Saturday, July 18, 2009

Michael Jackson, a Monster or simply Human ?

When Michael Jackson died I barely sighed and watched cynically as fans cried and raved about the death of a genius. But a few weeks on I have changed my mind about the value of this tortured young genius- thanks to my nine year old daughter who insisted she wanted to find out who Michael Jackson was and who forced me to sit with her as she watched. I have to say I am a convert.

In the last ten years Michael Jackson was known mostly for scandals and excesses- whether it was for his life in a Bubble, after his repeated plastic surgeries or for darker accusations. But in this energetic young man with a will to innovate, in art as in real life, in the perpetual process of self-transformation, this young man gave to a world teenager population, not necessarily with access to the elite channels of discourse, a voice to express the generosity and the need to give, to share, to partake of a collective, universal conscience which marks adolescence. Whether it was for the ecological conscience of 'Earth Song' or the wonderful universal humanism of 'Black or White', there was an tortured angst there with a need to intervene and express an awareness, a conscience of belonging to a world in danger... Against famine, against the destruction of the rain forest, against the snobbbery of the priviledged, as he effects an aesthetic-political statement about the third world within the United States and the geographical Third World, with “They Don't care About Us,” with fleeting iconic appearances of Martin Luther King in the background.

Indeed,for the more cynical of us, aware of the damning power of voyeuristic media as it concentrated on the years of scandal and forgot the musical genius in the latter years, we missed out the first truth about Michael Jackson, that tortured young man was a product of the violence of American race history, while being the embodiment of the American Dream at the same time. For some Death beckons and becomes like no other garb. In this case death is the best thing which could have happened to Michael Jackson.

Through death he stands redeemed, his genius rediscovered.

Nandini Bhautoo

for www.authorclub.info

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