I read this article about the Michael Jackson media blitz:
This lopsided allocation of media attention and public focus is an ominous indicator of how shallow and superficial we've become as a nation, and calls into question whether a nation fixated on entertainment possesses the maturity, discipline, judgment, and civic virtue necessary to preserve freedom in an increasingly hostile world.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I think this article is an ominous indicator of how shallow and superficial this man's appreciation of art can be. Identifying Michael Jackson as something new to the culture betrays a Philistine lack of knowledge of the history of dance and art. Michael Jackson is hyperlinked all the way back to antiquity. And how there is another threat to freedom on our horizons: a hatred of art and a hatred of the desires and tastes of the common man. Assaults on common taste are really just another form of hatred for humanity and a wish to control the public attention and taste is nothing more than an expression of fascism dressed up in elitist attire.
While I agree that there are other things going on in the world that deserve our attention--there is something about Michael Jackson that stodgy-old art hating neglects to see. Our hunger for celebrity and popular culture is a hunger to be moved. Michael Jackson, for whatever sensationalistic problems the man suffered, was an artist and his music and his dancing was a phenomenon to be respected, whether or not he reflected one's personal tastes. The art of Pablo Picasso, for example, is not something that all agree is beautiful, but it is an art that deserves consideration, for its technique, form, and impact.
I think the vigor in this assault on public taste is motivated by a misplaced division between high culture and low. And of course, the older generation always finds the taste of the next deplorable. Would this writer have complained about media attention to Fred Astaire or Frank Sinatra? Both Astaire and Sinatra, before there deaths names Jackson as the inheritor of their traditions. Astaire and Sinatra have both said the following about Michael Jackson:
“Oh, God! That boy moves in a very exceptional way. That’s the greatest dancer of the century”. - Fred Astaire“I didn’t want to leave this world without knowing who my descendant was. Thank you Michael!”- Fred Astaire (shortly before his death)“The only male singer who I’ve seen besides myself and who’s better than me – that is Michael Jackson.” – Frank Sinatra
I continue to take our culture's need for "entertainment" as an optimistic sign of our health. The use of the word "entertainment" here is an insult, and one that, I think, unfairly reduces what it is Michael Jackson was and what he did. On the issue of his predatory instinct toward young boys--we continue to confuse the artist with his art. If it is, in fact, true that Michael Jackson was molesting young boys, (it is not at all clear that is--the evidence is largely in the conclusions of the public based on bizarre behaviors that have multiple explanations) that really bears no relationship on the lasting impact of his art--of which I think the most significant portion was his dancing. If we are to take the personal behavior of the artist as the sign of the integrity of the work, we'll have a huge problem with as many (if not more) of the artists of the high tradition as the low. (Think Mozart, Caravaggio--as one of our friends brought to our attention in the combox this week--Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.) History tells us that beauty in art is not necessarily correlated to beauty in moral character--in fact, the two often exist in stark contrast to each other. James Hillman has commented profoundly on the depths to which artists sink and its seeming inverse proportion to how high their star and skills reach. (He uses the degrading deaths of Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, and Elvis Presley as examples noting the contrast of the conditions of their deaths to what their work represented in life.) As a dancer, Michael was an indescribable genius. His movement vocabulary was drawn from the history of dance and he is unparalleled in his ability to bring "street dance' to the very edges of high art. His body, ravaged at the end of his life but his own self-destructive impulses, was built from and around the vocabulary he created, until his very limbs and tendons conformed to his drive for higher expression. Though some of his movements could be construed as vulgar, all of dance, emanating from our body, has pointers toward sexuality. I read recently a quote (the source of which I cannot find now) that said something to the effect of: all dance is an upright expression of a horizontal impulse. If you begin to qualify dance moves as high or low, as beautiful or vulgar based on its reference to sex acts, you'll find yourself in very murky, grey territory. The world mourns the loss of Michael Jackson because of the food he provided for those who long for substantial art. Whether or not his art was your taste is a side issue--his world-wide popularity is not a sign of his lack of ability but an ear mark of how we all long for beauty. The writer of this article calls the media attention on Michael "lopsided" but I beg to differ. Michael Jackson is the product of the freedom this writer cries out to protect. That we were able to experience a Michael and that a Michael was enabled to make such beautiful poetry in motion is the strongest sign we have that the human desire for freedom will not perish. I cannot see a Michael Jackson evolving from anything but a culture that is free. Criticize the lack of media attention to violation of freedom across the globe--but don't criticize the common man for mourning and wishing to understand the individual who provided such masterful expressions of freedom in voice and movement. What is the Moonwalk but a body, through skill and mastery, defying gravity? What is the elastic movement of those limbs but an expression of the spiritual control of the body to express higher values and freedom from physical restraint? What are those unbelievable scales and phonetics in the upper-ranges of masculine falsetto but an expression of freedom from biology and cultural expression into the outer-reaches of sublimity? Lest the homophobic recoil be triggered too quickly--what were the Castrati, then, as part of a religious high art tradition? There are more than a few parallels between Michael and the Castrati, as a viewing of the movie of Farinelli might evoke. (I deliberately chose this clip to illustrate the fervor and ecstasy Farinelli created in his audiences.) Even Michael's de-evolution through plastic surgery and his documented anorexia nervosa is a result of the mental anguish he endured for the sake of art--the desire to control the body for higher artistic expression, expression that blasts through the limitations of the body into the realm of spirit, obviously preyed upon this man endlessly, until that desire to reach sublimity destroyed his face and body. I'm not sanctifying his disease--only noting the connection it has to his desire to reach artistic height. It seems that, like, us, Michael became unable to separate the man from the art he made.
RIP Michael Jackson.
If you doubt the link between Astaire and Jackson, then I think you need to see this video.
