplinesque and Keatonesque personas he so admired. At this point, the performance has very much of a vaudeville feel to it, and Michael is clearly and intentionally evoking those echoes.
Willa: I agree completely. Even the case itself feels worn and antiquated, like it's from an earlier era. It's pretty distinctive – tan with two brown leather straps wrapping around it – and he uses this same style of case for years, up through his Madison Square Garden performances. It's interesting because in Say Say Say, Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney play a pair of vaudeville performers, and they each carry that exact same style of case: tan with two brown leather straps. Here's a clip, and you can see those suitcases starting at about 4:20 minutes in:
So Michael Jackson clearly associated that particular case with vaudeville, and I think it's part of what gives his later "Billie Jean" performances "a vaudeville feel," as you said, Raven.
But more than that, his body language and the way he timidly shuffles across stage, as you mentioned; his simple clothes, suggesting someone who's down on his luck; the way he slowly pulls his props from a suitcase – these all harken back to vaudeville.
Raven: Oh, yes, absolutely. I was also just thinking that there seemed to be a definite element of miming incorporated into his "Billie Jean" persona. We know that Michael very much admired the art of miming and frequently worked elements of mime into his dance routines. "The Box" is one such example. In this video of him practicing in the studio, it is the move he performs at about the 1:00 mark:
I don't think it's a coincidence that a performance and persona so indebted to vaudeville and silent film comedians like Chaplin and Keaton would also contain elements of mime. Chaplin and Keaton were both heavily influenced by mime artists themselves. Here is a passage excerpted from the Wikipedia page on mimes:
The restrictions of early motion picture technology meant that stories had to be told with minimal dialogue, which was largely restricted to intertitles. This often demanded a highly stylized form of physical acting largely derived from the stage. Thus, mime played an important role in films prior to advent of talkies (films with sound or speech). The mimetic style of film acting was used to great effect in German Expressionist film.
Silent film comedians like Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton learned the craft of mime in the theatre, but through film, they would have a profound influence on mimes working in live theatre decades after their deaths. Indeed, Chaplin may be the most well-documented mime in history.
Willa: Oh, that's really interesting, Raven! I'd never connected mime with silent films before, but now that you mention it, it makes perfect sense. And I really see those elements reflected in Michael Jackson's concert performances also.
For example, Rembert Browne wrote a wonderful analysis of Michael Jackson's performances of "The Way You Make Me Feel" and "Man in the Mirror" at the 1988 Grammys. Here's a video of that performance:
As Rembert Browne points out, Michael Jackson is creating a fully realized character in the opening moments he's on stage – a character Browne calls "Tough Guy Mike":
"Tough Guy Mike" is an incredible creature, less because it was so opposite of his actual personality, and more because of how he moved his limbs as Tough Guy Mike. Every step became an aggravated kick, everything was to be pointed to, and his neck roll became the sassiest thing ever captured on camera.
As Browne says, he creates this character through his body language, and also through mime-like gestures. As Browne points out, at about 1:10 in we see "Tough Guy Mike mime-smoking a fake cigarette and blowing out fake smoke." Then he "put[s] out the imaginary cigarette with his foot." Through these subtle gestures, Michael Jackson gives us important clues about who this character is – just as Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton or Marcel Marceau did through their silent gestures long before him.
Raven: "Tough Guy Mike" is an excellent interpretation of that persona! The only difference, I think, is that we don't actually "see" the transformation in the same way that we do with "Billie Jean," or at least the later incarnations of it. In "Billie Jean" the symbols actually instigate the change.
Willa: Oh, I see what you're saying. As you mentioned before, it's when he puts on his fedora that he magically transforms into his "Billie Jean" character. So his hat brings about a change in him, in who he's portraying on stage.
Raven: As we have already discussed, hats were important props for these silent film comedians, as well as for mimes, and also many vaudeville performers. The white glove, also, is something that has roots in mime art (though not necessarily a single glove to my knowledge). However, I think that Michael probably took many of his ideas, especially those relating to color schemes, from mime artists. White and black were traditionally colors often used by mimes.
In the original "Billie Jean" video Michael wore a dark suit over a bold pink shirt with a red bow tie. That was a look significantly different from the one that came to be associated with his live "Billie Jean" performances, and again, it's one of the few instances I can think of (perhaps the only instance) where his performance attire and persona was completely different from the video version. I think it is because he took the whole performance in such a very different direction for Motown 25 that he must have known, from that point going forward, that this was the way the song had to be performed live. The video for "Billie Jean" seemed to be one of the few instances where his choreography was actually worked out after the fact.
When he did Motown 25, he still had not completely perfected the idea of using the black-and-white color contrast, and this was probably largely due to the fact that he had only recently come up with the routine and had to work with what was available for him at the time. According to most accounts, the famous sequin jacket he wore that night came from Katherine's closet. As the old saying goes, beggars can't be choosers so he ended up with a purple-ish sequin jacket. However, we can see that he had already worked out how he would incorporate all three symbolic objects – the hat, the glove, and sequined jacket – into the routine. It would just be a matter of how he perfected those uses through the years.
Those primary colors, black and white, both have strong ties to mime art. Michael also mimicked the age-old mime trick of using the color white to direct an audience's eyes to whatever body part he wanted them to focus on. He learned, for example, that wearing a white glove, or wearing white tape on his fingertips, would direct the audience's eyes to his hand gestures, and hand gestures, as we know, were very important for Michael. I really believe that this is the origin of his single, white glove. I never really bought the oft-rumored theory that it was to hide vitiligo spots on his hands. (I believe he had vitiligo, of course; I just don't believe it was the reason for the glove.) I believe he was thinking from an artistic standpoint about what each of these things would help him accomplish on a huge stage.
Willa: That's interesting. I tend to think it was both – that it helped him deal with his vitiligo and was an important artistic decision.
And that's interesting about white gloves being an important part of both vaudeville and mime. It reminds me that white gloves were also an important feature of blackface minstrelsy. Here's a clip of Fred Astaire performing in blackface in the movie Swing Time, and it's hard to miss his large white gloves:
In fact, the last thing we see is Astaire walking off stage, waving his hand in a floppy sort of way that draws even more attention to the oversized white glove he's wearing.
Raven: That's interesting. And we know that Michael would have been familiar with Swing Time. He studied everything Astaire ever did! I was also recently watching a documentary on Oscar Wilde and it was mentioned there that Wilde came up with the idea of wearing white gloves during his American tour in 1882. Wilde, like Michael, was as much of a showman as he was a writer (and his number one talent was the ability to sell himself!) and it was said that he liked the way it looked when he could stick a white gloved hand from his carriage window to wave to the crowd! I couldn't help but think of Michael when they mentioned that.
But a glove is also something a criminal wears at the scene of their crime, in order to prevent leaving incriminating fingerprints. It would be interesting to know if Michael was playing on this idea to some degree, since the song is about a man being accused. I don't know – that might be a stretch but it's something interesting to think about.
Something else I've noticed about his live "Billie Jean" performances is that, as he jumps into the spotlight and plops the hat onto his head, a transformation takes place. In later incarnations of the performance, he jumps into the spotlight almost as a kind of symbolic "plunging in." There is hesitancy and even a bit of fearfulness (he is still in the mode of the shy, geeky, and somewhat lost/bewildered character) and then, instantaneously, he plunges in, the bass kicks in, and the metamorphosis is complete. He starts with a series of hip thrusts, indicating a shift to masculine and virile energy. (A favorite, somewhat off-color joke of mine is that he must be acting out he how he got himself in trouble with this "Billie Jean" in the first place!) Whatever the case, the moves and gestures were clearly purposeful. If there was any doubt that these moves were intended to be interpreted as sexual gestures, Michael forever laid those to rest with his very playful and bawdy exaggeration of those moves in his This Is It rehearsal performance of "Billie Jean":
Willa: Oh, I agree! That rehearsal performance is much more overtly sexual and "bawdy," as you say, than anything he ever did during a concert – especially near the end. But he sure knew his audience – those young dancers watching him rehearse just loved it! And I love watching them watching him. In fact, that's one of my favorite scenes from from This Is It – he seems to be having a great time, and really connecting, through dance, with those young dancers.
But that scene also brings out important elements of the character he's portraying – elements that are usually presented much more subtly but still add complexity to that character. For example, he begins his Motown 25 performance and many of his later "Billie Jean" performances by pulling out an imaginary comb and slicking his hair back on both sides. This is very much a mime-type gesture, as you mentioned earlier.
Raven: I love that gesture! It invokes a very cool, 50s kind of vibe to the performance … James Dean, Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando from "The Wild One"!
Willa: I love it too! It has a very 50s kind of feel to me also, and it reminds me of "Tough Guy Mike" smoking his imaginary cigarette at the beginning of the 1988 Grammy performance, and then stubbing it out with his foot. In both cases, these little gestures give us important insights into the character he's playing. His "Billie Jean" character may be young and vulnerable, and he may still have his mother's advice echoing in his head – "Be careful who you love … " – but that little gesture of slicking back his hair tells us that he also sees himself as something of a ladies' man.
Raven: But even as he moves into this aspect of the performance, he would often still retain elements of his "Little Tramp"-like character. Something I have often noticed – and one of the most endearing traits of these performances – is that he didn't seem to be trying too hard to make them "too" perfect or "too" polished. For example, we can see when he is fighting with a particularly stubborn jacket flap that doesn't fall exactly as it's supposed to; he can often be seen adjusting his hat during the performance to keep it from falling off or to keep it at the angle he desires. When we consider what a perfectionist he was in his performances, we can only guess that all of these little flaws and "rough spots" of the performances were, in themselves, part of the act, or at least part of the persona.
It seems he didn't want polish or perfection in these performances so much as desiring to retain an aura of childlike playfulness and quirkiness. It was just enough endearing quirkiness, enough pathos to keep a leash on the machismo aspect of the performance. And it was wonderfully ingenious, because it kept the machismo aspect of the character just slightly off center, so that we weren't entirely sure just how seriously we were supposed to take this transformed persona.
Willa: Oh, that's an interesting way to look at that, Raven – and it's a very Chaplinesque touch, as you say. It adds a touch of pathos to this young man who's trying so hard to be suave and debonair, and not quite succeeding – but ironically he's all the more endearing because of that.
Raven: It's rather like watching a little kid who has suddenly been transported into an adult body, or like Frosty the Snowman when he first puts on his "magic hat" and becomes animated. He doesn't seem quite sure what to do with himself or with his new power and abilities. We can see him kind of growing into the persona the same way an awkward and gangly adolescent has to "grow into" their new body.
Willa: Exactly! That's how it feels to me also, though I'd never been able to really articulate that before, and that's one reason this character is so intriguing and appealing, I think.
Well, Raven, thank you so much for joining me again! I thoroughly enjoyed it, but there's still so much more to say about his "Billie Jean" performances. Maybe you can join me again sometime, and we can continue this discussion?
Raven: I would love that! Thanks again for another great conversation.
Willa: Oh, it's always a pleasure talking with you.
I also wanted to let everyone know that Australian journalist and blogger Damien Shields has a new book out, Xscape Origins: the Songs and Stories Michael Jackson Left Behind. Charles Thomson posted a review this morning on The Huffington Post, and it's interesting – while Charles has been very open about his opposition to posthumous tracks in general, and has been rather scathing in his comments about the Xscape album in particular, his review of Xscape Origins is surprisingly positive.
According to Charles, Shields was motivated by a feeling that the promotion for Xscape focused too much on the "contemporized" tracks and the producers who worked on them, and that "Jackson's own vision and process was almost completely overlooked." So he set about learning more. As Charles writes,
Determined to right this perceived wrong, Shields flew to America to interview a number of Jackson's original collaborators, including songwriters, studio engineers and producers. In his book he presents a comprehensive back story for each track. The result is a revealing and exciting insight into the working habits of pop's most reclusive star.
We've Had Enough
Willa: In response to recent high-profile cases of white police officers killing unarmed black men – a terribly familiar story whose latest victims include Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City – #BlackLivesMatter protesters have been organizing demonstrations and staging protests across the nation, including shutting down roads in cities and towns from Massachusetts to California, Illinois to Georgia. And as D.B. Anderson pointed out in an insightful article in The Baltimore Sun, many of these protesters have been singing Michael Jackson's anthem giving voice to the voiceless, "They Don't Care about Us."
However, as our friend Eleanor Bowman pointed out in a recent email, there's another Michael Jackson song, less well known, that speaks directly and powerfully to this abuse of power. It's "We've Had Enough," whose haunting lyrics tell stories of innocent people killed by men in uniform. For example, it begins with this story:
She innocently questioned why
Why her father had to die
She asked the men in blue
"How is it that you get to choose
Who will live and who will die?
Did God say that you could decide?
You saw he didn't run
And that my daddy had no gun"
Eleanor, you're right – this song could have been written today. It's chilling how closely the stories it tells parallel recent events. But then, this is a very old story, as Greg Carey, a professor of theology, posted in an article on The Huffington Post.
Eleanor: Hi Willa, and thanks for inviting me to join you in this discussion of "We've Had Enough," one of Michael Jackson's most powerful protest songs.
Willa: Thank you for joining me!
Eleanor: And thanks for linking to D.B. Anderson's great column about "They Don't Care about Us," which is so closely related to "We've Had Enough." I was glad that D.B. pointed out that the protesters were singing Michael's song, because nowhere else in the news media did I see Michael's name or "They Don't Care about Us" mentioned in relation to the protests.
Willa: Actually, I saw it mentioned several times, though some reporters seemed surprised that the protesters were singing a Michael Jackson song. But D.B. wasn't. And actually, if you know his history and how he was targeted by prosecutors – charged with crimes based on very shaky evidence, presumed guilty by the police and the media, forced to endure a humiliating strip search and very public trial, and ultimately driven from his home – it makes perfect sense that those protesters would be singing his music, especially "They Don't Care about Us."
Eleanor: I think the "they" in "They Don't Care about Us" is the same "they" he sings about in "We've Had Enough" ("They've gotta hear it from you … me … us"), just as the "us" in "They Don't Care about Us" is the same "us" he sings about in "Earth Song": "What about us?" And possibly the "we" in "We've Had Enough" unites the "they" with the "us" – just a thought. But, no matter how you look at it, Michael Jackson gets a lot of mileage out of pronouns.
Willa: He really does …
Eleanor: "We've Had Enough" really gets to me, right from the start – that beautiful voice filled with sadness and outrage singing that incredible opening line:
Love was taken
From a young life
And no one told her why
Willa: Yes, and then we learn soon after that the "love" that "was taken" from this young girl was the love and protection of her father, who was killed in "one more violent crime." But ironically and tragically, this "violent crime" was committed by the police. So the "men in blue" who should have protected him were the ones who killed him.
Eleanor: Right, and the lesson, the dim light, from that violent crime is what will give direction or misdirection to her life. Given recent events, "We've Had Enough" is a painful reminder that the more things change, the more they remain the same. In fact, just recently I received a link to news of a similar heartbreaking event. A life was not lost, but the love and care of a grandfather was taken from other young lives, hopefully only temporarily.
And, then there's the son of New York Times' columnist Charles Blow, who was accosted by a police officer at gunpoint as he was exiting the Yale library. In the case of Charles Blow's son, both the young man and the officer were black, so the significant point was that the officer was wearing a uniform, and therefore, acting officially.
As Carey says in the article you linked to:
Race dynamics have indeed changed in our society. But the basic pattern: an unarmed but anonymous black man (or boy), a confrontation with law enforcement, something goes wrong, and the law enforcement officer empties his weapon. So familiar.
And soooo depressing … and so unjust. (Are we beginning to feel the outrage yet? Can you feel it?)
But the first verse of "We've Had Enough' doesn't tell the whole story – or at least the story Michael Jackson wants to tell. So he includes a second verse where another child, perhaps in Iraq or Afghanistan, is also orphaned, but this time the uniform is military. And this story, too, is depressingly familiar:
In the middle of a village
Way in a distant land
Lies a poor boy with his broken toy
Too young to understand
He's awakened, ground is shaking
His father grabs his hand
Screaming, crying, his wife's dying
Now he's left to explain
He innocently questioned why
Why his mother had to die
What did these soldiers come here for?
If they're for peace, why is there war?
Did God say that they could decide
Who will live and who will die?
All my mama ever did
Was try to take care of her kids
In "We've Had Enough," Michael Jackson has described two tragic and all-too-familiar situations – an innocent man killed by police and an innocent woman killed by a bomb or a missile, both victims of "impersonal" state actions.
Willa: Yes, and that's a very important point, Eleanor. By paralleling these two stories the way he does, Michael Jackson draws a connection between them – and forces us to see that connection also. Through juxtaposition, we are forced to see the similarities between the girl whose father is killed by a policeman on a city street, and the boy whose mother is killed by a soldier.
Eleanor: Right. And in revealing these similarities, he shows us that these events are not isolated incidents but part of a larger cultural pattern, a pattern of behavior in which an agent of the state takes an innocent life, apparently by mistake, and no one does anything about it. And the children left behind, also victims, bereft of their parents' love and care, seem to be the only ones asking why.
But you know something interesting, Willa? In each story he deliberately leaves a critical piece of information out, brilliantly relying on us to fill in the blanks.
In the first story he doesn't specify the little girl's race – all we know is that love was taken from a girl's life for an unknown reason. She could be any race; she could be anyone's daughter. We all immediately feel for her. No race, no prejudice. But then the circumstances (an urban environment, a man killed by police – those whose job is to serve and protect) suggest that she is African-American.
And in the second, the song doesn't specify the boy's nationality – he only is a poor boy in a distant land to whom some unknown horror has happened. So we are drawn in and our sympathy is aroused. But again, the circumstances (a war zone, a woman killed by soldiers – peacekeepers – a Peacekeeper missile? – whose mission is to bring peace) suggest that this isn't just any foreign child. He is Iraqi or Afghani, at any rate an inhabitant of some country that the US is taking an unhealthy interest in, and very possibly, he is Muslim.
MJ's knowledge that he can rely on us to fill in the blanks, itself, speaks volumes – revealing both his understanding of human nature and his knowledge of our awareness of these atrocities. These stories, or stories like them, are old news to us, and he knows it. He also knows that by not identifying the girl's race or the boy's nationality that we are more likely to identify with and sympathize with them, but that once the circumstances of their parents' deaths are revealed, whether we are black or white, we will have a pretty good idea of the girl's race and the boy's nationality, which proves that we are well aware of the fact that both innocent black lives and innocent Iraqi or Pakistani lives are taken. We know who these people are by the way they are treated! We cannot claim to be innocent of this information. The reckless taking of innocent lives like these has become business as usual (or not our business).
Willa: I don't know, Eleanor. I mean, a boy from my high school was killed by police our junior year, and he was white.
Eleanor: But you still remember it because it was not routine, the way the killing, and incarceration, of black men and boys has become. I thought it was interesting that at the Oscar ceremony earlier this week, Common brought up the fact that there are more black men incarcerated in US prisons today than were enslaved before the Civil War.
Willa: Yes, and those incarceration rates are a national tragedy.
But I think I remember Brad's death because it was so terrible. I mean, I had known him since third grade. He had a very lively sense of humor that got him into trouble sometimes, but teachers still really liked him. You could tell. And other kids liked him too. So he wasn't mean or anything like that – just a really funny guy. But he was going through kind of a wild phase in high school and went out joyriding with a friend one night, and the police became involved and he was killed. There was an inquest and the review board determined that the police acted appropriately.
And a few years ago a young white man from my town – the father of a 2-year-old girl – was killed by police while stopped at a rest area on the interstate. He got into some sort of altercation with state troopers and had a gun in his hand and refused to drop it, and they shot and killed him. They later discovered the gun wasn't loaded. I was talking to a friend who knew him well, and he said they called it "suicide by police" – that they thought he actually wanted to be killed by the police. And my friend said, as horrible as it sounds, he thought that might be true. He had known this young man since he was a kid and was just torn up by his death, but he said he'd been really depressed lately and acting kind of reckless, and he thought what happened really might be a kind of suicide.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's really complicated. The police have a very difficult job, and it isn't just a black-and-white issue. As you mentioned earlier, the policeman who pulled a gun on Charles Blow's son was black, and young whites – especially those who are poor or homeless or abused or struggling in some way – are killed by police, though blacks are much more likely to be targeted than whites are. Much more likely. And whites are not immune to bombs either – just look at all the innocent lives lost in northern Ireland. So while race is definitely a huge part of the picture, we're all living in a very militarized time and we are all potential targets – though some are much more likely targets than others are.
Eleanor: But, Willa, it doesn't sound like these deaths were in any way routine. And that's the point I was trying to make, and that's what I think Michael Jackson is trying to point out – that the deaths of African-Americans at the hands of the police in the US have become so routine that they have ceased to matter. #BlackLivesMatter indicates things haven't changed, which is what all the recent protests have been about.
"We've Had Enough" focuses specifically on tragedies that are the result of the state taking actions against people who are not enemies of the state, but US citizens or citizens of other countries which we are not formally at war with. It tells the stories of gratuitous, careless killings of the poor and vulnerable, carried out by powerful state agents, armed to the teeth. The people in these stories are killed for no reason: the girl's father is no criminal, and the boy's mother is no enemy combatant. In fact, if he is referring to Pakistan or Afghanistan, we are not at war with her country, but only with the enemy combatants within it. MJ is telling us that from the state's point of view, it doesn't matter whether or not they represent any real threat because their lives don't matter, and then he is asking us why.
Depending on the states, different groups are expendable. Which is another reason the song leaves both race and nationality out. Because, although in terms of the US, blacks are disproportionately on the receiving end of police action, and post 9/11, Muslims have become military targets, depending on who you are and where you live, you would fill in the blanks differently.
Willa: And we might fill in the blanks differently at different times in history also. At different times in American history, for example, recent immigrants from Mexico or Japan or Ireland or Italy or the Mideast or Korea or Poland or Puerto Rico or China or wherever have been discriminated against and treated as if their lives don't matter. And American Indians have certainly been treated as if their lives don't matter.
And I think Michael Jackson is speaking up for all those who are outcast, for whatever reason, though I certainly agree that a disproportionate number of police victims in the US are black, and a disproportionate number of bombing victims are somehow "Other" – other races, other religions, other nationalities and ethnicities. In fact, I've heard some very troubling discussions about the fact that the US dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities but never on a European city. If Germany or Austria or Italy had still been in the war in August 1945, would we have dropped atomic bombs on them? Or is that unthinkable to Americans?
Eleanor: Interesting. And I am having a hard time imagining the US using drones to bomb targets in Europe, even if there was strong evidence of concentrations of Islamic extremists there.
Willa: Yes, it's like American policymakers use different rules for those who they see as similar to themselves, and those they see as Other.
So I think the issue of race hangs heavy over these two stories that begin "We've Had Enough," but I also think it's significant that it's left unspoken. In some ways, it makes racial prejudice an even more potent part of the story precisely because it's unspoken, forcing us to work through that complicated history in our own minds.
Eleanor: Exactly. But I would say race is the issue in the first, but nationality is the key to the second.
Willa: Yes, or religion or ethnicity or some combination of those divisions. But however we interpret it or mentally picture it in our own minds as we hear these stories, Michael Jackson just sounds heart-sick as he sings these verses, and I think he would be just as saddened by a child who lost a parent in northern Ireland as by a child who lost a parent in Iraq or the Sudan or Serbia or Israel or Southeast Asia. From the child's perspective, it doesn't matter. What matters is the loss of the mother or the father – and "We've Had Enough" encourages us to consider the perspective of that child who's lost a parent.
Eleanor: Of course, he would. But I think he's trying to get us to look at the loss of these two lives as representative of specific types of situations – where lives are taken recklessly and casually – as if they don't matter, because to so many of "us" they don't.
Willa: Yes, I would agree with that. And I think that's the message of "They Don't Care about Us" as well, as you mentioned earlier.
Eleanor: And to focus our attention on these events, he shows us just how much they do matter to him, singing each story in a voice loaded with sorrow and loss and telling each story from the perspective of the child whose life has been destroyed – a child who has not yet been programmed to unquestioningly accept her or his fate as par for the course or the natural order of things. His voice reflects their pain and confusion.
These children, understandably, want to know "Why?" (Even if we don't, even if we think we know why.) Why would a policeman (whose mission is to serve and protect) shoot an unarmed man – and deprive a little girl of a loving father? Why would soldiers (whose stated mission is peace) take the life of a poor boy's mother, a woman who spent her days taking care of her kids, leaving his father devastated, "screaming and crying [as] his wife's dying"?
And, he wants us to focus on a second question, which the children also raise: who or what gives these men in uniform the right to take their parents' lives? What role does God or religion, if any, play in these events? Has God decided that these lives don't matter?
Willa: Eleanor, I think you've just zeroed in on the key issue at the heart of this song: what gives one person the right to kill another person? And Michael Jackson's answer seems to be that nothing does. Nothing gives them that right. As he sings, "Did God say that they could decide / Who will live and who will die?" He seems to be saying that only God has the right to make that decision, so only God can confer that right – not the state, not a badge, only God. If that soldier and that policeman weren't given the right to kill directly from God – and they weren't – then they don't have that right.
Eleanor: Well, I agree, he certainly seems to be saying that. But I'm not convinced that's where he's going with this. For one thing, we don't know whose god the children are talking about or even if it is the same god. Is it the god of white supremacists or the god of the black church? Is it a Christian god or a Muslim god? Is it your god or mine?
And, so far, all he's given us is questions, not answers. But, by having the children ask these questions, he both raises some very serious issues and ups the emotional ante, arousing the outrage most people would feel when innocent children are victims.
Willa: That's true, it is children asking these questions, and children are among the most defenseless and voiceless. So the image of a small child asking a towering man in uniform "Why?" – why did you kill my father? why did you kill my mother? – is incredibly moving.
Eleanor: Yes, it is. And it works. We are moved and we are outraged, at least for the moment and for the fictional children in the song, who, through Michael Jackson's artistry, are brought fully alive. But once we get into grappling with the questions they raise, we get into the area of blame and we get into trouble.
Hearing either story by itself, we might place the blame on the policeman who fired the shot or the soldier who released the missile or dropped the bomb. But, showing us that these stories are part of a larger pattern characterized by the repetition of violent acts resulting in the taking of innocent lives carried out by agents of the state, Michael Jackson begins to redirect our rage away from the police or the military, who in the larger sense didn't make the fatal decision, and toward the states they represent, the states who have apparently decided that these lives don't matter.
And then he complicates things even more: through the children's questions about God, he opens up the related questions. If God said that the state "could decide who would live and who would die," then does that make the state God's agent, and does being an agent of the state imply that one is an agent of God? And if God said that the state "could decide who would live and who would die," does that mean that God allows the state to decide which lives matter and which ones don't? Who or what bears the ultimate responsibility for this insanity?
Willa: I think I see what you're getting at, Eleanor. So when the children say, "Did God say you could decide?" you think they aren't just questioning the men in uniform but the idea of a loving God also, for letting this happen. That's interesting – I hadn't thought about it that way.
Eleanor: Well, their questions do introduce the topic of God and raise the issue of the relationship between God and the state. The little girl seems to assume that the state acts without God's blessing. She is issuing a challenge:
How is it that you get to choose
Who will live and who will die?
Did God say that you could decide?
While the little boy seems to be asking the more philosophical question:
Did God say that they could decide
Who will live and who will die?
Willa: I see what you're saying. I only saw one interpretation before – the girl's implied statement that the police didn't have the right to take her father's life. And I saw the boy as simply repeating that. But you're right, there's a subtle but important difference between them.
For one thing, the girl is challenging the police directly ("Did God say that you could decide?") while the boy is asking his father to explain what happened ("Did God say that they could decide?"). And that subtle shift in pronouns from "you" to "they" really changes the situation and how we interpret it. So once again we're back to pronouns … And like you, I think Michael Jackson's sophisticated use of pronouns to shift perspective is nothing short of brilliant – and something we see throughout his work.
So as you pointed out, Eleanor, the girl is standing up to the police in the heat of the moment and asking them to justify their actions, while the boy is genuinely struggling to understand, perhaps days or weeks or even years later, and is asking his father to help him understand.
Eleanor: Yes, and the mental image of his poor father, who was powerless to save his wife's life and who is left to explain the unexplainable to his now motherless son, is so heartbreaking.
Willa: It really is. My father lost his father when he was five years old, and I know from personal experience that it can take a lifetime to come to grips with that loss. Few things are more devastating to a child than the loss of a parent.
Eleanor: That's so sad, Willa. I can't even imagine it.
But let's distance ourselves from the emotional content of these stories for a minute and look at the underlying logic. Both stories make clear that the men in uniform, agents of the state, are directly responsible for the deaths of the children's parents, and both children seem to assume that only God has the power to decide who will live and who will die, so it appears that the only explanation is that God gave the state permission to take their parents' lives. Which makes no sense at all to either child.
If their parents are innocent, then either God is evil or the state has somehow usurped God's power, both of which are theological impossibilities. The only other logical explanation is that the children are lying and their parents are guilty of something. But this is Michael Jackson singing this song, and in MJ's world, children don't lie and children see clearly. It is this quality of wise innocence that MJ cherished and that these children represent. These children are the real deal.
Although adults may rationalize evil into good, the deep wisdom of children allows them to get to the heart of the matter. No matter how you look at it, in this song, they are telling us, something is rotten, something doesn't make sense, something doesn't add up. If "God" gave these men the right to take these innocent lives, what kind of god is that? (With friends like these…??) The children see an inherent contradiction. They are not confused by convoluted political – or theological – sophistry that turns good into evil and evil into good, such as arguments that might claim that merely being black or being born in a distant land, now defined as enemy territory, makes their parents guilty, and justifies their killing. They are not calloused or inured or jaded or brainwashed. They are truly innocent. And they know, when things like this happen, something (our understanding of the nature of reality or even our understanding of the nature of "God") is "out of joint."
The children's heartbreaking stories and their simple, straightforward, and perfectly natural questions reveal inherent contradictions in conventional assumptions about the nature of God (at least the God of the Abrahamic religious traditions) who is conventionally assumed to be both all good and all powerful. And, these contradictions suggest that this God is not God, that the God of most organized religions, is not what it is cracked up to be.
Willa: And that brings up a question people have struggled with for millennia: why would a loving, all-powerful God allow terrible things to happen? Why would a loving God allow the Holocaust to happen, or war or famine or disease or torture? We see Michael Jackson grappling with this question in his talks with Rabbi Schmuley Boteach – for example, in a chapter of The Michael Jackson Tapes called "Karma and Justice":
MJ: I don't believe in karma. I think that is a bunch of crap, because so many mean-spirited, evil people are on top of the world and doing well and people love them, no matter how evil they are.
SB: I love it when you make strong statements like that.
MJ: Well, I'm sorry, it's crap. Karma is a theory like any other theory that some human made up.
SB: Well, "what goes around comes around" is ok, because there's great truth to that. But karma could actually be evil because karma says that handicapped children did something bad in a previous life.
MJ: That's a fine line and I'm sorry for talking like that. But I hate whoever says something like that. A child did something in a past life so God is going to handicap them? There were all these orphans in this one country coming to America to be adopted. The plane crashed. Every child on the plane died. Why? If you could save those kids, if you were in Heaven, you would say, "This one is not going down. Maybe another one, but not this one." I know I would.
Eleanor: That's a really interesting exchange, Willa. It clearly shows Michael struggling with these issues and shows that he wasn't willing to accept "off-the-shelf theology." If we believe an all-powerful god is responsible for everything that happens, and we are morally outraged by many things that happen, as MJ was, then we are adopting a position that says humans are more moral than God, which in conventional religious thought is a no-no.
But regardless of the flaws in theo-logic, someone's god is often given as an explanation for those things which otherwise are inexplicable, and someone's god generally is thought to have the power of life and death, and someone's god's will has often been invoked as the reason behind state actions. And I think Michael Jackson really wants us to focus on and question the assumption many people make concerning the relationship between state actions and the will of God, how an assumption of such a relationship, even if unconscious, seems to paralyze our will and absolve us of personal responsibility. I think he wants us to think about exactly who "the state" is, whose will the state is really carrying out – and how anyone could believe that any lives don't matter.
Willa: I agree. While "We've Had Enough" talks quite a bit about God in a way that may lead us to question conventional wisdom and even our own beliefs, I don't think the focus of this song is on the concept of God – not really. I think it's on us, and how people have appropriated the concept of God to advance their own ideology, whatever it may be.
Eleanor: And there is certainly a long history of exactly that. In ancient Greece and Rome, the emperor often was worshipped as a god, so his will in the arena of state actions was viewed as the will of a god. Then over time, this idea of the emperor-god evolved into the divine right of kings, which pretty much gave free rein to European monarchs and covered a multitude of sins and has fueled endless religious wars. And even today, there is plenty of evidence that suggests that states continue to believe, or act as if they believe, that they are instruments of divine will. Some god or other is a very convenient authority to appeal to for self-serving (in)human actions.
An argument could be made that the gods of organized religions, which have traditionally worked hand in glove with states, are actually thinly veiled "agents of the state" – a psychological construct that states have used for millennia to justify their actions and manipulate their citizen/subjects – especially in the area of sorting out the lives that matter from those that don't.
Willa: Wow, Eleanor, there's a lot to think about here. I think it's true that "some god or other" is often "a very convenient authority to appeal to for self-serving (in)human actions." In other words, nations or religions (or even football teams) frequently like to claim that God is on their side, and that their actions, no matter how violent, are carrying out God's will.
Eleanor: And, don't forget races. White supremacy and Christian fundamentalism often go hand in hand.
Willa: Unfortunately, that often seems to be the case. But I think you're raising a very important point about the tendency for nations or other groups based on religion or race or ethnicity or sexual orientation or whatever to appropriate the idea of God and God's will to justify their actions – especially when those actions are violent and repressive.
That's something we see Michael Jackson struggling with in "All in Your Name" as well, as Joie and I talked about in a post last March. According to an article in The Guardian, "Jackson showed up at [Barry] Gibb's doorstep with the unfinished song … about three months before the United States invaded Iraq." In that song, he isn't just questioning the looming war but all the things that are done "in Your Name." He is so angry and upset with the terrible things that are being done in God's name that he questions the very existence of God. But the idea of living his life without his strong belief in God deeply troubles him also, as he and Barry Gibb sing in the dual choruses:
So what is my life
If I don't believe
There is someone to watch me?
Follow my dreams
Take all my chances
Like those who dare?
And where is the peace
We're searching for
Under the shadows of war?
Can we hold out
And stand up
And say no?
Only God knows
It's all in your name
Follow me to the gates of paradise
They're the same
It's all in your name
It seems to me that Michael Jackson's belief in a loving God was one of the foundations of his life. He grew up in the church, and his religious beliefs helped guide him and keep him sane through all the craziness he went through. He can't imagine life without it – as he repeatedly sings, "What is my life / If I don't believe?"
But at the same time, such horrible things have been done and continue to be done in God's name: "where is the peace / We're searching for /Under the shadows of war? … It's all in Your name." And we continue to see the spread of religious intolerance and holy war throughout the Mideast, and in other parts of the war. That's intolerable to him also.
Eleanor: So interesting, Willa…."Where is the peace?" is similar to a line out of "Earth Song" ("What about all the peace/That you pledge your only son?"), which was written years earlier. He had been dealing and struggling with these issues for such a long time.
Willa: Yes, I think so too. And so he finds himself at a crossroads, trying to understand what he should believe and what he should do. And in "All In Your Name" he seems to resolve that conflict by deciding to rise up and take a stand against religious wars and religious intolerance, while still maintaining his belief in a benevolent God. As he and Barry Gibb sing,
Can we hold out
And stand up
And say no?
Only God knows
Eleanor: I remember that discussion well, Willa, and that song so perfectly expresses the terrible dilemma he found himself faced with, given his own deep compassion and his deep feeling of connectedness to a power that he often referred to as L.O.V.E. It shows how deeply troubled, how desperate he felt at that time – and remember, he was in New York on September 11 and had witnessed that horror.
The song, and the accompanying story, also show that the "God question" and the problem of evil was an abiding concern of his. And his dilemma is exactly the dilemma faced by the children in "We've Had Enough." At the core of their being, they know that their God, understood as love and a force for good, couldn't be responsible for the evil that has befallen them and their parents; and God, understood as all powerful, wouldn't allow such terrible things to happen. And yet they do happen. So what is the answer?
I think Michael Jackson found the solution to his dilemma in the clear-eyed innocent wisdom of children, like those in "We've Had Enough." There, he found the evidence for the existence of, not an imperial god out there backing state actions and calling the shots and deciding that some lives matter while some do not, but what in some circles is called the god within – a powerful force for good, for the common good – that is accessible if we seek it, and that is all powerful if we unleash its force. But what a big "if." Because we adults can, and in most cases do, choose to ignore it.
Unlike the rest of us, who in adulthood lose touch with our own wise innocence, MJ kept the channel wide open, keeping every emotion, every nerve ending alive, giving emotional depth and power to his work, and through this power, he was able to reach deep into our souls and touch our own innocence – the love and compassion which binds people together, rather than the fear and anger that drives them apart, and which he continued to believe was still there somewhere, despite a lot of evidence to the contrary.
Willa: I agree, Eleanor, and I think he beautifully expresses this idea in "Heaven is Here," a poem from Dancing the Dream. Here's a wonderful reading of it:
There's actually a whole series of these readings and I don't know who's creating them, but I love his voice. Anyway, as Michael Jackson says in the opening lines of this poem:
You and I were never separate
It's just an illusion
Wrought by the magical lens of
There is only one Wholeness
Only one Mind
We are like ripples
In the vast Ocean of Consciousness
Come, let us dance
The Dance of Creation
Let us celebrate
The Joy of Life …
Eleanor: And that beautiful poem speaks to another recurring theme in his work, the idea that we are not separate beings, that "You're Just Another Part of Me."
Willa: Exactly.
Eleanor: Like the children in "We've Had Enough," Michael Jackson was in touch with that inner power, that tie that binds. It informed his vision, giving him the ability and wisdom to see clearly and recognize the cruelty, the barbarity and utter senselessness – the insanity – of the type of acts described in "We've Had Enough."
The children feel the deep wound of their losses – and the injustice – and so does he … and so should we all. But, as he points out in the next lines of the song, we don't. Instead,
We're innocently standing by
Watching people lose their lives
It's as if we have no voice
If we are watching people lose their lives, how could we be "innocently standing by"? He could be using irony, or he could actually see us as innocent victims of religious and cultural brainwashing. My guess is that he means it both ways. That we are both innocent bystanders and guilty as sin.
And the outrage aroused at the beginning of the song, which seemed at first to be directed at the police or the military, we now find directed at the systems that have brainwashed us, and at us for allowing ourselves to be brainwashed. After all, we do have a voice, but we choose not to use it. It is our responsibility to put a stop to these acts, but we are shirking it. As Edmund Burke famously said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Willa: He also seems to be suggesting that if we stand idly by "watching others lose their lives" then that disempowers us as well. It silences us: "It's as if we have no voice."
Eleanor: If we are standing by, believing ourselves to be innocent bystanders, while people lose their lives, clearly something is seriously wrong. To paraphrase "Earth Song," "we don't know where we are / but we know we've drifted far…." In other words, we've lost our moral compass.
On the other hand, we could do something instead of nothing, and MJ is telling us it is long past time for us to act:
It's time for us to make a choice
Only God could decide
Who will live and who will die,
There's nothing that can't be done
If we raise our voice as one
They've gotta hear it from me
They've gotta hear it from you
They've gotta hear it from us
We can't take it
We've already had enough
Deep in my soul, baby
Deep in your soul and let God decide
I think he is suggesting that we need to recognize that we are the medium for the expression of "God's" will, and so he implores us in a voice filled with urgency and desperation to make that choice to open our hearts to that power "deep in [our] souls" and "let God decide." And note the change from "only God could decide" to "let God decide" – putting the ball in our court.
Willa: Yes, and that's an important distinction. It reminds me of the famous line by Abraham Lincoln that Barack Obama has quoted a number of times: "My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side." In other words, he's saying we should look within and try to use our understanding of God to guide us to do what's right, rather than using God as justification to do what serves us best.
Eleanor: If we look deep in our souls and consult and access "the god within, the life force, the drive for the common good," a global, rather than a national or a racial common good that includes us all, that does not sacrifice the good of one group to benefit another – if we "let God decide" – it will restore our moral compass and unleash all the power that has been blocked by our inner conflicts. I think Michael Jackson sincerely believes that this energy exists, and if we let this energy guide us, there's nothing we can't accomplish.
And the title of the song suggests that once we get our heads on straight and restore the connection between heart and brain, we should feel these injustices as if they were happening to us. Because they are; we all suffer as a consequence of these actions. And he wonders when we will decide "We've Had Enough" and do something.
Willa: I agree, and I think that's the meaning he's trying to convey in the ad libs near the end of the song, beginning about 4:10 in:
They've gotta hear it from me
They've gotta hear it from you
They've gotta hear it from us
We've already had enough
(He's my brother)
We've already had enough
(Dear God, take it from me
It's too much for me
That's my brother
It's too much for me
That's my brother, baby
That's my lover)
We've already had enough
When an unarmed man – a father – is killed on the streets by a policeman, or a wife is killed in her own home by a bombing raid in a distant country, Michael Jackson doesn't want us to think of it as something distant that doesn't affect us. Instead, he wants us to take it personally, as if "That's my brother" or "That's my lover." It's happening to all of us.
Eleanor: And in choosing not to act, we are dooming ourselves.
Willa: Absolutely.
Eleanor: I don't know when "We've Had Enough" was written, but it was released with the Ultimate Collection in 2004, during that period leading up to his trial, a trial that could have ended with his imprisonment and the loss of his children – an intensely painful period that had begun ten years before, and it has the same feel – anger and desperation mixed with deep sadness and compassion and frustration – of much of his later work.
And something about the level of desperation in his voice leads me to believe that not only does he feel the pain of these children and thousands like them, but he views himself – and all of us – ensnared in the same vicious pattern, a pattern that in one way or another diminishes all of us, a pattern that he believed could be broken and must be broken.
But, tragically, shockingly, we still haven't had enough. Years after this song was first recorded, the innocents continue to die in confrontations with police and military – especially since police forces have become increasingly militarized and military actions become more and more impersonal, young soldiers sitting at consoles, playing video games that take real lives.
But perhaps the stakes are too high. Speaking up can exact a high price, which he alludes to late in the song: "It's up to me and I'm still alive." But, tragically, today, he isn't. Like the children in the song, he knew the difference between right and wrong, he confronted the state with incredible strength and courage, he opened his heart and let the power of the life force come through, and he encouraged us in his life and in his art to raise our voices against injustice. He never gave up. He never backed down. And, he paid the ultimate price.
Willa: Yes, and that's something D.B. Anderson talks about as well, in that article we mentioned at the beginning of this post:
Michael Jackson was never afraid to put himself out there for the truth as he saw it. We could always count on Jackson to be the global leader of the band, to give voice to everything we were feeling. His adult catalog is a trove of social activism. Starvation. AIDS. War. Gang violence. Race relations. The environment. It was Jackson who put on concerts for war-torn Sarajevo. It was Jackson who put together a group charity song and concert after 9/11. It was Jackson who used every ounce of his global celebrity to make a difference. He was there.
What happened to Jackson for his politics was so much worse than losing sales. For in speaking truth to power, Jackson made himself a target …
And D.B. Anderson is right. He did make himself a target, and he paid a terrible price for it.
Eleanor: But he left us with that powerful truth that the stakes are too high not to act, and that desperate call to action:
They've gotta hear it from me
They've gotta hear it from you
They've gotta hear it from us
We can't take it
We've already had enough
Scared of the Moon
Willa: This week I am thrilled to be talking about "Scared of the Moon" with Raven Woods. Raven has an MA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing, and she teaches writing and literature courses at Alabama A&M University and Calhoun Community College. She's also a freelance journalist and writer, and teaches seminars on Michael Jackson's music and cultural importance.
She's also the creator of AllForLoveBlog, which was the first site Joie and I added to our blogroll when we started Dancing with the Elephant. It's a favorite for both of us, and it's still the first place I turn whenever there's breaking news in the Michael Jackson universe. I know I will find important information, thoughtful analysis, and a community of voices sharing ideas. In addition to current events, AllforLove also provides fabulous, rarely seen photos (that's another reason I check in frequently!), important historical information, and insights into Michael Jackson's music, dancing, and videos.
Thank you so much for joining me, Raven!
Raven: Thank you so much for inviting me. And I would like to return the compliment by saying that I think Dancing with the Elephant is one of the best blogs for anyone who is interested in Michael's art foremost.
Willa: Thank you, Raven. I really appreciate that. Coming from you, that means a lot!
So I'm excited to talk with you about "Scared of the Moon" and I don't mean to get us off track, but I was very intrigued by something you said in a recent post:
It was during the Dangerous era that Michael seemed to solidify the concept for his live performances which often began with the "masculine" (he would come on tough, as a persona who was very masculine, angular, and hard, with military-esque trappings) and, over the course of the performance, would evolve to a more feeling, flowing, ethereal "feminine" persona (a transition that, like the Dangerous album's concept, usually transpired with the performance of "Heal the World," "Will You Be There" and the other spiritual "message" songs).
Michael's onstage persona during the first half of his Dangerous tour performances was always somewhat distant and cold; he would often wear a perpetual sneer. The moves are often blatantly sexual (a lot of crotch grabbing, etc). By the time the metamorphosis is complete, he is smiling, interacting with children onstage; the fencing shirt replaced by a flowing white shirt that accentuates his ethereal quality. His dance moves have become fluid and graceful, rather than angular and hard.
I had never noticed that before, Raven, but you're right – his concerts from Dangerous on did tend to begin with a hard-edged "masculine" persona and move toward a softer, more "feminine" persona. We see it all the way up to This Is It, which documents his plans for the 2009 London concerts. Apparently, those concerts were going to begin with him in a spacesuit and then move to something called "The Drill," a very militaristic performance of "Bad" and "They Don't Care about Us," before moving to softer songs like "Earth Song."
Raven: Yes, This Is It, from all indications, was going to be a continuation of that formula. I think he liked that arc. It seemed to suit his artistic vision.
Willa: I agree. And we see a similar movement in his later albums as well, as you pointed out with Dangerous. HIStory begins in a rather in-your-face way with "Scream" and "They Don't Care about Us," but ends with the much softer "Smile." And Invincible begins with the hard-driving trio of "Unbreakable," "Heartbreaker," and "Invincible" but concludes with softer songs like "The Lost Children" and "Whatever Happens," though it does add a little edge at the very end with "Threatened."
I had never noticed that structure before, but now that you've pointed it out, Raven, I keep seeing it, like in his performance at the MTV 10th anniversary celebration in 1991, or his Superbowl performance in 1993, or his performance at the 1995 MTV awards, or his 30th anniversary concerts at Madison Square Garden in 2001.
That movement from a hard, even militaristic opening to a much softer conclusion seems very significant, especially since he returns to it so often. And how wonderful that he enacts it during the halftime show at the Superbowl!
Raven: Oh yes, that Superbowl finale with "Heal The World' has to be, hands down, one of the greatest moments in live TV.
Willa: Absolutely!
Raven: As you know, I have been doing a very in-depth review of Susan Fast's book Dangerous and that was why the topic came up, because she aptly points out how this arc forms the central concept of the Dangerous album. This seems to have been where the pattern begun, and from there, it became a kind of blueprint, almost, for all the albums and tours that followed.
As always when discussing and analyzing art, of course, it is hard to say how much of this was intentional, conscious choice and how much of it may have simply evolved organically and subconsciously. I know this because, as a writer, I often don't see certain themes or emerging patterns in my own work until I've written them and have had time to step back and reflect on them – or until someone points them out. But once I am aware of them, I know they were not entirely accidental. Rather, they are the result of things buried in my subconscious that are being worked through.
But for sure, Michael was well aware (keenly aware, I am sure!) of the overall flow of his albums and performances; how the flow of one track to another, for example, impacts the listener (or the performance) and sets the overall tone and mood. He definitely liked the idea of taking listeners on a journey, and the arc was part of that journey. Susan Fast refers to it as Michael's desire to create utopianism, and I don't think that is a far-fetched concept. It seemed to permeate most everything he did, at least from Dangerous forward.
Willa: I agree, though I'd never noticed that arc before you – inspired by Susan – pointed it out. But I'm really intrigued by it now. For one thing, it provides a very different way of interpreting his use of military imagery – not as something he was advocating, but as something that would later be transformed into something softer and more nurturing.
So getting back to "Scared of the Moon," what started this conversation was something you said in a comment a while back where you compared "Scared of the Moon" to "Childhood":
"Scared of The Moon" … is a song about childhood from a very different, and darker, perspective. In that song, he addresses how we carry the traumas and fears of childhood into adulthood; how the traumas and scars of our childhoods shape even our adult selves.… I have heard that he wrote the song for Brooke Shields, but much of it seems autobiographical for Michael, also.… In both cases, they shared a fear of a parent who was a mystery to them. In both cases, the parent they feared was also the dominant parent who controlled much of their destiny.
So it seemed that, while acknowledging childhood as a kind of ideal state, he was also acknowledging that it can be a scary time as well, when one is haunted by inexplicable fears and the inability to be in control.…
Michael understood that childhood is both our happiest, most wondrous years but at the same time, because of that very innocence and the ability to perceive things so much deeper – can also be the source of our greatest pain, traumas, and fear.
Raven, I was really struck by everything you said. I love "Scared of the Moon" – it's a truly beautiful song – but it's very unsettling as well. Partly, that's because of the subject matter, a child threatened by nameless fears, but also because it seems so contrary to how he usually talked about childhood. Your comment perfectly captures the ambivalence I feel whenever I listen to this haunting song, and helps explain why it's so disturbing as well as exquisitely beautiful.
Raven: Exactly. Although it certainly is a very beautiful song melodiously, it is also one of his darker songs about childhood, though perhaps not as dark as "Little Susie," which was about the murder of a child.
Willa: That's true. There's also "The Lost Children" and "Hollywood Tonight" – they're both pretty dark as well – and "Do You Know Where Your Children Are." That's a very troubling song. It's about a young girl who's trying to escape an abusive stepfather, and the lyrics are pretty explicit about that: "she is tired of stepdaddy using her / Saying that he'll buy her things, while sexually abusing her." So she runs away to Hollywood, but ends up "selling her body" just to survive. In the end, she's arrested for prostitution, even though "she's only 12 years old" – and Michael Jackson just sounds heartbroken as he sings those words, as if he can hardly bear it.
So even though he frequently spoke up for children and repeatedly emphasized the importance of childhood, he didn't hesitate to show the harsh realities many children face.
Raven: Your reference to "Do You Know Where Your Children Are" got me to thinking about how the subject of child prostitution has been handled in other pop songs. One example that leaps immediately to mind is the Nick Gilder classic "Hot Child in the City" (a song I remember well from my teen years) about a 15-year-old runaway who has turned to prostitution,
What's interesting about this song is that, just as what Michael is doing with "Scared of the Moon" Gilder uses a deceptively poppy, sweet melody to cloak what is actually a very dark subject.
I remember when this song was a huge hit and it was largely because when young people my age were listening to it, we were hearing its catchy hook and not really paying much attention to the words – or if we did, we just took it as a song about a pretty girl catching boys' eyes as she walks down the street (not exactly new subject matter in rock'n'roll; songs like Roy Orbison's "Oh Pretty Woman" had been playing on that motif for years). I don't think anyone really caught on that this song was about a kid who is selling her body and is being preyed upon by an older guy (the narrator of the song who says "we'll talk about love") or if we did think about it, we just kind of brushed it off – after all, it was a much less politically correct era in terms of underaged sex. I also have a very vivid memory of a video to the song that depicted a child wearing a wig and an oversized, adult evening gown, walking the streets. But again, because the song's hook was so catchy, I suppose we could argue that it belied the very dark reality of its subject matter – or that it somehow made the dark subject matter more palatable, which perhaps was the idea.
In the case of "Do You Know Where Your Children Are," though it has a catchy riff, it's a somewhat ominous and gritty riff, preparing us for the reality of the song's subject matter. The effect he achieves with "The Lost Children" is similar. Here the intent is not so much to create a dark mood, but rather, one of sadness and heartbreak. It's a prayer that all of the "lost children" will somehow find their way, and the music intensifies that sadness and longing.
That is what makes "Scared of the Moon" even more puzzling to me; it's as if the lyrics and melody do not "fit." Yet we know the master's skilled hands and ear are at work, and what he is achieving with this song must be purposeful.
Willa: Yes, I agree – and actually, the fact that they don't "fit" heightens the eeriness of the song. It underscores the feeling that something is dreadfully wrong below the beautiful surface.
Raven: As you know, so much of Michael's body of work was about trying to either recapture or maintain the innocence of childhood. In the song "Childhood" he is advocating that, as adults, we should look within our hearts and ask ourselves if we have seen our childhood – the idea being that, if we can recognize our inner child, it can pave the way for a healthier adulthood.
But in "Scared of the Moon" it is the opposite, a recognition that it is also the scars and traumas of childhood that shape us as adults. It is a recognition that childhood, in addition to being a magical time of innocence and wonder, can also be a scary and frightening time. For sure, it is the period that most shapes and defines who we become as adults – for better or worse. The very reason that childhood tragedies strike such a resonant chord with us – when we hear of children being murdered, beaten to death, starved, sexually abused, or caught in the crossfires of violence – is because this is supposed to be the most innocent, carefree time of their lives. If a child can't be innocent, happy, or carefree during the first decade or so of their lives, then when on earth is that going to be possible for them? The answer is never. Once the damage is done, it's for life.
I have often wondered if this was the reason Michael deliberately chose such a deceptively sweet, wistful melody to pair with lyrics that are, by contrast, so dark and tinged with fear. The song's luscious arrangement gives it the quality of a lullaby, but just as we are settling in too comfortably, we realize that this is not a comfortable place we are being taken to.
Willa: That's an interesting way to interpret that, Raven. It's like the "sweet, wistful melody," as you called it, evokes images of childhood the way it's supposed to be, while the lyrics evoke a very different reality. And part of the tension of the song is the contrast between the two.
Raven: Exactly. And in something like "Little Susie," for example, he goes with an intentionally Gothic sound that fits the theme of the song. There is no ambiguity regarding the place that the song is going to take us.
Through the years, "Scared of the Moon" has given rise to many interpretations, largely because the moon can be said to symbolize so many things. Because the moon is associated with night, it can symbolize the terrors of darkness. The song's protagonist is a female child (as we know, he claimed to have written the song for his friend Brooke Shields) who lies in fear of unnamed terrors in the dark. But interestingly, the moon – even though it is providing "beams of light" – is no source of comfort in that darkness. Indeed, it seems to be the source of her fear.
Willa: And that's a really important point, I think. It's not unusual for kids to be scared of the dark, but generally the moon is seen as reassuring, almost like a friend in the darkness. I'm thinking of children's stories like "Goodnight Moon" by Margaret Wise Brown:
And there's a wonderful story my son loved when he was little called "Owl and the Moon" by Arnold Lobel:
In both of these stories, the moon is a kind of companion who stays with you in the dark, so you don't feel so alone. But that isn't the situation in "Scared of the Moon," so again there's a sharp contrast between what we expect and what the song actually says – like the contrast between the melody and the lyrics that you described earlier.
Raven: I've heard speculations that it is a song about childhood sexual abuse, but I'm not sure what I make of those interpretations or their validity. It could be possible.
Willa: Yes, I've heard that also, and it makes sense – it makes her fears understandable. And childhood sexual abuse was an important issue for him and something he did address in his songs, like in "Do You Know Where Your Children Are," as we mentioned earlier.
So I think that's a perfectly valid interpretation, but I tend to see this song as more ambiguous than that, more open-ended. It's almost like he's trying to describe those nameless fears many children have, that are so terrifying in part because they're nameless – because children can't label them and analyze them, and in that way drain them of their power.
Raven: But also, the term "lunacy" is often one associated with mental illness. This would seem to be borne out by the song's lines:
The feeling of terror
She felt as a youth
Has turned from a fantasy
Into a truth
The moon is the enemy
Twisting her soul
And taking its fearful toll
Scared of the moon
But now there are others
Who sit in their room
And wait for the sunlight
To brighten their gloom
Together they gather
Their lunacy shared
But knowing just why they're scared
Scared of the moon
The key phrase seems to me to be "their lunacy shared" which could refer to a group of people in an institution (or it could just refer collectively to every individual with a scarred childhood that has carried over into adulthood). Either way, it seems that the fears are still there. As adults, they are better able to hide those fears in light of day, and they now understand the reasons behind them. But that knowledge doesn't make the fears any less potent.
Willa: Those verses are really perplexing, aren't they? And I see what you mean – I get the impression of a mental asylum also. And that goes back to a very old idea that the moon could cause a kind of temporary madness that would then fade as the moon faded from sight. In fact, the words "lunacy" and "lunatic" come from "luna," the Latin word for "moon," which is also where the word "lunar" comes from in phrases like "lunar eclipse" or "lunar month."
We see this ancient idea acted out in Thriller when the Michael character transforms into a werewolf or werecat. He doesn't just undergo physical changes but mental changes as well. As he begins to transform, he tells his girlfriend, "Run away!" because he can feel the madness coming on and knows that soon he won't be able to control his actions. And he can't. After he's fully transformed, he chases and attacks her.
So interpreting this section of "Scared of the Moon" as a type of madness or mental illness brought on by the moon seems valid to me, but I wonder if it could be interpreted more metaphorically also. I mean, Michael Jackson was so linked to the moon. His signature dance was called the "moonwalk," which is also the title of his biography. His only feature length film was Moonwalker, with the moon appearing as a very important symbol of change and creativity, even magic. We see this idea in the Childhood video also, where the moon seems to represent imagination and creativity – specifically, the intense imagination of childhood. Joie and I talked about that a little bit in a post a while back.
He expresses this idea in Dancing the Dream also, like in the opening paragraphs of "Dance of Life":
I cannot escape the moon. Its soft beams push aside the curtains at night. I don't even have to see it – a cool blue energy falls across my bed and I am up. I race down the dark hall and swing open the door, not to leave home but to go back to it. "Moon, I'm here!" I shout.
"Good," she replies. "Now give us a little dance."
But my body has started moving long before she says anything. When did it start? I can't remember – my body has always been moving. Since childhood I have reacted to the moon this way, as her favorite lunatic …
That word "lunatic" takes us back to the idea of a kind of madness evoked by the moon, but he doesn't use it in a negative way. Just the opposite. It's a wonderful madness that the moon inspires in him – a kind of creative ecstasy. And it's clearly something he cherishes.
The fact that the moon is generally such a positive image in Michael Jackson's work, used repeatedly to represent imagination and creativity, is another reason "Scared of the Moon" is so unsettling to me. It just feels wrong to hear a Michael Jackson song where the moon is "the enemy." And that makes me wonder if we can interpret this a different way.
For example, maybe the main character in "Scared of the Moon" is someone who's scared of her own imagination, scared of letting herself go and expressing herself creatively. So something that should be nurturing to her (the moon, her imagination, her own artistic nature) has become frightening to her.
Raven: It is interesting to compare Michael's "Scared of the Moon" to "I'm Open," a track from Pearl Jam's 1996 album No Code. This is the only song I have found that comes similarly close to Michael's message in "Scared of the Moon." Note the lyrics spoken in the song's opening monologue:
A man lies in his bed, in a room with no door
He waits hoping for a presence, something, anything, to enter
After spending half his life searching, he still felt as blank
As the ceiling at which he's staring
He's alive, but feels absolutely nothing
So, is he?
When he was six he believed that the moon overhead followed him
By nine he had deciphered the illusion, trading magic for fact
No trade-backs…
So this is what it's like to be an adult
If he only knew now what he knew then.
Willa: Oh, that's really interesting, Raven. So in this song we see a man who's completely lost touch with the moon – and also with his emotions and his inner life. "He's alive, but feels absolutely nothing." He had that connection when he was a child, when "he believed that the moon overhead followed him." But then he traded "magic for fact" and lost that connection.
So like the main character in "Scared of the Moon," he seems to be repressing parts of himself that should bring him joy. But while the things she's repressing seem to terrify her, he feels nothing at all. He's "as blank as the ceiling at which he's staring."
Raven: With the main character in the Pearl Jam song, it seems to be more of a case of lost innocence. He's lost the magic of childhood. It is the idea of something being irretrievably lost once we are an adult and have, as he says, "deciphered the illusion." Now that you have pointed this out, I am thinking that, thematically, this is actually closer to what Michael was stating in "Childhood." And, also, in the video for that song we see children in a boat gliding towards the moon.
Willa: Oh, that's a good point. Like his character in Childhood wistfully watching as children sail away on their imagination, the main character in "I'm Open" wistfully remembers his own childhood, and wishes "he only knew now what he knew then."
This is an idea Michael Jackson frequently mentioned – that children have a deep knowledge that adults have lost. As he said in an interview when he was only 22,
One of my favorite pastimes is being with children, talking to them and playing with them. Children know a lot of secrets [about the world] and it's difficult to get them to tell. Children are incredible. They go through a brilliant phase, but then when they reach a certain age, they lose it. My most creative moments have almost always come when I'm with children. When I'm with them, the music comes to me as easily as breathing.
So in this one small comment, he's expressing some really profound ideas: that children have knowledge of the world that adults lack, and that this knowledge is linked to creativity.
Raven: Yes, and you know, there has been so much said about how we are never so close to our spiritual natures as when we are children. This was what William Wordsworth meant in "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" and his famous line that the child is "Father of the Man." His entire point of that rather lengthy piece is that we are born with all our inherent qualities of divinity, grace, and perception.
Children, as we know, are much more perceptive of the spiritual and natural world, as well as much more receptive of it. Children, for example, often display psychic abilities which they tend to lose with age – for example, the ability to see auras, or ghosts. I have read many accounts where adults will recall that, as children, they once saw someone's aura. Often, adults have childhood memories (sometimes comforting; sometimes frightening) of commuting with the spirit world. But unless an individual is especially sensitive, they tend to lose this gift with age. It's as if we lose something of our spiritual selves the minute the world takes over and consumes our bodies and minds, as what happens in adulthood. Part of what we lose as adults is the ability to sense magic and wonder in the world. Everything now has a rational explanation. For many kids, it may be a comfort to get older and realize there is no monster hiding under the bed, but the trade-off is in realizing that, likewise, Santa Claus and the tooth fairy are not real, either. In most of his songs about childhood, Michael was usually lamenting the loss of that childhood innocence and wonder. But here he seems to be singing about another childhood rite of passage, and that is the fear of unknown and inexplicable terrors.
As you said, Michael used the moon symbolically throughout much of his career as something that was associated with magic and the imagination. In the Pearl Jam song, the moon is somewhat serving this same function – it represents something wondrous and magical, as compared to the emptiness and mundaneness of adulthood. I think that the characters in both songs may be experiencing some sort of trauma. Mental illness can produce terror in some (such as hallucinations, or flashbacks to past traumatic events) or it can also produce complete inertia and numbness.
In the case of "Scared of the Moon" I am not quite sure if the moon is intended to merely symbolize her terrors, or if it is, literally, the thing that she fears.
Willa: Yes, I wonder about that also.
Raven: Judging from the lyrics, I would register to guess that in childhood, the moon was the literal source of her fear (as children often fear things irrationally); in adulthood, she may no longer fear the moon itself, but she fears what it represents symbolically. It stands for all those inexplicable fears of childhood.
Willa: Oh, that's interesting. So instead of seeing it as an either-or question, you interpret it one way when she's younger and the other way when she's older. I hadn't thought about that, but it makes a lot of sense.
Raven: In "I'm Open" it seems that the character has withdrawn emotionally from the world. That, too, can be a defense mechanism against trauma, but it does seem that in childhood, at least, the moon was a friend and a comfort, much like "Goodnight Moon" and "Owl and the Moon." In that regard, it does differ markedly from "Scared of the Moon" where Michael even explicitly sings, "The moon is the enemy / twisting her soul."
It is interesting in the fact that it seems so very opposite of Michael's own feelings about the moon, which he always expressed as something that was, for him personally, something very benevolent. But then again, if he did intend for this to be a song about his friend Brooke Shields, perhaps we have to be careful about trying to project too much of "Michael" into it. As I am always reminding my students, we have to make the distinction between author, narrator, and character – or in this case, lyricist and character – and not assume they are automatically one and the same. In all likelihood, this was a very personal song between Michael and Brooke, which may have had something to do with why it went unreleased for so long. It could have been that Michael was not entirely comfortable with releasing something he had written for a friend that was so intensely personal. It would be interesting to know what Brooke's thoughts on the song are.
I know that Brooke had a very troubled childhood. She not only began working at an even younger age than Michael, but also had to deal with an alcoholic mother. I believe I mentioned in my blog comment (the one that sparked this conversation) that in her recent People magazine interview she said that the only time she ever saw her mother sober was early in the morning before she went to school. Her mother would be drunk by the time she got home again, and her drunkenness only progressed into the evening and nights. Reading between the lines, it seems like the only time she felt safe, secure, and sure of her mother's love was in those early morning hours, when the day was fresh. It seems that she lived in fear of darkness descending; as the day wore on, her mother became a bigger terror.
Willa: That's a really interesting way to interpret that, Raven. It's almost like, as the moon rises, her mother's demons come out through her binge drinking. So if we apply that to the character in "Scared of the Moon," maybe her fear of the moon is actually her fear of what could happen if her mother loses control.
Raven: I would imagine that she and Michael probably had many deep conversations about these fears. And, of course, they had common ground, for Michael spent most of his childhood in fear of Joseph.
I am sure you remember the story Michael recounted about the time Joseph scared them all half to death by putting on a frightening mask and coming in through their bedroom window. Joe said that it was to prove a point – to "scare" them into closing and locking their bedroom window at night, rather than leaving it open for any prowler to climb through. But if that was his intent, his child "psychology" backfired horribly. Michael said the incident caused him to be afraid of the dark and to have nightmares about being kidnapped for years afterward.
Michael respected his father, but as we know, he also feared him. "He can just give you a LOOK," he said, and I know he was telling the truth because, from what little time I was around Joe in 2010, I got "the look" and realized if I had been a child, this man would have terrified me. I was an adult and shaking in my shoes because when Joe gives you "the look" as Michael put it, it can make you feel like a gnat! (But to set the record straight, I saw many sides of Joe that weekend, including when he sat behind me and struggled not to shed any tears during a tribute, so this is not to judge him, but only to reinforce what Michael said). To be honest, I never felt closer to Michael – or more empathy for him – than I did at that moment, standing before the man who made him (literally and figuratively, I suppose) and having those steel blue-gray eyes pierce my soul.
Willa: So Raven, now you have me terribly curious. When was this? And what were the circumstances? How did you end up spending a weekend with Michael Jackson's father? And why on earth did he give you "the look"!
Raven: This was in Gary, Indiana, during Michael's birthday weekend in 2010. Joe was a guest of the Fanvention that year. I had a media pass which gave me access to a lot of the events where he was attending. I half suspect that I got "The Look" because I was wearing a media badge. I recall that when I got close enough to him to ask a question, he just glanced down toward my badge and scowled, ignoring me like he didn't even hear me (this, I have since learned, is a coping strategy that the entire family seems to have for avoiding the press or questions they don't want to answer). So I didn't actually talk to him that weekend, but I was in the same room with him quite a bit – more than enough to observe him. I probably should add that I could have interviewed him if I hadn't blown my chance! I was told I could meet with him in the hotel restaurant, which was called The Star Cafe. But I misheard and went to the Starbucks instead!
Willa: Oh no!
Raven: By the time I figured out I was in the wrong place – and that she actually meant The Star Cafe which was right across from the Starbucks – it was too late. So I'll never know if Joe and I might have gotten past our initial awkward encounter.
My experience with Katherine two years later was similar. I was in the same room with her, but never actually got face time. I had been told before I left that an interview might be possible, but once I got there, was informed that Katherine wasn't going to do any press. Still, I treasure those experiences because I got to be around both of Michael's parents and it afforded me a good opportunity to really observe both of them. And I can say that both of them are exactly as their children have described them! No exaggerations.
Willa: Wow, that's amazing. I can't imagine being in the same room with either of them. You know, there are a thousand questions I'd love to ask them, but if I actually saw them in person, I wonder if I'd really be able to ask …
Raven: Yes, and the toughest part is that you never really know what kinds of questions are totally off limits. You can choose to play it safe and ask the generic kinds of questions that you know will only net the same ol' answers, or you can take the gamble of asking the really juicy questions that you really want to know – but which are apt to get you completely iced out. I usually start with a few "safe" questions to feel the subject out; if they seem comfortable, I may go for the tougher ones. But it also depends on how much time has been allotted.
I would say, however, that although Joe has a much crustier exterior, he actually seems to be the more amiable of the two. Katherine is much more reserved; she is very shy and doesn't really enjoy doing press, and seems very embarrassed to have too much attention focused on her. She will usually prefer to sit in an inconspicuous corner in the back of the room, avoiding the fanfare as much as possible. Joe, on the other hand, seems to enjoy meeting the fans and the adulation – unless you cross him in some way, which I apparently did without even realizing it.
But to steer this back to the point, Michael did have a deep-rooted fear of his father. All of the Jackson children did, and as a result, they came to dread evenings and nights when they knew he would be home. Whatever the deep rooted, underlying causes, a fear of the darkness and of night did seem to plague Michael into adulthood, although it was not consistent. For example, he loved taking nighttime walks around Neverland. By his own account, he would often go out at night to sit in The Giving Tree. He seemed to be at peace with his infamous insomnia when not under the pressure of touring – in fact, he took advantage of those dark hours to engage in some of his most intense creativity. (I am just the opposite. I have to do my most intense creative thinking in the mornings, and am usually "braindead" by night!) But Michael was very much a night owl who seemed, on the one hand, to welcome the dark hours.
On the other hand, however, it seemed he also sought ways to avoid it as much as possible: Keeping a light on all night, for example (and often, what fitful sleep he did get was beneath a glaring light) and a distraction such as TV or a computer – these are all, to some degree, means of avoidance, a kind of artificial environment that simulates daytime comforts as a way of postponing or avoiding absolute darkness. I understand completely, because it is the same reason why I immediately turn on the TV when I check into a hotel room if I am alone (oddly enough, I don't indulge this habit if I am with someone). It's a way of creating an artificial comfort zone, so we don't feel so alone. I sense that Michael had these fears of being alone in total darkness.
Willa: That's really interesting, Raven. So it's like, for him personally, the moon and nighttime in general played a fascinating double role, as a time of creative inspiration but also fear. But in his previous work – meaning his songs and poems and videos before "Scared of the Moon" – he'd only expressed the positive role the moon played for him, as muse and creative spark. So maybe "Scared of the Moon" is balancing that out by presenting the other side, and expressing hidden fears that he hadn't expressed before – a time of night terrors where the moon is "the enemy."
Raven: I had another interesting revelation on this topic last week when I assigned one of my classes to read "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I am sure you are probably familiar with the story, but for those who don't know, it is a story Gilman wrote in 1892 about a woman with postpartum depression who is confined by her well-meaning but controlling husband, who is a physician, to the "bed rest" cure. The "cure" backfires, however, because her confinement slowly drives her insane. With nothing better or more fulfilling to do day in and night out, she starts to obsess over the patterns in the hideous, yellow wallpaper that decorates her room. Eventually, she starts to hallucinate and imagines that within the wallpaper's patterns she sees women, trapped like herself, within it. This irrational fear and obsession starts to eat away at her sanity. Eventually, she starts to dread her nights alone with the wallpaper worst of all:
There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself, and that is that it changes as the light changes.
When the sun shoots in through the east window – I always watch for that first long, straight line – it changes so quickly that I can never quite believe it.
That is why I watch it always.
By moonlight – the moon shines in all night when there is a moon – I wouldn't know it was the same paper.
At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it as plain as can be.
I didn't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman.
By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour.
It does not take astute readers long, however, to learn that the narrator and the woman "behind the pattern" are one and the same. This passage, likewise, bears a striking similarity to the girl Michael is singing about in "Scared of the Moon." In "The Yellow Wallpaper," the narrator likewise becomes "scared of the moon" because she starts to dread when the moon's light will play on her mind and eye, transforming the pattern of the wallpaper into the bars of her own prison. It is, of course, the illusion she fears, rather than the moon itself. But again, it is that idea of the moon as the thing that is synonymous with nighttime fears and all which we suppress in light of day.
Willa: That's a fascinating connection, Raven. Those lines you quoted really remind me of the opening lines of "Scared of the Moon":
Alone she lays waiting
Surrounded by gloom
Invaded by shadows
Painting the room
The light from the window
Cuts through the air
And pins the child lying there
Scared of the moon
And another similarity is that both are told in a way that's very sympathetic toward the main character. The woman in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is also the narrator and she seems so trustworthy, so reasonable, that it comes as a terrible shock to learn that she has apparently slipped into madness – pushed there by being locked in isolation day after day.
And we really sympathize with the girl in "Scared of the Moon" also, who may be suffering from a type of "lunacy" also. Mental illness is frightening, so we may try to distance ourselves from people who suffer from it. But both Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Michael Jackson encourage us to identify with their characters, and experience the fears they experience. That's interesting. Thank you for sharing that, Raven, and thank you so much for joining me!
Raven: My pleasure. Thank you again for inviting me.
Willa: Oh, I've thoroughly enjoyed it.
I also wanted to add a quick note following up on our last post. Vanity Fair has removed a number of Maureen Orth's articles – including "Losing His Grip" and "Neverland's Lost Boys" – from their website. So thank you sincerely to everyone who contacted them. It seems to have made a difference. I hope Vanity Fair will now do the right thing and print a correction or retraction. I think journalistic ethics and integrity, as well as common decency, demand it.
Action Item: Vanity Fair
Willa: This week we present another action item we feel could significantly change public perceptions of Michael Jackson. This time we're focusing on Vanity Fair and one of its writers, Maureen Orth. Together they are responsible for a string of articles that are deeply racist, sexually explicit, and poorly researched. Much of the content of these articles is false. In fact, while they are presented as journalism, they often seem to be little more than bizarre racist fantasies that occasionally border on pornography.
For example, in April 2003 Vanity Fair published an article by Maureen Orth titled "Losing His Grip." Here are the opening paragraphs:
"David Geffen, be gone! Steven Spielberg, be gone!" The witch doctor cursing Michael Jackson's enemies and blessing the tarnished King of Pop himself in a voodoo ritual in Switzerland in the summer of 2000 had promised that the 25 people on Jackson's enemies list, some of whom had worked with him for years, would soon expire. The voodoo man later assured one close observer of the scene that David Geffen, who headed the list, would die within the week. But Geffen's demise did not come cheap. Jackson had ordered his then business adviser, Myung-Ho Lee, a U.S.-educated Korean lawyer based in Seoul, to wire $150,000 to a bank in Mali for a voodoo chief named Baba, who then had 42 cows ritually sacrificed for the ceremony.
Jackson had already undergone a blood bath. The pop star, who is said to be $240 million in debt, had paid six figures for a ritual cleansing using sheep blood to another voodoo doctor and a mysterious Egyptian woman named Samia, who came to him with a letter of greeting from a high-ranking Saudi prince, purportedly Nawaf Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, now the chief of intelligence of Saudi Arabia. She had taken an eager Jackson to her basement in Geneva, where, he later told associates, he saw with his own eyes piles of $100 bills which Samia said totaled $300 million. It was "free money," she said; he could have it, and she could also get him a villa and a yacht. She arranged to have three men fly from Switzerland, at Jackson's expense, to Neverland, his luxurious California ranch, to discuss further deals. When the hex delegation arrived at Neverland, Jackson asked Lee to authorize $1 million in cash to be brought to the ranch. Lee refused, but Jackson obtained the money by other means. Lee found out about it only when a $20,000 bill came for an armored truck.
Jackson, in turn, sent Lee to Geneva to check out yet another voodoo doctor, whose specialty was pulling money out of thin air. At the Hôtel d'Angleterre, the voodoo man produced a show of sound, lights, and pigeons before leading his visitors one at a time into the bathroom, where the tub was full of cash amounting, he claimed, to $50 million. When they asked where it had come from, he said, "The U.S. Federal Reserve." There was just one catch: all this money would disappear unless Michael Jackson paid thousands of dollars for the blood of a number of fowl and small animals for yet another ritual. The sacrificial animals were already assembled at a location on the French-Swiss border, waiting to die to make Jackson's wishes come true. Lee was horrified and left in disgust.
This is poppycock. It never happened. Orth's far-fetched story of "a voodoo ritual in Switzerland" is simply not supported by the evidence, such as Michael Jackson's well documented love of animals and abhorrence of violence or – more specifically – the extensive and detailed records of the Federal Office of Agriculture (FOAG) in Switzerland.
"In the summer of 2000," when Orth claims this voodoo ritual took place, Switzerland and most of Europe was engaged in intense efforts to eradicate bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as "mad cow disease." BSE is a neurological disease that is fatal to infected cattle, and potentially fatal to the people who eat them. According to a report by the European Food Safety Administration (EFSA), the first confirmed case of BSE in cattle appeared in the UK in 1986 and then spread to Europe, probably through commercial cattle feed containing meat-bone meal from infected animals. Since that time, Switzerland has had 453 confirmed cases of BSE.
In 1996, a kind of "mad cow" hysteria swept Europe and the US after BSE was linked with a series of unexplained human deaths. As the EFSA report explains, these fears were fueled by
a media outbreak of apocalyptic scenarios sketching a man-made disaster of then unpredictable proportions. Health authorities were frantically acting to limit damage from BSE not only to human health, but also to agriculture, economies, political credibility and public confidence.
In response, many European countries, including Switzerland, implemented rigorous cattle identification and registration programs that track every cow from birth through slaughter and processing.
Given this background, I thought the FOAG might be able to provide insight into Orth's wild claims of voodoo rituals involving animal sacrifice – specifically, the ritualized killing of 42 cows (not to mention the "fowl and small animals" that were allegedly gathered for sacrifice "on the French-Swiss border"). So I talked to some friends in Germany, and they contacted the FOAC. After some research, the FOAG informed them that they have no knowledge of an event such as Orth describes, nor any evidence indicating that such an event might have occurred.
So why would Orth believe such an outlandish story, and why would she want to begin her article this way – with a preposterous voodoo tale that casts doubt over her entire article? Susan Woodward addresses that question in her book, Otherness and Power: Michael Jackson and His Media Critics, which devotes a chapter to Maureen Orth:
This is, in its way, the perfect scene with which to begin her article, incorporating white racial fear, violence and expenditures of hundreds of thousands of dollars, themes that run throughout the article.
In other words, Orth believed this story because she was predisposed to believe it, and because she wanted to believe it. It aligns with underlying cultural and racial biases, and in many ways seems to encapsulate how she sees Michael Jackson – as someone who embodied a frightening otherness. In fact, she presents him as so completely Other that at times he seems scarcely human. Susan explains this fear of his difference more fully in her book, and in a post we did a few weeks ago where she talks about her book.
But where did this bizarre and deeply racist story that Michael Jackson engaged in voodoo practices come from? Orth's sole source seems to be Myung-Ho Lee, who served for a short time as Michael Jackson's business adviser before being fired for fraud and incompetence. Myung-Ho Lee then filed a $12 million lawsuit for breach of contract, and Michael Jackson's lawyers counter-sued, saying Lee had "stolen millions."
As Susan points out in her book,
In addition to the obvious fact that Lee's lawsuit would render him a questionable source, the story of the voodoo rites is contradictory to everything known about Jackson, who loved animals, was a vegetarian for many years and had a decades long grounding in a Christian church.
Ironically, the original source of this story may have been Michael Jackson himself, as Susan goes on to explain:
The actual inspiration for Lee's story of the voodoo ceremonies may be something that Jackson himself said to journalist J. Randy Taraborrelli in 1995, in expressing his enormous frustration with the media's fabricated or wildly inaccurate stories about him: "Why not just tell people I'm an alien from Mars. Tell them I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight. They'll believe anything you say …"
Importantly, in this quotation Michael Jackson refers to voodoo mockingly – not as someone who seriously believes in it. In fact, he uses it as an extreme example of just how gullible some journalists and their readers could be. And he was right. Lee's wild stories of voodoo rituals were believed by a lot of people, including Maureen Orth and her editors at Vanity Fair.
This is not the only time Myung-Ho Lee misled Orth into reporting false stories. For example, in March 2004 Vanity Fair published an article titled "Neverland's Lost Boys," in which Orth claimed Michael Jackson intoxicated a 13-year-old boy, Richard Matsuura, with wine served in soda cans. It went on to say that Matsuura's father became so angry when he found out that he cancelled plans for an amusement park development project. Once again Orth's source was Myung-Ho Lee, and once again the story is untrue.
In an interview with Mike Taibbi, Richard Matsuura denounced the story as "completely false." (At the time of the interview, he was 18 years old and a college student.) Importantly, he says Orth did not contact either him or his father for verification before publishing this story about them. Here is Taibbi's segment for NBC News:
As Taibbi reports, "Matsuura says Jackson never said or did anything inappropriate in the four days he spent in his company." According to Taibbi, NBC News interviewed Matsuura's father as well and he corroborated his son's statements.
NBC News also contacted Maureen Orth, who Taibbi describes as "one of the recognized experts on the Jackson saga," and she said she "stands by her source for the story," Myung-Ho Lee. Vanity Fair then issued a statement saying they had contacted Lee, and he said, "I've read the Vanity Fair article. I stand by everything I said in the article." However, following NBC's broadcast of the Matsuura interview, Vanity Fair deleted all mention of him from the online version of Orth's article.
These are simply two examples of Orth's sloppy research, her willingness to believe sordid stories about Michael Jackson with very little research or skepticism, and Vanity Fair's willingness to print those stories without corroborating evidence. There are many other examples.
For example, later in the "Losing His Grip" article, Orth claims he was missing his nose and wore a prosthesis instead. As she wrote, "One person who has seen him without the device says he resembles a mummy with two nostril holes." This is patently false, as verified by the autopsy report following his death.
However, this rumor was disproven long before he died, when his face was examined by representatives of The Daily Mirror in November 1998. Susan and I talked about this in our post a few weeks ago. According to a BBC report about the incident, the Mirror had published an article about him in June 1992, saying he was "hideously disfigured by extensive plastic surgery" and that he had "a hole in his nose, one cheek higher than the other and a sagging chin." Michael Jackson sued, and later met with Mirror representatives who examined his face. According to a November 10, 1998, article in Variety,
Jackson reportedly allowed himself to be examined without makeup for 40 minutes in a suite at the Universal Hilton in Los Angeles in the company of doctors and lawyers for both sides of the case.
Afterwards, "Mirror Group Newspapers and the paper's former editor Richard Stott acknowledged that Michael Jackson was neither hideously disfigured nor scarred," according to the BBC. This was in November 1998, yet Orth was still promoting the false rumor that he didn't have a nose more than four years later in her 2003 article.
So what can we do?
One option is to contact Vanity Fair and politely and respectfully inform them that the voodoo story at the beginning of Maureen Orth's April 2003 article, "Losing His Grip," is factually incorrect, deeply racist, and sensationalistic – and there are numerous other inaccuracies in her articles as well. (If you'd like to do your own fact checking, this page at Vanity Fair's website lists all of Maureen Orth's articles on Michael Jackson. It also provides a brief overview and a link to each one.)
Vanity Fair requests that readers contact them through email. As they say in their latest issue, "Send all editorial, business, and production correspondence electronically to email@example.com."
Another option is to contact Snopes.com, a popular site for checking urban myths, and tell them the Vanity Fair voodoo story is untrue. Here's a link to an online form for submitting information to them. Unfortunately, Snopes itself contains a lot of misinformation about Michael Jackson. Like Wikipedia, most of its information is provided by readers, so the quality of its entries varies a lot. Correcting all the misinformation on Snopes could be – and probably should be – a series of action items in itself.
If you decide to contact Vanity Fair (or Snopes), here are some talking points you may want to consider:
- Records at the Federal Office of Agriculture in Switzerland do not support Orth's claim that a witchdoctor sacrificed 42 cows on behalf of Michael Jackson. Vanity Fair can verify this independently if they'd like, using contact information available on the FOAG's website.
- The voodoo story appears to be part of a pattern of sloppy and sensationalized reporting in Orth's articles on Michael Jackson. Her articles frequently include misleading, exaggerated, or highly suspect claims that are later shown to be false.
- Orth's sole source for the voodoo story seems to be Myung-Ho Lee, and this was not the only time Lee told Orth an untrue story: Lee was also behind the Richard Matsuura story. Matsuura himself later told NBC News the story was "completely false," and his father denied it as well.
You may also want to suggest that quietly removing the false voodoo story, as they did with the Richard Matsuura story, is not sufficient. Vanity Fair needs to correct some of the damage they've done by publicly acknowledging and correcting these falsehoods. Journalistic integrity demands it.
As we mentioned last week, we don't want to put anyone in an awkward or uncomfortable position. However, if you are willing to contact Vanity Fair, we may be able to convince them to report on Michael Jackson more professionally in the future, and maybe fix some of the damage they've done in the past.
Note: We wanted to tell everyone about a fascinating new article by Lubov Fadeeva, a professional dancer and choreographer who specializes in flamenco dancing. Fadeeva views dance through its ancient origins as a sacred ritual, and she brings that perspective to her appreciation of Michael Jackson as a dancer, calling him a "shaman of the great stage." As she says, "When Michael Jackson hit the stage, he danced in ecstasy." It is, quite simply, the best article I've ever read about Michael Jackson and dance. We've added Fadeeva's article to our Reading Room, along with a 30th anniversary article about "We are the World" that includes some really fun behind-the-scenes video clips.
Action Item: KCBS-TV in Los Angeles
Willa: Greetings! I hope you're all enjoying a wonderful start to the new year.
I strongly believe that 2015 could be a pivotal year for Michael Jackson and his legacy. On the one hand, it seems that the hysteria surrounding him is starting to subside, and that the mainstream press may finally be ready to consider the actual facts behind the allegations against him. And once you look at the facts, it seems obvious to me that he's innocent. So this could be the year when the false allegations against him are finally put to rest, and his name is cleared of the scandal that has dogged his reputation for more than 20 years. That is my vision and my hope for what could happen this year.
But this could also be the year when the Wade Robson and James Safechuck allegations set off a whole new round of hysteria. So far, the more respected media outlets have been reluctant to carry the Robson / Safechuck story, but there have been some extremely graphic, sensationalistic, and lurid tabloid articles. Those kinds of stories could become much more common if the case goes to trial, and 2015 could bring a repeat of what happened following the 1993 allegations and 2005 trial.
So I believe 2015 could be a major turning point for Michael Jackson's legacy, for good or ill. And which direction things go may depend on us, his fans and supporters. As Michael Jackson says in This Is It,
People are always saying, "Oh, they'll take care of it. The government will do it. Don't worry, they'll …" They who? It starts with us. It's us, or else it will never be done.
And he was right. Whether it's changing public attitudes about the destruction of the environment, or changing public attitudes about him, it's up to us – the people who care enough to bring about that change. "It starts with us … or else it will never be done."
So in this post and the next one, we're going to do something a little different. We're going to ask you to participate in two specific action items that we think could play a major role in changing public perceptions of Michael Jackson. And we're beginning with KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, which is also known as KCBS or CBS2.
Here's a little history …
On May 3, 1994, KCBS-TV broadcast a short news segment in which a reporter asked Evan Chandler if he had sedated his son with sodium Amytal, a psychiatric drug that has been implicated in producing false memories, especially if patients under its influence are asked leading or suggestive questions. Mary Fischer included a description of that broadcast in her October 1994 article for GQ magazine:
A newsman at KCBS-TV, in L.A., reported on May 3 of this year that Chandler had used the drug [sodium Amytal] on his son, but the dentist claimed he did so only to pull his son's tooth and that while under the drug's influence, the boy came out with allegations.
Ian Halperin describes Chandler's response to the KCBS reporter a little differently in his book, Unmasked: the Final Years of Michael Jackson. According to Halperin, Chandler neither confirmed nor denied the use of sodium Amytal, but did say that Jordan made the allegations while under the influence of "a drug," without specifying which one.
While Fischer and Halperin disagree about whether Chandler confirmed the use of sodium Amytal specifically, they both state that he told the KCBS-TV reporter Jordan made the allegations while under sedation. That's crucially important. And actually, I find it significant that Halperin's version differs slightly from Fischer's. It suggests that he's providing an independent description of the KCBS broadcast, rather than simply repeating her article.
It's also interesting that while Fischer and Halperin both report on what the father said, neither gives an exact quote. That is unusual. I became curious about this in 2011 while working on the "Rereading Michael Jackson" article, in part because I wanted to quote Chandler's exact words if I could. So I started digging around, looking for actual video footage of the KCBS broadcast, but I couldn't find any video clips on YouTube or other places like that, or even a transcript or other print quotations anywhere on the web. (I did stumble across some interesting information, however, that I haven't been able to confirm: apparently the KCBS reporter was Harvey Levin, who later went on to start a celebrity news outlet called TMZ.)
Importantly, while searching for information about the KCBS report, I found a note about it on an advocacy site for victims of sexual abuse – a site that treated Michael Jackson with utter contempt. They were addressing the Chandler case and said that, if Evan Chandler really did tell KCBS that Jordan made the allegations while under sedation, then those allegations are obviously questionable. However, they went on to say they didn't believe Chandler had said that, and they didn't believe the KCBS news segment even existed.
That made a big impression on me and started me thinking that this was a lot more important than simply getting a quote. If even an advocacy group with strong biases against Michael Jackson would consider the KCBS report as important evidence that the allegations are suspect, then I really needed to find it.
And actually, Diane Dimond says something similar in her book, Be Careful Who You Love:
Questions about whether or not Dr. Chandler "planted" the molestation in Jordie's subconscious while the boy was under the influence of the anesthesia first surfaced in a story that ran in GQ magazine in October 1995 written by Mary Fischer. …
Had Fischer's claims been correct, Jordie's allegations would have to be viewed as unreliable, if not highly questionable.
And I think Dimond's right. If it can be shown that Jordan agreed to the allegations while under sedation, they "would have to be viewed as unreliable, if not highly questionable." It therefore seemed very important to try to track down that video footage.
I began with the KCBS website and found a phone number for obtaining old news segments. However, when I called I was connected to a contractor who provides a video archive service to KCBS, and he said the footage they have doesn't go back nearly that far.
Then I called the KCBS front desk and talked to the receptionist, who passed me on to someone who said I needed to talk to someone else. I got the runaround for quite a while and was disconnected twice, as well as being sent to a couple of full voicemail boxes where I couldn't leave a message, so had to hang up and start all over. It was very discouraging but I was persistent, and by the end the receptionist was pretty tired of me. In fact, at one point she told me that maybe the people at KCBS just didn't want to talk to me, which was probably true …
I finally ended up talking with Allan, the KCBS video librarian. (He wouldn't tell me his last name, and neither would the receptionist when I asked her later, but he did spell his first name for me.) He was the person I needed to talk to, but we didn't get off to a very good start. He began by giving me a long lecture about how expensive it is to preserve old footage and how TV stations simply don't have the resources to store everything, and that I was being very naive to expect they'd still have something from 1994.
However, he finally agreed to go look … and was very surprised to find that, yes, they do have a two-minute video segment dated May 3, 1994, with a note that it's about Michael Jackson and drugs (a rather misleading label). Wow! It seems we'd found it! I was pretty excited about that, but then he told me he couldn't release a copy without authorization from the assistant news director, a Mr. Paul Button. He gave me Mr. Button's email address and I sent him a couple of emails, but never heard back from him.
A few weeks later I was talking with a friend and fellow Michael Jackson scholar who teaches at a university in Los Angeles, and told her what was going on. She was intrigued and became involved also. She talked to Allan and he told her the segment was on Beta, and the tape was still sitting right there on his desk. (To be honest, that kind of alarmed me. I had a mental image of Allan accidentally spilling coffee all over it. It would be terrible if, after all those years of sitting lost and forgotten in the archives, it was finally discovered only to be damaged or destroyed.) He directed her to Mr. Button also, so she called him and left a message, but he never called her back. She also tried visiting the KCBS offices in person, but was unable to arrange a meeting.
So then my friend, who is much more media savvy than I am, did a little research and found out about Thought Equity Motion, an independent contractor who handles licensing agreements for CBS. She put me in touch with them, saying they'd told her that "If they have it offline they can send a screener of it for $25.00. If they have it online then they will email a low-resolution copy of it." That was such exciting news! We really thought that, one way or the other, we were about to get a copy of it.
But then it turned out that CBS, meaning the parent company, didn't have the rights to it. KCBS-TV is a CBS affiliate but they are also an independent entity, and they retain the rights to any segments that aren't picked up for national broadcast. This segment wasn't carried nationally, so CBS doesn't own the rights to it. KCBS does. That means we were back to dealing with Allan and the elusive Mr. Button. Darn.
Things seemed to be at an impasse, but then I realized that Mary Fischer or Ian Halperin must have seen it so they might have a copy. I emailed Mary Fischer, and she sent back a brief note saying, "I have seen the footage but do not have a copy." I then emailed Ian Halperin but didn't get a response.
Since then I've tried various other ways of either getting a copy of the segment or having it rebroadcast. For example, I've contacted other news outlets and encouraged them to investigate the story, but that hasn't worked either.
So now we're turning to you.
We are asking you to contact KCBS-TV, and politely and respectfully inform them that they have an important news story sitting in their own archives. Maybe together we can encourage KCBS-TV to rebroadcast the Chandler footage that has been buried for so long.
To reach them, you can call their news hotline at 818-655-2290, or you can go here and submit your request online, or you can write them a letter at this address:
CBS Studio City Broadcast Center
4200 Radford Avenue
Studio City, CA 91604
If you would like to try contacting specific individuals at KCBS, you can call the station's news department at 818-655-2299. Here's a link that provides contact information for the station, and I notice that Mr. Button is still listed as the Assistant News Director – however, trying to talk with him directly seems to have a low probability of success.
If you do contact the station, here are some talking points you may want to consider:
- We know the tape is there. My friend and I both talked to their video librarian, and he confirmed it was in their archives – at least, it was in late 2011.
- This story is local and timely, especially in light of the Wade Robson and James Safechuck case, which is now before a Los Angeles judge. Here's an article from MyNewsLA with the latest information.
- This story is important. If it's true that Jordan Chandler agreed to the allegations while under sedation, it casts significant doubt on those allegations, especially given the way the father conducted the questioning.
This last point is especially significant. According to Evan Chandler's own written chronology of events, which he gave to police, he questioned his son in a very coercive and manipulative way.
First, he asked leading questions and made sexually explicit comments that could have planted false images in the boy's mind, especially if he were still under sedation. For example, he says he asked Jordan, "Did Michael Jackson ever touch your penis?" and told him, "I know about the kissing and the jerking off and the blow jobs." These are precisely the acts Jordan will tell the psychiatrist when he goes to see him a month later.
Chandler also admits he lied to his son, saying he "falsely told" Jordan that "I had bugged his bedroom and I knew everything anyway." This is not true. He had not wiretapped his son's bedroom, and he was only imagining what might have happened if Michael Jackson were a child molester – imaginings that he explicitly and vividly shared with his son that day in his dental office.
And finally, he threatened to destroy Michael Jackson – "to take him (Jackson) down" – if Jordan didn't agree with him that the accusations were true. This is very disturbing, and completely inappropriate when trying to uncover the truth about suspected abuse, especially when talking with a child.
We understand that some of you may feel uncomfortable about contacting a television station, and we don't want to put anyone in an awkward situation. To be honest, I'm pretty uneasy about this myself since I haven't seen the footage – I've only read the descriptions of it by Mary Fischer and Ian Halperin. So if this is something you do not wish to do, we perfectly understand. However, if you do feel comfortable calling KCBS-TV, or sending them a letter, or submitting a written message to their online hotline, we believe this could truly make a difference.
Whatever you decide, we thank you sincerely for joining us here at Dancing with the Elephant, and we wish you a very happy 2015!
Announcement: Monsters, Witches, and Michael Jackson's Ghosts
An article by Willa was published by Popular Musicology Online just this morning. You can read the full article here, and you can read a brief overview of the article and share comments here.
Note: Michael Jackson's Ghosts was never officially released outside of Asia so is not widely available. If you don't have a copy, here's a link to a high-definition version available on YouTube:
Also, while much of the information in the "Monsters" section of this article is already very familiar to fans, this is the first time a balanced review of the evidence has appeared in an academic journal, and it has rarely been reported in the mainstream media. We think it's very important that this information be made available to the general public as well as Michael Jackson's supporters, so if you have ideas about ways to share this article with readers who may or may not be fans, please feel free to do so.
Here We Go a-Michaeling
Willa: Happy holidays, everyone! For our first Christmas here at Dancing with the Elephant, Joie and I wanted to do something special so we wrote a post about Michael Jackson and his ideas about childhood and creativity. Then the following year, we did a Christmas post about his song, "Childhood," and the beautiful video he made for it.
We'd like to continue that tradition this year by talking with Veronica Bassil about her warm and insightful book, That Wonder in My Youth: Michael Jackson and Childhood. Veronica has a Ph.D. in English and American literature, and this is actually her third book about Michael Jackson. She's also the author of Michael Jackson's Love for Planet Earth and Thinking Twice about Billie Jean.
Thank you so much for joining us again, Veronica!
Joie: Welcome, Veronica. You've been busy!
Veronica: Yes, you're right, Joie – I have. I feel as if I have been Michaeling pretty much nonstop since he left us in 2009. And it's been great to share that journey with you both and your wonderful blog participants. I've learned so much from these discussions. I feel as if we have all been together on this "great adventure," exploring the various dimensions of MJ's art and in the process building a better, fuller, and more accurate understanding of who he was and what he was communicating.
So I am very happy to join you now to discuss That Wonder in My Youth, which incidentally I noticed was the title for one of your previous posts. I think it's such a haunting and powerful line from MJ's "Childhood" – "I'm searching for that wonder in my youth."
Joie: It is an interesting line, isn't it? So I've been wondering, what was it that made you want to write about this aspect of Michael's life? Can you tell us a little about what drew you to focus on his childhood?
Veronica: Sure, Joie, I'd be glad to. I considered that removing the encrustations of media disinformation that had constructed a false picture of who MJ was and what his art was about was critical to revealing his true stature as an artist and a person.
For example, in terms of his music, he was to a large extent portrayed as just a lightweight pop star, and then later as a has-been lightweight pop star, when he is in reality a powerful musical innovator, poet, and philosopher (by this I mean a visionary thinker on the deepest level). He is a modern-day Socrates who questioned and challenged the status quo, the beliefs of "Normal Valley." His challenges provoked discomfort, and like Socrates, he became a thorn in the side of those who wanted to maintain existing social norms and beliefs. Interestingly, Socrates was also accused of corrupting the young and put on trial. Found guilty, he was sentenced to death as an old man in his 80s.
MJ's work to focus our attention on the plight of children worldwide was distorted or disregarded. Instead of investigating our real-world commitment to children, many found it easier to attack the messenger and criticize his very being.
In an effort to correct this false media persona, my first book discussed MJ's passionate environmentalism, which I saw (as did others, Joe Vogel especially) as central to his work. Then the allegations of course were and sadly still are a huge stumbling block that keeps people from appreciating him and his art. So that was my second book, using the accusations in "Billie Jean" as an access point. In this recent book, I tackled the third major stumbling block when it comes to MJ – namely, his views on children and childhood, including his own experiences as a child.
Willa: Oh, that's interesting, Veronica. I've read all three of your books and enjoyed them individually, but hadn't put that together – that each one is addressing a "major stumbling block" to understanding and appreciating Michael Jackson and his work.
Veronica: Thanks so much, Willa, for reading my work! Yes, the three books tie together. MJ has been so profoundly misunderstood and misinterpreted, and his effort to focus the world's attention on the need to care about children and learn from them, seeing them as teachers and guides, is at the top of the list. His philosophy grew out of his own childhood experiences, which he saw as deprived of the normal pleasures and carefree days of childhood, and this gave him insight into the sufferings and neglect of children worldwide.
By the way, I have been reading the book Michael Jackson, Inc. by Forbes writer Zack O'Malley Greenburg, and he says that in 1966 (when MJ was 7 or 8), he was doing 5 sets a night, 6 nights a week, on top of going to school and rehearsing! That is so amazing.
Willa: Really? I had no idea. I mean, I knew he and his brothers worked very hard to succeed – were forced to work hard to succeed – but that's really troubling that a second grader would be working that much. I've read Greenburg's book also, but somehow that went right past me – or maybe I just didn't stop to think about what it meant. He really didn't have time to experience childhood in a normal sense, did he?
Veronica: No, he didn't, and I think even we, his fans, don't fully grasp what that kind of childhood work was like and how it affected him.
Willa: Yes, and I'm afraid I'm one of those people. I try to understand, but just when I think I'm starting to get a good picture of what his life was like as a child star, growing up with that extreme level of fame and hard work and harsh discipline from his father, I hear something like that and realize, no, I still don't get it. I still have no concept of what it was like for him.…
Veronica: MJ talked about it quite a lot – for example, in his autobiography Moonwalk – and he makes this point again in "Childhood" when he sings about "the painful youth I've had." But I think it's easy to underplay or discount it, perhaps because his experience is incomprehensible in that it is so far from our own.
In terms of MJ's awareness of the plight of children in general, I've been reading Losing Our Way, an important book recently published by former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, and he talks about how the USA was for a time number 1 in child poverty of all industrialized countries. It is now number 2 after Romania.
Willa: That's shocking. I didn't know that.
Veronica: Yes, it is scandalously shocking. One in 5 children (23 percent) in our nation live in poverty today.
Joie: I'm actually aware of that statistic, and it is shocking.
Veronica: Yes, Joie, I agree. Herbert also writes that since the recession of 2008, billions upon billions of dollars have been cut from our public school budgets. This means eliminating or curtailing supposedly "nonessential" programs that are actually vital, such as music, art, band, foreign languages, sports, and early childhood education programs. This lack of care and nurture of children is what MJ wanted to draw our attention to on a worldwide scale, as well as his focus on the enormous value of children, how they can show us a new way. As he says so wonderfully in his Grammy Legend Award speech of 1993:
The magic, the wonder, the mystery, and the innocence of a child's heart are the seeds of creativity that will heal the world. I really believe that. What we need to learn from children isn't childish. Being with them connects us to the deeper wisdom of life, which is ever present and only asks to be lived. They know the way to solutions that lie waiting to be recognized within our own hearts.
I absolutely love this speech, and his reference to "a child's heart" is so important. Incidentally, the Immortal version of "Childhood" includes 2 passages. Here's a link to the full speech:
Willa: I agree – what he is saying in this speech is crucially important, and I think this is one way critics really misunderstood what he was saying. When he talked about wanting to retain the childlike part of himself, critics tended to interpret that as meaning he was reluctant to grow up and be a responsible adult. But that wasn't what he was saying at all. He felt very responsible about trying to help solve the many problems that face our world.
And this is the critically important part: he felt that connecting with the creativity and "deeper wisdom" of childhood would help us solve those problems. Susan Fast talks about this in her Dangerous book:
In the collection of short films that accompanies Dangerous, Jackson says in a preamble to "Heal the World": "Being with [children] connects us to the deep wisdom of life, the simple goodness shines straight from their hearts."
Many conventional ideas about childhood link it to the future through the belief that children enter the world as empty vessels, that there is, therefore, an opportunity – or obligation – to educate them, "fill" them, shape them, in order that they will hopefully produce a "better" future … that they will fulfill the dreams of their parents, and that they will carry on family lines.
But Jackson rarely talks or sings about children in this conventional way … For him, there was a utopian impulse in children not because they represent the future, the hopes and dreams of adults, the continuation of a "normal" progression of time and family, but because their honesty, simplicity and innocence center adults, bring us back to feeling, to good affect; "now, when the world is so confused and its problems so complicated," he says in the same preamble, "we need our children more than ever."
So as Susan emphasizes, Michael Jackson isn't saying that we can create a better future by molding children into better people – into the people we want them to be. Just the opposite. He's saying that when we spend time with children, it "connects us to the deep wisdom of life" and makes us better people.
We really see this in the Heal the World video, where we see children playing in war-torn areas around the world as soldiers watch, and then the soldiers throw down their rifles. And we see it more subtly in the Jam video, where he juxtaposes images of children playing, dancing, making music against images of urban poverty. Importantly, he explicitly talks about solving the world's problems in the lyrics of "Jam," like in these opening lines:
Nation to nation
All the world must come together
Face the problems that we see
Then maybe somehow we can work it out
And in the chorus he goes on to say that the way to solve these problems is to "jam" – meaning to play like children, to connect creatively with one another and find innovative solutions. So he seemed to see this childlike wonder and playfulness as a powerful force for social change, and thought it was very important for adults to reconnect to the childlike parts of themselves to tap into this creative force. As he says in the passage Susan quoted, "now, when the world is so confused and its problems so complicated, we need our children more than ever."
Veronica: Amen to that, Willa! I agree with what you just said so well and with what Susan Fast wrote. The word "center" here is very important: "their honesty, simplicity and innocence center adults, bring us back to feeling." This is one place where we can see MJ as a philosopher. When he talks about the "playfulness of life" and the "deeper wisdom of life" in the Grammy speech, what is he really telling us? We need to look closely at this speech, which is a condensed form of insights that are reflected elsewhere – for example, in the Heal the World introduction, in Dancing the Dream, and maybe throughout his entire work.
Here I'd like to quote from a wonderful book, The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer. In the final chapters, he talks about the Tao of Lao-tzu and the Tao te Ching. The Tao (pronounced "dow") is translated as "the Way," a way of balance, or being at the center of extremes, also called The Middle Way. Singer uses the example of a pendulum that will, when pushed, swing one way to one extreme and then back again to the other extreme to the same degree. Eventually it will come to center, to a balance point, where it rests. Singer also uses the analogy of sailing, where the balance point of the energies is more complicated because it involves the wind, the sail, the rudder, and the tautness with which sailor holds the ropes.
He suggests that our entire planet lives within a balance of energies known as "The Way" and that if we humans can stop going from one extreme to the other and find the center, we can reach our full potential.
First you have to realize that since everything has its yin and yang, everything has its own balance point. It is the harmony of all these balance points, woven together, that forms the Tao. This overall balance maintains its equilibrium as it moves through time and space. Its power is phenomenal.
If you want to imagine the power of the Tao, examine how much energy is wasted swinging sideways. Suppose you want to go from point A to point B, but instead of walking there directly, you move from side to side like a sine wave. That would take you a long time, and you would waste a lot of energy…. When you spend your energy trying to maintain the extremes, nothing goes forward. You get stuck in a rut. The more extreme you are, the less forward movement there is…. In the Tao of sailing, the balance point is not static; it's a dynamic equilibrium. You move from balance point to balance point, from center to center. You can't have any concepts or preferences; you have to let the forces move you.
In the Way, nothing is personal. You are merely an instrument in the hands of the forces, participating in the harmony of balance. You must reach the point where your whole interest lies in the balance and not in any personal preference for how things should be.
How does this relate to MJ and his feelings about children? Children, MJ believed, were fully present to life – they were in effect living the Tao, the Way. He expressed some of these ideas regarding what might be called philosophical Taoism before, for instance, in 1983:
In this interview at Hayvenhurst, Michael describes his creative inspirations and how he "plays off of life":
You can feel the energy, everything around you. You can feel it. The energy from the moon, or the plants, everything around you. It's wonderful.
I mean, nature, animals, and all those things, are very inspirational to my work. I play off of those things, and children, and it stimulates ideas, creates all kind of things. I just can't tell you. I think the majority of my success is from these sources. Some people say, "Well, go into detail." But it's hard. You really can't. It's just the whole world. You just play off of life.
I think it's the same for what inspires painters, sculptures, and people of the arts. It's the whole world, though. It's magic.
Willa: That's a wonderful description of his creative process! And it really does go hand in hand with Singer's description of "dynamic equilibrium," doesn't it? – where, he encourages us to be in tune with "the energy, everything around you," as Michael Jackson describes it.
Veronica: Singer writes about moving in sync with the forces of the Way. He compares the Tao to the eye of a hurricane, a balance point of forces that swirl around it. The forces of movement outside and the balance inside are part of this centering. MJ spoke about the need to "keep moving" – to keep growing, evolving, and creating – and he repeatedly advised musicians to let the music create itself. He said if I try and write a hit song, nothing will happen – I have to let it "drop into my lap."
When I create my music, I feel like an instrument of nature. I wonder what delight nature must feel when we open our hearts and express our God-given talents. The sound of approval rose across the universe and the whole world abounds in magic. Wonder fills our hearts for what we have glimpsed for an instant: the playfulness of life….
MJ calls himself "an instrument of nature" – echoing the idea he expressed before about "playing off of life." In both passages, he appears to be speaking about the Way, the balance, the harmony of life that children are more in tune with, when he speaks about "the deeper wisdom of life" and the "playfulness of life."
Here we come back to that key word "wonder," one that appears so significantly in the line in "Childhood." Wonder, mystery, magic, creativity, a child's heart, nature – all these seem connected to something MJ called "the playfulness of life" and that he saw as a gift that children had to offer our "wounded world."
Willa: Yes, that phrase "the playfulness of life" is interesting, isn't it? And the fact that he attaches such importance to it – to this spirit of play. We don't usually think of play as important, but repeatedly we see him linking this spirit of playfulness with creativity and a sense of personal well-being – and with global well-being as well.
Veronica: The importance of play in our lives, from children to adults, is undervalued. In my research I came across the work of Dr. Stuart Brown, co-founder of the National Institute for Play, who affirms that play is as biologically essential as sleep or dreams, and equally necessary for adults and children. Play is a universal language of higher intelligence species and is important for neurological and social development. Play promotes memory, stress management, and resiliency, and is one of the Rights of the Child adopted by the U.N.
In the USA, maybe because of the strong influence of the Puritan work ethic, we are just way too serious! We need to play more, and MJ promoted this in his own life – for example, in the creation of Neverland and in the way he brought children and children's issues to the forefront, perhaps more than any other performer has ever done. Dr. Brown also says that we must incorporate play into our lives fully, and realize that the opposite of play is not work but depression.
Willa: Wow, that's really interesting. I never looked at it that way. Maybe instead of prescribing anti-depressants, doctors should encourage their patients to play more!
Veronica: Sounds good to me! In so many ways, our lives are impoverished by a lack of play.
But seeing the problem, as MJ sings in the lines from "Jam" you quoted, Willa, is what we tend to avoid, because it's sometimes painful to see "what's going on" (to quote Marvin Gaye), and the corporate mass media is an all-too-willing vehicle to distract us (via consumerism, celebrity gossip, scandals, and so on). MJ, however, was not afraid to "speak truth to power." In the Grammy speech he goes on to connect worldwide problems, such as wars, terrorism, and incarceration, with the fact that "children have had their childhood stolen from them."
Willa: Yes, and this is another critically important point, I think. Michael Jackson not only tells us that reconnecting with childhood can help solve the world's problems but, on the flip side, that many of those problems directly result from a loss of childhood, as you say.
Veronica: Yes, absolutely. MJ had made the same point earlier in "On Children of the World" from Dancing the Dream:
We have to heal our wounded world. The chaos, despair, and senseless destruction we see today are a result of the alienation that people feel from each other and their environment. Often this alienation has its roots in an emotionally deprived childhood. Children have had their childhood stolen from them. A child's mind needs the nourishment of mystery, magic, wonder, and excitement. I want my work to help people rediscover the child that's hiding in them.
Willa: I'm so glad you shared this quote, Veronica, because this is the crux of the issue, isn't it? We live in a "wounded world" because "of the alienation people feel from each other and their environment." I think that's exactly it.
And as he says, "Often this alienation has its roots in an emotionally deprived childhood." Or this alienation can appear in adults who may have had happy childhoods but have lost the "deeper knowledge" they had as children. In fact, often we find ourselves encouraged to cast aside that "deeper knowledge" as childish, and focus on adult concerns like earning money, building a career, being respectable.
Veronica: This is so true, Willa. In terms of Singer's analysis, we go to an extreme and lose the balance point. This "senseless destruction" and alienation cause great pain. Too many of us have some form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from not being nurtured or encouraged enough as children or from feeling pressured by social norms to abandon our childlike values, like spontaneity, creativity, magic, open-heartedness, as we grow up. Michael wanted to recast our social and personal tendency to disregard children into a deep respect and appreciation for what they have to offer.
It's interesting that an artist so extraordinarily gifted himself would be disregarded in the same way children are often disregarded. There is an irony in that, while asking us to see children and their gifts more clearly, he himself was misperceived precisely for his very playfulness in his personal life and in his art.
Willa: I agree.
Veronica: To get back to the song "Childhood," it is so poignant to me when MJ sings,
No one understands me
They view it as such strange eccentricities…
'Cause I keep kidding around
Like a child, but pardon me …
He was actually modelling for us the values he wanted to see. It's interesting too that in "Childhood," he gets really animated and excited when singing about play:
Have you seen my childhood?
I'm searching for that wonder in my youth
Like pirates in adventurous dreams,
Of conquest and kings on the throne …
Have you seen my childhood?
I'm searching for that wonder in my youth
Like fantastical stories to share
The dreams I would dare, watch me fly …
The fact that we, as adults, often no longer experience play, adventurous dreams, and wonder was something MJ spoke about a lot, particularly in conversations with Schmuley Boteach. (He refers to a book on childlike values that he was working on with Boteach in his Oxford Union Speech of 2001. Boteach published these conversations in Honoring Child Spirit, a book I might not have read but someone I respect recommended it, so I took a look and discovered a lot of valuable discussion there.)
MJ reveals to Boteach how much he thinks adults have shut down and lost the natural playfulness and creativity that they once had as children. He even persuaded Boteach to climb a tree with him and sit in its branches to recapture those lost feelings!
MJ: The world is gift-wrapped for them [children] and everything is a new experience and they know it is all out there waiting for them and all these different categories of fun, a wonderful fantastical mission to take. Why do they [adults] lose it? Why does it go away? You felt that way, you remember feeling that way. Can you go back to that place?
SB: The only time I felt like that again is when I was with you watching Toy Story on Thanksgiving, and at Neverland, when we went to the tree that morning. We climbed up and spent a full hour there, just hanging out. And I have to say, it was pretty liberating. Two grown men, hanging out in a tree house. It was memorable.
MJ: Isn't that wonderful? Everybody should have that experience and never feel that I am too old to climb a tree.
Willa: And he invited Martin Bashir to have that same experience. Near the beginning of Living with Michael Jackson, he climbs his "Giving Tree" and encourages Bashir to climb with him. Here's a clip:
It's interesting that in talking to Bashir, he explicitly links the childlike joy of climbing the tree with his creativity. As he tells Bashir, "I've written so many of my songs in this tree. I wrote 'Heal the World' in this tree, 'Will You Be There,' 'Black or White,' 'Childhood.'"
As he climbs he calls down to Bashir, "Aren't you coming?" but Bashir says, "No way." He's intrigued, though, and does end up climbing a short way, but then stops – either because he's worried about falling, or worried he'll look ridiculous on camera. Later, when they're both back on the ground, Bashir quizzes him about it in a somewhat mocking way, and then in voiceover asks, "So how had this singing and dancing genius arrived in this surreal place that is his life today?"
So Bashir doesn't understand what Michael Jackson is saying – and more importantly, he doesn't seem to want to understand. He wants to look down at him from the privileged position of a respectable adult and criticize him.
Veronica: Thanks for this comparison, Willa. What a contrast between MJ and Bashir here! Bashir had closed down to childlike value to a huge degree and had become a stultifying, judgmental adult. That was what was truly "surreal." MJ looks so peaceful and happy sitting up high in his "Giving Tree."
Willa: Though he also seems a little self-conscious to me, like he knows Bashir is judging him.
Joie: You know the truly interesting part in all of this? At least, to me anyway … is the fact that he understood that no one was taking him seriously, and that no one was going to take him seriously in this endeavor. He even addressed it in "Childhood" when he sang the simple words,
Before you judge me
Try hard to love me
He knew that people were going to listen to that song and roll their eyes in a sort of, "Oh, he's at it again" attitude.
Veronica: Yes, that's a good point – he sure did perceive and anticipate that judgmental criticism. But the next line of the song is an instruction (these lines are in the imperative, or command, form) to "Look within your heart, then ask / Have you seen my childhood?" I think MJ took a heart-centered approach and tried to speak to people on that level and ask them to respond on that level. And look at the fans and how much they responded to that. When he says in This Is It, "Love is important," he knew that love was the way to reach people on the deepest levels.
Here is another snippet from Honoring Child Spirit:
SB: You are very successful, so you can afford to forgive people and remain childlike. "But me?" someone can say, "I live in a trailer park. How can I forgive people? Life is bitter for me. G-d has let me down. I have no time for my children. I am a single mother with two jobs to support my kids." What would you say to someone who says, "Come on, Michael. This is not realistic. You want to be like Peter Pan? You want to take me to this fantasy land called Neverland. Get real. I can't go to fantasy land. I have children to support. My husband beats me." What would you say to someone like that?
MJ: I would think they should try to find the truth about the power of love, and the way that I think it should be done, without sounding selfish, the way I have discovered what real bliss is. I think if they even gave it a chance they would feel it.
Willa: That is so interesting! I haven't read this book but I looked up this passage in Google Books, and here he's specifically talking about "a childlike way of being," right? So he seems to be saying that maintaining those childlike qualities within ourselves not only can help solve problems on a global scale, but on a personal level as well. As he tells Rabbi Boteach, it can lead to "real bliss."
Veronica: Yes, it's in the chapter called "Love and Guidance," where MJ and Boteach discuss loving children and guiding them, and learning from them too. MJ says, "They are my teachers. I watch them and I learn. It's important for us to try and be like them and imitate them. They are golden." In another place he says, "They are the sunshine of the world."
Joie: Here's a question that I'm fond of asking during these types of discussions. Do you think, ladies, that the public at large will ever "get it"? Will they ever open themselves up and receive the message that he tried so hard to impart? Because I have to be honest and say that, sadly, I don't think they will. I always wonder if the tide will ever turn where Michael is concerned. If he will ever be seen as the truly remarkable artist, thinker, and visionary that he was, or if his image and his legacy are tarnished forever. And I'm actually an optimist in my everyday life, but about this, I'm just not sure anymore.
Veronica: Well, I think the general public, and by that I mean people who are not MJ fans and advocates, are lacking a true picture of who MJ was. They are lacking information. They have been fed lies from the tabloids for decades. Remember how MJ called it junk food? They have been eating all that junk food and don't have the real nourishment that would come from eating healthy food – meaning true information.
Recently, I gave a talk at a gallery about my book. I was a bit worried that some media-indoctrinated people would show up and harass me, but luckily, it was my friends who came. But few of my friends have read my books, and they don't know much about MJ either. During the talk, one person commented that Michael had "mutilated" his face. I recognized that this came from the relentless tabloid-type stories (for instance, see Susan Woodward's reference to the Daily Mirror article that MJ sued them over), but I stayed calm and just said, "Well, plenty of women love 'mature Mike' and if you go on YouTube you can find videos about that." I also referred to This Is It, which some people had seen. And I kept going. This same person just sent me an email, which I quote, unedited:
Thanks for sending this beautiful video [a link to the Childhood video]. Veronica, I have a new perception of who Michael was and an understanding of what happened to him that, perhaps, explains his actions. His is a very sad story …
Thanks again. Your presentation was far more enjoyable than what I expected. At first I wanted to come because I was interested but, primarily, because I wanted to be there for you. After hearing your talk, I was very glad I attended because I learned so much!
So many misperceptions about MJ can't be changed in a short talk, but we can open up fissures in the biases that people have absorbed from the media. As MJ advocates spread their knowledge outside the fan community more and more, it slowly ripples out.
I remember when, in the early 90's, Bill Moyers asked Oren Lyons, the Onondaga Faith-Keeper of the Iroquois nation, if the Native American tradition was basically finished in the modern world, and Oren replied (I am paraphrasing here), "As long as there is one person to talk and one person to listen, the stories will continue." That is so hopeful – and true.
In my opinion, it is on this fundamental level of person to person, heart to heart, where deep change occurs. Yes, there is a lot of doubt and skepticism out there, but with true information, people can learn. And the other hopeful thing is of course MJ's music: "If you want to know me, listen to my music. The love is stored there and will not die."
Willa: That's beautiful! I hadn't heard that before: "The love is stored there and will not die." So he must have believed that his image would be redeemed someday, and that his ideas might spark significant change in the future.
Veronica: In my talk, I emphasized the reasonableness of MJ's thinking – namely, that if we want a better world, we have to take better care of our children. We have to love and value them, nurture them, and learn from them. We have to honor them and listen to them. I read some passages from the beautiful conclusion to MJ's Oxford Union speech – here is a link to that speech:
Someone commented afterwards how impressed she was with his "intelligence and articulateness." Well, this is no surprise to us, but it is for people who have been told lies for decades. I remember being shocked after MJ's passing when Larry King asked someone, "Was Michael Jackson intelligent?" I mean, it blew my mind that he even had to ask that question! We have our work cut out for us, but I think people are becoming more receptive to MJ's messages, particularly on subjects like children and the environment. He was so advanced in his thinking, light-years ahead, and we are starting to catch up at last.
Willa: Yes, I think so too, and I strongly believe that someday he will be seen as the most important artist of our time. And that day may not be too far away. I mean, perceptions of him seem to have changed dramatically since he died, and they're continuing to evolve as people like your friends, Veronica, learn more about him. Thank you for sharing that story. We just need to keep "Michaeling," as you say, until everyone "gets it," as you put it, Joie.
Joie: Well, that's all for this post, and we want to thank Veronica for joining us. Willa and I also want to thank you for your continued support over the last three years.
As some of you may remember, when we began this blog it was a weekly feature, and we were so overwhelmed with all the love you guys heaped on us. We were truly surprised at the reception we received, and we quickly came to recognize what an awesome platform we had built for exploring new and thought-provoking ideas about the way Michael Jackson's art is perceived. But after that first year, we also realized that in order to do it justice we couldn't keep up the weekly schedule and still bring you the quality posts we wanted to. So we switched to posting on a bi-weekly schedule, and that worked well for us for a time. However, as the circumstances of our lives change, we need to acknowledge that this blog needs to adapt to fit our changing lives.
So we have decided to take a more laid-back approach and post when the inspiration strikes. We have some fun and interesting topics lined up for the coming year, and we still hope to post fairly frequently – we will just have a less structured posting schedule. We hope you understand, and we look forward to your continued support in the new year. Thanks again!
Willa: Yes, and thank you, Veronica, for joining us for this special holiday post. We really appreciate it, and hope you have a warm and wonderful Christmas today, and a very happy new year.
Veronica: It was my honor and pleasure to be with you, and I look forward to more great discussions ahead. Happy holidays to you!
Michael Jackson's Otherness and Power
Willa: This week I am very happy to be joined by Susan Woodward, a psychoanalytically trained clinical social worker. She's also the author of Otherness and Power: Michael Jackson and His Media Critics, a book that provides important insights into the extremely harsh criticism that came to dominate media coverage of Michael Jackson and his work. Instead of simply ignoring or discounting this criticism, as many of us tend to do, Susan has dived right into the worst of it to try to uncover what motivates it. And what she's found is fascinating!
Susan, thank you so much for joining me to talk about your research and analysis.
Susan: Willa, I am so honored to be invited to talk to you about Michael Jackson. I must note that your book M Poetica was an important inspiration for my book. I really admired the way you waded into the morass of some of the hot-button criticisms – plastic surgery, changing skin color, allegations of child abuse – and calmly, intelligently addressed them. I think that Jackson fans tend to shrink in horror from the most severe critics, and the critics see the fans as fanatics, but you were able to walk the middle ground of being a Jackson defender who was willing to look at the criticisms and deal with them even-handedly and effectively.
Willa: Thank you, Susan. I really appreciate that, and I think your work is so interesting and important. Instead of reacting against that harsh criticism Michael Jackson faced, or simply ignoring it as many of us tend to do, you've really tried to understand it. And one of the things you discovered while researching this is that, ironically, the cultural critics who were the most severe when writing about him also seem to believe that he possessed tremendous power. I was really surprised by that.
Susan: I was quite surprised as well.
Willa: So I'm curious, how did you first notice this? And what drew you to this research to begin with?
Susan: After Michael Jackson died I became interested in reading everything I could find about him. Along the way, I read some pretty hateful stuff, which I found increasingly puzzling, and even shocking, as I learned more about him. I'm a clinical social worker, so I'm always interested in what motivates people, and I wondered where all this vitriol came from. There were the child abuse allegations, but they were highly questionable accusations that were never proven, and there were abundant reasons to conclude that those allegations could not be true. And I eventually found that the allegations seemed to have little to do with the hatred that was leveled at him.
Willa: I agree. For example, Woody Allen has been accused of child sexual abuse also, but there hasn't been the rush to judgment that there was with Michael Jackson, and there hasn't been the extreme hysteria and antipathy that Michael Jackson faced. So there seems to be something more going on there. It's almost like the abuse allegations gave people an excuse for expressing strong negative feelings about him that were already bubbling underground.
Susan: Yes. And at the time of the first allegations, in 1993, since he had already endured nearly a decade of inaccurate, exaggerated tabloid stories painting him as "bizarre," the public was primed to believe that his "bizarreness" could extend to child abuse.
Willa: That's a really good point, Susan. As Michael Jackson himself said in a speech when receiving a Grammy Legend Award, "I wasn't aware that the world thought I was so weird and bizarre." That was on February 24, 1993, a couple months before he met Evan Chandler. Then the allegations hit the newspapers in August, so it appears the press and the public were indeed "primed," as you say, to see him as "weird and bizarre" – and perhaps guilty as well because of that.
Susan: Oh, yes. I think that the negative press he got had terrible consequences for him. I wanted to understand more about where that hostility came from.
Susan Fast, in her essay "Difference that Exceeded Understanding" (one of the best titles ever), pointed out that much of the hostility toward him was due to racism and a deep-seated discomfort with his "difference," meaning the ways in which he was unreadable and unclassifiable. His signifiers for race, gender, age, and sexuality were hard to interpret and confusing to many. I call that difference his "otherness." Although I don't share in that discomfort with his otherness, at least I could understand that it might motivate some to criticize him. But I just had this nagging feeling that there was something else in the mix that I couldn't identify.
So I kept reading. As I was reading a particularly hateful, long chapter of The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson, one of the three works I analyze in my book, I began to notice that the author, amidst the vitriol, kept referring to Michael Jackson as a king or divine being and using other highly elevated descriptions. Often these terms were used sarcastically, but among the 23 authors included in the book, they all used that sort of language in describing him, along with a roughly equal number of disparaging and hateful terms. When I went back to look at the rest of Resistible Demise and then the other two works that I include in my book, I saw that there was an assumption that he was an extraordinarily powerful person.
And I mean a power that is quite different from the power that any famous, wealthy person would be perceived as having, and unprecedented for a musician. The critics I looked at for my book see him as a royal person or as having almost supernatural power. I cannot think of another figure in popular culture who was seen this way. But at the same time these critics just tear him apart for having those very qualities.
The three works I chose to analyze are Dave Marsh's 1985 book Trapped: Michael Jackson and the Crossover Dream, Maureen Orth's 2003 Vanity Fair article "Losing His Grip," and The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson, a collection of 23 essays published about six months after Michael Jackson died. I chose these particular works because they were each overviews of his life and work, rather than addressing just a particular event, and they were all harshly critical, even sometimes quite hateful.
Willa: Yes, though they're very different, as you point out. In your book you show that, while they are all reacting very negatively to his supposed power, they didn't all see his power the same way or react against it for the same reasons. For example, Dave Marsh seemed to think Michael Jackson had the power to heal racial divisions, and was deeply disappointed that he wasn't using that power the way he wanted him to. And I have to say, there's just something too ironic about a white man criticizing a black man for not doing enough to end racism – especially when that man is Michael Jackson, who has done more than anyone in recent memory to end help prejudice of all kinds, including racism.
Susan: Yes, well put! Marsh says that initially he was a Jackson fan who saw him as almost a messiah figure, someone who could lead America, and maybe even the world, into a new era free of racial, sexual, and political divisions. Marsh writes quite eloquently about that feeling.
Willa: He really does. And in an odd way he's still a Michael Jackson fan because he sees such tremendous potential in him – not just musically but culturally and spiritually. And he keeps imposing his expectations onto him, the hopes of a white man looking for a powerful black figure to solve the complex problem of racism. For example, here's a quote from near the end of Marsh's book:
Michael Jackson is one thing before he is a singer or a success or a star or anything else. He is a black person in America. As a result, he set some old chains to clanking, stirred some ancient ghosts, incited some venerable dreams.
The ghosts of slavery and racism are four hundred years old but their power is fresh and strong. The dreams he incited are equally old – the fantastic hope that we can somehow be brought together long enough to lay those ghosts to rest.
Throughout his book, Marsh expresses tremendous respect for Michael Jackson's musical talent, but also a longing for him to become a Moses-type cultural figure who will lead America out of racism. And that longing is coupled with a disgust that he isn't Moses – that he isn't fulfilling Marsh's fantasy of who he wants him to be.
Susan: That is a very powerful passage from Trapped. It's such a shame that Marsh couldn't see how Michael Jackson's otherness, which he criticizes so harshly, was the very reason that Marsh and others could project onto him "that fantastic hope."
Willa: That's a very good point, Susan. The real irony is that Michael Jackson actually was combatting the roots of racism – and much more effectively than anything Dave Marsh proposes – but he was doing it at a deep, almost subconscious level that Dave Marsh can't comprehend. But instead of trying to understand what Michael Jackson is doing, Marsh attacks him for what he isn't doing.
Susan: He should have cherished that otherness.
Willa: I agree. And then there's Maureen Orth, who wrote some of the most sordid, inflammatory articles ever published about Michael Jackson. She felt he had tremendous power also, but it was the power to manipulate and even control people. So while Marsh believed he had a positive power that he was squandering, Orth believed he had a negative power that he was using all too well.
Susan: Yes, Maureen Orth really seems to be in the grips of that fear of Jackson's otherness. You get the feeling that she thinks that he was so dangerous that he deserved to be driven to the ends of the earth. While she seems to fear his otherness, she also seems to feel that his otherness was exactly what gave him the power to manipulate others.
Willa: That's really interesting, and something I hadn't noticed before I read your book. She definitely seems to fear his difference, as you say – to the point of hysteria. For example, in her article she claims that Michael Jackson paid a Mali witchdoctor $150,000 to conduct a voodoo ceremony in Switzerland, and that as part of that ceremony he "ritually sacrificed" 42 cows. She actually published that in Vanity Fair. I think it goes without saying that that's ridiculous – it makes no sense, and from what I can tell it has absolutely no basis in fact.
Some friends in Germany contacted the Federal Office of Agriculture (FOAG) in Switzerland for me, and the FOAG told them they have no evidence that anything like that ever happened. The FOAG tracks every cow in Switzerland from the time it's born until it's slaughtered and processed – they can tell you exactly which cow or cows are included in every package of beef sold in Switzerland – and they have no records of missing cows, no evidence of anything like this.
Susan: That is one masterful feat of fact checking!
Willa: It really is. I'm so grateful to them for doing that. But even without the FOAG, this story should strike any reasonable person as extremely improbable. For one thing, it goes against everything Michael Jackson stood for. But also, I just don't think you could hide something like that. Cows are huge – around 1,000 pounds – so 42 cows would weigh about 20 tons. How could you hide 20 tons of dead cows? Where would you put them? How would you move them? You can't just stick them in the trunk of your car. And yet the most obsessively surveilled man in history somehow did this, and no one knows anything about it? That just doesn't seem possible. But Orth blindly accepts this wild story and reports it as true without any fact checking, as far as I can tell.
Susan: I found that little fact checking seemed to have been done for many of the things she said in that article. I have to say that I had a lot of fun doing the fact checking that should have been done before publication – and easily finding several glaring errors. She really seemed to want to believe what suited her about Michael Jackson. Along the same lines, she cites numerous sources for the article, but almost all of them are either anonymous, have some obvious motive to want to say bad things about him, or are people (such as plastic surgeons) who had no connection to him.
Willa: That's true. The question is why she accepted such an outrageous story as true, and I think it's because she was predisposed to believe it – she saw him as so completely Other that she thought he was capable of anything.
Susan: I certainly agree. I think that it's significant that she begins her article with this unbelievable voodoo scenario. This story presents him as racially other, foolishly wasteful of large sums of money, and indifferent to the lives of others, in this case animals. Certainly it primes the gullible reader to believe that he was capable of anything.
Willa: It really does. And then there are the many critics in The Resistible Demise. Unfortunately, I haven't read this collection of essays, but you show that these writers – and again, these are all music and cultural critics who are writing very negatively about him – expressed a belief that he had an almost supernatural power, which is very surprising. That is so unexpected. And while analyzing that you introduced two terms I hadn't heard before: "angelism" and "beastialism." Could you explain these a bit?
Susan: The term "angelism" was coined in the 1940s by Jacques Maritain, a French philosopher. Angelism is the erroneous view of humans as being primarily of a divine nature, purely spirit and intellect. Angelism does not refer specifically to angels, by the way. The opposite, and equally erroneous view, is that of beastialism, that humans are only motivated by bodily, selfish concerns, such as greed, lust, envy. These views are erroneous because, of course, we are all driven by some combination of both angelism and beastialism. Michael Jackson came to be seen by many as an angelistic being, someone who seemed to be free of the normal human categories of race, gender, and age. And he was seen by many as beastial, someone who was physically decaying and morally corrupt.
Willa: These are such useful concepts for understanding reactions to Michael Jackson, I think. I hadn't heard these terms before, but after reading your book and learning about these ideas, I've been seeing this angelism/beastialism split applied to him constantly, both by those praising him and those criticizing him.
Susan: Yes, once you're aware of that angelism/beastialism split, you just see it in so much of how he was viewed.
Willa: You really do. And you know, it's really interesting how these categories tie in with Eleanor Bowman's ideas of transcendence, as she talked about with us in a post a while back. Transcendence views some humans primarily in terms of mind – they aim to "transcend" the limits of their bodies – while other humans are seen primarily as bodies. These two categories seem to map pretty directly onto the divisions you're talking about, with angelism viewing humans primarily in terms of mind – "purely spirit and intellect," as you said – while beastialism views humans primarily in terms of the body, and its needs and desires. Is that right?
Susan: I would agree with you. The transcendent worldview involves seeing spirit as separate from matter, and matter as inferior to spirit. It's a polarized way of perceiving reality, very much like the extreme poles of angelism and beastialism. Michael Jackson's critics used the beastial end of the transcendent spectrum to debase him, to compensate for the angelistic, much more flattering view of him.
Willa: Yes, but while the angelistic view tends to be more positive, it's just as unrealistic and can be just as problematic. Eleanor sees Michael Jackson as challenging that division, and offering a new vision – one of immanence – where mind and body are fully integrated, indivisible. But the critics you researched seem to fall into that transcendental view of separating mind from body, and see him strictly as one or the other. So what are some examples of critics viewing Michael Jackson through the lens of angelism? And of beastialism?
Susan: The Resistible Demise (I still don't know what that title means) is very fertile ground for examples of angelistic and beastialistic views of Michael Jackson. Many of the words used on both sides of that polarity were so extraordinary that I included lists of them in my book. For example, on the beastial side, authors of the essays use words and phrases such as "freakish," "inhuman," "precious weirdo girl-man," "not unlike Darth Vader – a degenerating husk of pale flesh kept barely alive by a complex mediating machinery," "Zombie Jackson," "auto-castrated asexual," "creature of absolute soulessness," "monster," "genuine beast of the apocalypse," and "biotic component going mad." I could go on. There are hundreds of examples in Resistible Demise. Note that many of these terms focus on the body and make an assumption of decay, moral corruption, and insanity – the very opposite of the angelistic view.
Willa: Yes, they do. And in fact, much of the harshest criticism of Michael Jackson focuses on the idea that he somehow corrupted the integrity of the body, like the repeated fallacy that he'd had so much plastic surgery his nose disintegrated. And actually, the allegations of sexual abuse or perversion are another form of bodily corruption, and so are the claims of extensive drug abuse. So this criticism really does focus on a sense of bodily corruption.
Susan: And the angelistic terms used in Resistible Demise are equally extreme and see him as divorced from his body, a creature of pure spirit: "god," "a creature of youth and lightness whose performance defies emotional gravity," "otherworldly," "an angel who fell to earth," "beyond human law," "invading savior," "gravity-defying," "archangel," "unearthly," "uncanny," and "not matter." As with the beastial terms, Resistible Demise contains hundreds of similar examples of angelistic terms, in addition to the many references to him as a kingly figure. And this is in a book that is harshly critical.
Willa: Even his dancing is used as an example, which is so ironic. I mean, dancing is the most embodied of all art forms. Yet because he could do things with his body few others could do, he was portrayed as disembodied: "a creature of youth and lightness whose performance defies emotional gravity," as you quoted before.
Susan: One of the things that comes to my mind when I read these angelistic and beastial terms is, Do the authors really think they were describing an actual human being? You can easily see that both views are erroneous. It's hard to imagine the sort of decrepit being of the beastial view. But it's equally difficult to imagine that Michael Jackson was really a divine being. I know, however, that there are people who are absolutely convinced of one view or the other.
There were many reasons that so many came to see Michael Jackson in an angelistic light. Anyone who reads much about him learns that he wanted to give his audience a "magical" experience, and a person who appears to be magical also appears to be an angelistic being. There are abundant examples of magical transformations in the short films he made of his songs. In Remember the Time he appears out of swirling sand and then disappears into the swirling sand. In Black or White he moves effortlessly between scenes of performing with dancers from different cultures, then transforms from a panther to himself, and ends by becoming the panther again. In Smooth Criminal, Bad, and Beat It, his dancing transforms the mood and actions of the people around him. In Billie Jean he lights up the sidewalk as he steps on it.
Willa: Yes, and there's a suggestion that he transforms into a tiger.
Susan: In the version of You are Not Alone that appears on the DVD collection HIStory on Film, Volume II he appears as an literal angel.
Of course, the degree and range of his talents were positively awe-inspiring and certainly could be seen as beyond the scope of a mere mortal. I have a theory that his dancing did more than his other talents to enhance the view that he was not quite of this earth. I couldn't substantiate that theory, unfortunately, so I didn't include it in my book, but I know that every single time I've watched him perform my immediate reaction is to feel overwhelming delight and almost a sense of shock that someone could move the way he did. You pointed out that dancing is the most embodied of all art forms. That fact that he could take take a physically strenuous act and appear to do it with ease and with such fluid grace, in a way that stands out even when he performed with other highly accomplished dancers, is certainly "magic."
Willa: It certainly seems that way, doesn't it? He told Randy Taraborrelli in the late 1990s that his dancing was hard work, physically:
When I go on stage, people expect a lot. They want the dancing, they want the spins, and all. But I don't know how much longer I can do it. I don't know when it'll just not be possible.
So he was human. But for the audience, watching him dance sure feels magical, doesn't it?
Susan: It certainly does. And the personal qualities that made him seem "other" to so many people were another major reason that he was perceived angelistically. In Resistible Demise, he is called a "postmodern dream of becoming something new," "raceless and all races," and "liberated from mere flesh, destiny, fixed roles of race and sex." The very unreadabilty of his race, gender, age, and sexuality gave him a shape-shifter aura and made him appear to have left mere mortal life and its limits behind.
Willa: Yes, though that's just a projection. What I mean is, the issue wasn't his body so much as what other people projected onto his body, and how they interpreted it. He clearly had a gender and an age, for example. He just didn't fit preconceived ideas about how his age and gender were supposed to define him.
Susan: Yes, that's what's so fascinating about all of this: it's really just projection.
We've been talking about how Michael Jackson was described in words, but there are visual representations of him as an angelistic or beastial being. Some of them are subtle, like this one.
This photograph was taken in approximately 1995, during the era of the HIStory album. His face is very pale, seems almost lit from within, obscuring all facial features except for his eyes, lips and, to a lesser extent, nose. One can't get a sense of facial structure, such as cheekbones, or detail, such as facial hair. And he appears to be almost perfectly androgenous. This photograph is reminiscent of Italian Renaissance portraits, so it's even hard to say what time he belongs to. In short, he appears as a somewhat otherworldly being who is free of the bonds of gender, time, and maybe even human flesh. Willa, in your book M Poetica you used the word "ethereal" to describe these luminous, pale images of him during this period, and I think that's the perfect word.
This next image, however, is a literal, florid example of an angelistic representation.
This is Archangel Michael: And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer by artist David LaChapelle. It's one of three images he made of Michael Jackson in a series he calls American Jesus.
Willa: Wow, there's no denying that's angelistic, is there?
Susan: Yes, it's really over the top. By the way, if you google "Michael Jackson angel" you'll find dozens of images of him as a literal angel. This one, however, is probably the most accomplished. I need not comment on what makes this an angelistic representation.
This image works because the Archangel is Michael Jackson and not someone else. Imagine, say, Mick Jagger or Prince as the Archangel. I don't think that would make the same kind of sense.
Willa: No it wouldn't, and that's a really important point, Susan. I read an article once about political gaffes, and why some get a lot of airplay – like Dan Quayle misspelling "tomatoes," or George Bush not knowing what a grocery store checkout scanner was, or Sarah Palin saying she could see Russia from her house – and others don't. And the answer was that the gaffes that go viral are the ones that tap into preconceived ideas the public already has about that person – that Dan Quayle wasn't educated enough to be vice-president, that George Bush was completely out of touch with the everyday world of middle-class Americans, that Sarah Palin tended to believe what she wanted to believe.
If that's true, it implies there was already a preconceived idea that Michael Jackson was "angelic" in a way that bad boy rockers like Mick Jagger and Prince definitely aren't. But Michael Jackson was also demonized in the press and public imagination. It's so interesting that those two contradictory images existed side by side.
Susan: Well, I don't think that "angelic" is quite the right word. "Angelic" usually means sweet. You could certainly characterize the first image we discussed that way, because in it he appears to have an otherworldly saintliness. But the image of Archangel Michael Jackson isn't sweet. He is a being powerful enough to subdue Satan, and although his pose is still, he is stepping on Satan and a sword is dropped at his feet, suggesting that a violent struggle had taken place just moments before. And the Archangel's power is echoed by the stormy skies, dark ocean and craggy rocks behind him. He uses his power for good, but it is a power to be feared.
Willa: That's interesting, Susan, and reminds me of a YouTube video about Saint Michael the Archangel that Stephenson shared in a comment a few weeks ago:
As you were saying, Saint Michael is an angel but he's not "angelic" in the usual sense. He's powerful. And as you said, "He uses his power for good, but it is a power to be feared."
Susan: And I think that it's the power represented in this Archangel image that was so disturbing to his critics. The more mildly angelistic Michael Jackson that we see in that first image probably would have been kicked around by critics, but not in the way that the more powerful, threateningly angelistic Michael Jackson was.
And in case anyone thinks that this Archangel image is just an anomaly, please take another look at the angelistic terms I quoted above from Resistible Demise. Those terms were just a random sampling, but there are many, many more used – by very harsh critics – throughout that book that could be applied to this image of the Archangel.
Willa: And this brings up another idea from your book that I found really fascinating: the phenomenon of "flipping." Could you explain this a bit?
Susan: The contradictory views of angelism and beastialism can sometimes be two sides of the same coin. In some people, especially those with personality disorders, there is a strong tendency to "split," that is to see everything in terms of extremes of over-idealization and devaluation: all good/all bad, all black/all white. This is said to originate in early childhood as the child begins to make judgments in these simple and extreme terms. Most of us eventually learn to see and appreciate the gray areas, the nuances. By the way, almost anyone who is feeling really angry about something will revert temporarily to that all good/all bad way of seeing.
This splitting, however, is not necessarily stable. The split can "flip," meaning that something that had been seen as all good can suddenly seem all bad. That often happens after a disappointment that may seem of little consequence to others but seems like a major betrayal to someone who sees the world in such polarized terms. The flip can go in the other direction too, from all bad to all good.
While I certainly don't want to draw any conclusions about Dave Marsh's personality, he writes in Trapped about exactly that sort of sudden and extreme reversal of his feeling for Michael Jackson, after experiencing "hairline" (Marsh's term) cracks in his idealization of Jackson.
Willa: That is so interesting, and I think it's a really useful and perceptive way of trying to understand the sudden reversal of feeling experienced by Dave Marsh, and maybe others as well. What I mean is, Marsh's sudden shift also seems emblematic of what happened among critics as a whole. When Michael Jackson was an up-and-coming superstar, the next big thing, it was like he could do no wrong. But once he achieved that goal and was on the top of the peak, perceptions of him changed radically – they "flipped," as you say – and suddenly he couldn't do anything right.
So it's interesting to look at Dave Marsh not only as an individual critic, but also as representing a whole class of critics who "flipped" at about the same time he did, and through him gain some insights into why that may have happened.
Susan: I agree. We have to thank Dave Marsh for being so open about his feelings! I suspect that envy also played a big role in the feelings of Marsh and many of Michael Jackson's critics, although that's difficult to prove.
Willa: I agree. Michael Jackson himself seemed to think that envy – in particular, racial envy – was a primary motivation for many of those criticizing him. Joie and I talked about that in a post last February.
Susan: The splitting and the flipping of the split are projections, of course. All I am really talking about here are others' projections of who Michael Jackson was. Dave Marsh certainly did a tremendous amount of research for Trapped, but his interpretation of what he learned seems to me to be devoid of nuance, as if he had a hidden axe to grind. And none of the other writers I analyzed in my book bothered to do what I would call serious research. They're projecting, assigning to Michael Jackson qualities that correspond to deep fears and hopes in the one doing the projecting. It's fascinating that one person could evoke such polarized, strong responses in others.
Willa: Yes it is. I think that's part of his power as a performer – that people looked at him and saw a reflection of their deepest fears and desires. So it's ironic that you also see it as the source of a lot of his troubles.
Susan: And here is another projection of who Michael Jackson was. As you note in your book, Willa, the press loved to publish photographs of Michael Jackson that made him appear to have had more plastic surgery than he actually had. This photograph, which was clearly doctored, was published in the Daily Mirror in 1992.
The photograph was accompanied by an article that claimed that he had had so much plastic surgery that his face was hideously disfigured. He sued the Mirror for libel, and the suit was settled in 1998 after the Mirror's doctors examined his unmade-up face and then issued an admission that they were wrong and an apology.
Willa: I'm glad you mentioned this incident, Susan, because it's important evidence that the plastic surgery rumors were wildly exaggerated, yet it doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should. Here's what a BBC article said about it:
At the High Court in London, Mirror Group Newspapers and the paper's former editor Richard Stott acknowledged that Michael Jackson was neither hideously disfigured nor scarred.
Mr Jackson's solicitor, Marcus Barclay, … told the court: "Representatives of The Mirror have since met directly with the plaintiff and have seen with their own eyes that the photographs … do not accurately represent the plaintiff's appearance.…"
Susan: While this seems like a happy ending, it did nothing to dispel years of rumors that he was grotesquely disfigured by plastic surgery, rumors that were still being repeated years later by Maureen Orth and many of the authors of Resistible Demise.
Willa: And that's something we see often with him also – that rumors about him receive excessive and unwarranted attention, while follow-up articles debunking those rumors receive almost no attention.
Susan: Yes, it's clearly so difficult to undo the damage of negative stories once they're out in the world.
Dave Marsh sarcastically called Michael Jackson "the most special guy in the world." I think this one statement, sarcasm aside, does a lot to explain the situation Michael Jackson found himself in. Since the 1960s, our society has moved, however imperfectly, towards accepting previously marginalized racial and ethnic groups, and we are now struggling with accepting same-sex marriage and learning to understand transsexual people. But Michael Jackson was in a category all by himself, which is why I think the hatred towards him was so unbridled. In other words, there was no standard of political correctness to reign in critics and make them rethink their reactions. All of the authors I analyzed knew that openly racist opinions were not acceptable, so few of those sorts of opinions are in evidence in their writings. But it was not unacceptable, apparently, to severely criticize Michael Jackson for changing his skin color, acting childlike, and being sexually ambiguous.
This is why I care so much about how Michael Jackson was treated. The negative response he got says so much about the often unquestioning way we react to people who are perceived to be "other" and how quick we are to accept the received wisdom about marginalized people, even if, as in Michael Jackson's case, the marginalized person happens to also be extremely famous.
Willa: I agree completely. My son is in high school, and there's a lot of emphasis right now on preventing bullying, especially of kids who are different. Yet apparently it is still acceptable for tabloids to bully and cyberbully celebrities. I see pictures and headlines in the tabloids sometimes and think, if a high school student posted something like that about a classmate, they'd be suspended – and they should be. That kind of bullying behavior is not ok. Yet it is tolerated in the tabloids and even the mainstream press on occasion. It sometimes feels to me that Michael Jackson was bullied to death – that he died as a result of decades of bullying by the press.
Susan: I couldn't agree more with everything you just said. There are a lot of things I could say about that, but let me just note that none of the writers that I analyzed in my book were tabloid writers. It's shocking that so much hatred was spewed at him from people who write as if they were offering good reporting and thoughtful analysis. And it is disappointing that so much of the public accepted lies and distortions as the truth. I can't tell you how many times I have had conversations about Michael Jackson that consist mainly of my trying to correct the other person's misconceptions about him.
I'm hoping that one day we can all come to a much more rational understanding of who Michael Jackson was. Colby Tanner, a co-author of Remember the Time, recently wrote an insightful article for Slate called "The Radical Notion of Michael Jackson's Humanity." In it he addresses the issue of how little attempt has been made to understand Michael Jackson, although he comes at it from a different angle from the one I take.
Willa: It is a wonderful, thought-provoking article that really questions the "beastial" vision of Michael Jackson portrayed in the press. As he says, "The idea of Michael Jackson as a human being remains a radical notion."
Susan: In a way, this brings me back to Eleanor Bowman's transcendence / immanence ideas. I think that it is so much more interesting to try to understand Michael Jackson as a human being, one capable of such tremendous artistic achievement and with such highly intriguing personal qualities. I have to admit that I am very drawn into the angelistic view of him, although I know intellectually that that is a fallacy. I'm always trying to move past that transcendent view to the immanent view, to find the flesh and blood person who was capable of making others feel that he was a semi-divine being or a physically, morally decaying monster. For that reason, I find accounts of people who actually knew him well to be absolutely fascinating.
Willa: I agree – I really enjoy stories that show his "human" side also. For example, I have a friend who was a visiting professor at UC Santa Barbara for a while, and she became friends with an elderly woman who owns a shop in town. Her friend was alone in her shop one day when Michael Jackson came in and made a small purchase. Her friend has arthritis and was a little nervous, I think, and she was fumbling with the coins and taking a long time getting the right change out of the drawer. But instead of getting frustrated or angry about that, Michael Jackson just waited patiently and then started singing "Hot Cross Buns." Do you know that song? It's an old nursery rhyme:
Hot cross buns
Hot cross buns
One a penny, two a penny
Hot cross buns
What a wonderful way to handle that situation. I love that story!
Susan: That is such a charming story. And I find it so much more interesting than lurid accounts of voodoo rituals or of his supposedly decaying nose. This story is so minor and incidental, but it says something about his character, who he really was. Thanks for sharing that.
Willa: And thank you for talking with me today. I learned so much from your book, Susan, and really enjoyed having the chance to talk with you about it.
Susan: Thank you so much for inviting me to have this discussion, Willa.
Willa: Oh, it's been a pleasure! I also wanted to let everyone know about an opinion piece by D.B. Anderson in yesterday's Baltimore Sun. It draws important connections between Michael Jackson and recent protests against police brutality toward black citizens in the U.S. As Anderson says, "Michael Jackson was never afraid to put himself out there for the truth as he saw it." But as Anderson goes on to say, he paid a terrible price:
What happened to Jackson for his politics was so much worse than losing sales. For in speaking truth to power, Jackson made himself a target, and he took a pounding. The worst shots at him were taken by a white district attorney in California who pursued him relentlessly for 12 years and charged him with heinous crimes that were utterly disproved at trial.
No one ever seems to connect the dots: A very vocal, very influential, very wealthy black man was taken down by a white prosecutor on trumped-up charges.
This is the first time I know of that a major newspaper has allowed the police handling of the allegations against Michael Jackson to be presented in this way: as a backlash to the very real threat he posed to existing power structures. Here's a link to Anderson's essay. We've also added it to the Reading Room.