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Michael Jackson's Ressentiment : Billie Jean and Smooth Criminal in Conversation with Fred Astaire

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 35; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03007766.2011.616307

1740-1712

Amir Khan,

Musicology and Musical Analysis

Abstract Little attempt is made at juxtaposing Michael Jackson's art against that of his cultural predecessors. Reading Billie Jean (1983) and Smooth Criminal (1988) in conversation with Fred Astaire's popular 1953 musical, The Band Wagon, for example, exposes all sorts of intertwining threads of significance and ressentiment, particularly in terms of race relations and cultural appropriation. Yet my purpose in this paper is not to assign the last word to either Michael Jackson or Fred Astaire, but to analyze what sort of ramifications their dialogue may have for American popular imagination. Notes [1] For the latest and most telling example of the sort of insidious but "heartfelt" victimization of Michael Jackson Jackson, Michael. 1988. Moonwalk, New York: Random House. Print [Google Scholar], see Montreal journalist Ian Halperin Halperin, Ian. 2009. Unmasked: The Final Years of Michael Jackson, Montreal: Transit. Print [Google Scholar]. Halperin's name rose to prominence when, in December 2008, he famously predicted that Jackson had six months to live. Almost six months to the day, Jackson did indeed pass away. In the aftermath, Halperin's book went speedily into print and was dedicated, somewhat crassly, to "Michael's fans" and "his three children." At risk of sounding cynical, the obvious marketing ploy, to my mind, was to promote yet another victimary angle capable of "explaining" Jackson's eccentricities. Perhaps his eccentricities require explanation, but, for those who insist on loving Jackson at all costs, anyone willing to provide a novel and sympathetic sob story stands to profit. With other victimary narratives largely exhausted (i.e. the "have you seen my childhood" angle, or the "abusive father" angle, or the "child star" angle), Halperin went to some lengths to give his particular hypothesis credibility. Though he ultimately suggests that Jackson was manipulated by those around him, Halperin covertly puts forward new victimary "possibilities," including Jackson's alleged "homosexuality" and prescription "drug problem." These new narratives, like all the others, provide only a piece of the puzzle, and, in the end, serve to explain nothing. If we take the aggregate of all of Jackson's supposed shortcomings, we are left, finally, not with an explanation, but still begging for an explanation. On the other end of the spectrum, though I am unaware of any credible, overtly one-sided condemnations of Michael Jackson, certainly tabloid sources are relentless. For a detailed account of the disturbing prosecutorial bloodlust of Santa Barbara District Attorney Thomas Sneddon Jr., see Jones Jones, Aphrodite. 2007. Michael Jackson Conspiracy, Bloomington, IN: IUniverse. Print [Google Scholar]; Jefferson (106 Jefferson, Margo. 2006. On Michael Jackson, New York: Vintage. Print [Google Scholar]–38). [2] For instance, John Jeremiah Sullivan Sullivan, John Jeremiah. "Back in the Day." GQ, Sept. 2009. Web. 15 Oct. 2009 [Google Scholar] writes: "It's fascinating to read the interviews he gave to Ebony and Jet over the past thirty years.…During whole stretches of years when the big media were reporting endlessly on his bizarreness and reclusiveness, he was every so often granting these intimate and illuminating sit-downs to those magazines…to hear Michael laid-back and talking unpretentiously about art, the thing he most loved—that is a new Michael, a person utterly absent from, for example, Martin Bashir's infamous documentary.…He is charming; his mind is alive. What a pleasure to find him listening to early "writing version" demos of his own compositions and saying, 'Listen to that, that's at home, Janet, Randy, me.…You're hearing four basses on there." [3] "Yes, [Michael] says, he feels used, declining specifics, saying only that in his profession, 'They demand that, and they want you to do this. They think that they own you, they think they made you. If you don't have faith, you go crazy'" (Hershey 60 Hershey, Gerri. "Inside the Magical Kingdom." Spec. Commemorative Issue of Rolling Stone Oct. 2009: 60. Print [Google Scholar]). [4] The idea of "black" success in popular culture as the sort that truly remedies the status quo or merely perpetuates existing racial hierarchies is taken up more fervently by Ellis Cashmore Cashmore, Ellis. 1997. The Black Culture Industry, New York: Routledge. Print [Google Scholar]. His critique of the commodification of black culture is pertinent for anyone wanting to sus out how or if Jackson's commercial successes really constituted social change. Cashmore takes up the case of Jackson in his chapter 9, entitled "Infant Icon," and indeed employs the term "lynching" (see Cashmore 125–43). [5] See the first and third essays in Nietzsche (9 Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1998. On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic, Trans. Maudemarie Clark and Alan Stevenson Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Print [Google Scholar]–34, 67–118). As Gans puts it, "Nietzsche might well have admired [noble pagan warrior] Achilles, but he would not have called it resentment. My insistence on the term is not, however, an arbitrary matter of definition. The point is that there is no fundamental distinction between the resentment of Nietzsche's priests…on the one hand and that of…Achilles on the other.…The political history of our nearly completed century is demonstration enough that fundamental human equality must be pushed back one more level than Nietzsche's anti-Christian critique allowed it. Separating people into the heroic and the resentful, the authentic and the inauthentic, is a prelude to genocide" (see , "Chronicle #160"; Originary Thinking 1–28). [6] The salient example from life would be Jackson's purchase of the Beatles' catalogue. At first glance, the "business" motives behind the acquisition seem sound enough. Such sentiment very quickly seems short-sighted and naïve, however. The significance of the act, though more readily described in dollar figures, went far beyond any straightforward economic calculation. Though Jackson is understandably coy about the affair in his autobiography (see Jackson 194), no shortage of pundits have voiced the move's obvious cultural resonance. Rolling Stone contributor Touré Touré. "Black Superhero." Spec. Commemorative Issue of Rolling Stone Oct. 2009: 73. Print [Google Scholar] cuts right to the chase: "It proved his savvy, separating him from all those previous black artists who lacked the power to control the music business. But, more than that, the symbolic power of Jackson owning the Beatles' music cannot be overstated. Not only did he become as big as the Beatles, he bought them too. A century after American whites owned blacks, a black performer owned the product of the most elite white group in the world. It was an amazing turn about, and one blacks took special pride in" (73). [7] Emerson makes much of conformity in his essay on "Self-Reliance," but the quotation with the greatest semantic weight (for Cavell) is, I believe, this one. "The virtue in most request in conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion." See Emerson 17. For a discussion of how Cavell reads this quotation, see Cavell, Cities 19-22. [8] For a terrific primer on just how Stanley Cavell Cavell, Stanley. 2005. Philosophy the Day after Tomorrow, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Belknap Press. Print [Google Scholar] seeks to employ "the common, the familiar, and the low," in true Emersonian spirit and in his subsequent discussion of the philosophical significance of film, see Cavell Cavell, Stanley. 2004. Cities of Words, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. Print [Google Scholar] (Pursuits 1–42). [9] This is the position taken up by Robert Gooding-Williams Gooding-Williams, Robert. 2006. "Aesthetics and Receptivity: Kant, Nietzsche, Cavell, and Astaire". In The Claim to Community: Essays on Stanley Cavell and Political Theory, Edited by: Dumm, Thomas and Norris, Andrew. 236–62. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP. Print[Crossref] , [Google Scholar] after acknowledging Cavell's interpretation of events. Rather than seeing room for praise, Gooding-Williams is instead "dismayed" by the Astaire routines. Though he launches a very interesting discussion that "racializes" the skepticism Cavell discusses—where a "white" melancholy is tied to a white emasculation which requires inheriting what Eric Lott calls the "cool, virility, abandon or gaité de Cour that were the prime components of white ideologies of black manhood" (Lott, qtd in Gooding-Williams)—he insists, even "demands," that his dismay "prompt dismay in others." One reason to avoid explicit discussion of Gooding-Williams in this paper is because the dismay he expresses is an invitation (or a "demand") to end conversation rather than extend it. Michael Jackson was certainly not "dismayed" by the opening scenes of The Band Wagon, though he did choose to respond to them in a way that arguably acknowledges (if less fully agrees with) Gooding-Williams's denial of the film's "appropriateness." See Gooding-Williams (254, 259); also, for a rejoinder to Gooding-Williams, see Rhu (197 Rhu, Lawrence F. 2006. Stanley Cavell's American Dream, New York: Fordham UP. Print[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]–210). [10] This is recounted to J. R. Taraborrelli Taraborrelli, J. Randy. 2004. Michael Jackson: The Magic & the Madness. 1991, London: Pan. Print [Google Scholar] by Hermes Pan, the "legendary choreographer and Oscar winner who taught Fred and Ginger Rogers their most memorable dance steps" (242–43). [11] The full quotation by Fred Astaire: "You're an angry dancer. I'm the same way. I used to do the same thing with my cane" (qtd in Tick and Beaudoin 820 Tick, Judith and Beaudoin, Paul, eds. 2008. "Turning Points in the Career of Michael Jackson". In Music in the USA: A Documentary Companion, Oxford: Oxford UP. Print [Google Scholar]–21). In his autobiography, Michael Jackson recounts their meeting after his Motown 25 performance of "Billie Jean" in 1983. He recalls that Astaire praised him to the point where Jackson "really blushed" (see Moonwalk 209–10). [12] I should clarify that Fred Astaire's white suit is not the one that appears in the opening sequences of The Band Wagon but is, rather, donned by Astaire in its last sequence, "The Girl Hunt Ballet." [13] One that requires interpretation of the sort more penetrating than that found in the commemorative issue of Rolling Stone, which somewhat blithely dismisses the sequence as "interpretive dance." We all know it is interpretive; the question is interpretive of what? (see Sheffield 79 Sheffield, Rob. "A New Kind of Hollywood Musical." Spec. Commemorative Issue of Rolling Stone Oct. 2009: 79. Print [Google Scholar]).