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Friday, June 26, 2009

The king of pop

Michael Jackson was one of those pop cultural phenomena I try my best to avoid. Of course, if you watch what passes for TV “news,” or even wait in the checkout stand, you can’t avoid some exposure. So I have a scattershot knowledge of Jackson, just like I have a scattershot knowledge of some other celebrities.

I’ve also glanced at a few Christian blogs on his death. What is there to say?

One thing that strikes me as how overrated he was. I keep running across the phrase “musical genius.” All I can say is that I don’t define musical genius the way some folks do.

What was it that made Jackson a bigger star than Ray Charles or Tina Turner or James Brown or Al Green or Johnny Cash or Ricky Martin or Henry Belafonte?

Does he have more talent? Charisma? Stage presence? Not that I can see.

At his peak he was a very energetic performer, but that’s a truism of youth. Aren’t we all energetic in our teens and twenties? And there are lots of hyperkinetic performers to choose from.

I guess that in his prime he was a good dancer, but you could say the same thing about a number of other entertainers.

I read about what a great singer he was. Oh, please!

To begin with, if you need a microphone, then you’re really not solo material.

But even by the inferior standards of pop vocalism, I can think of far more talented singers. Take Marion Williams.

So what makes him stand out in the pantheon pop culture? I think it has more to do with a calculated effort to redefine human nature. Transhumanism. Jackson was transhuman. He denied his race. Denied his gender.

Tina Turner isn’t my type, but one thing you can say about her–she’s all woman. There’s nothing ambiguous about her sexual or racial identity.

By the same token, entertainers like Johnny Cash and James Brown exude masculinity.

Entertainers like that are threatening to an ideology which is hell-bent on the subversion, inversion, and perversion what it means to be human. What it means to be male and female.

Take operas and musicals. Although these are often rather decadent, they are also quite heteronormative. Boy-meets-girl set to music.

By contrast, Jackson came to look and sound like a drag-queen. That makes him the poster child of transhumanism. Everything about him was fake. Ersatz. Ambiguous. And he had a lifestyle to match.

It’s a frontal assault on any residual Christian values. The futuristic face of secular humanism.

6 comments:

  1. They hyper-stardom didn't come until Thriller, and then came the weirdness; and nobody endorses the weirdness or thinks it enhances the guy's legacy. Thriller sold on the basis of a few creative videos featuring cool new dance moves; but it also sold because it was packed with some dang funky music.

    Thriller's success prompted a lot of people to look at Jackson's earlier work, esp. Off the Wall, which was already popular and quite good, itself, and confirmed, in retrospect, that Jackson wasn't a fluke.

    To each his own, I suppose, but I thought Jackson had the whole package for a few years there. There are a number of things that made Jackson a bigger star than Cash or Martin, and some of those things had nothing to do with Jackson himself, but some did. The same could be said about Cash and Martin compared to people who never "made it." Sometimes the stars align.

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  2. I think this post is sad, edpecially because you are saying these things about a person who was abused his entire life. Its ashame to hear christians speak of such a lost soul with so little regard, especially when you expressly have little knowledge of anything about him. And then to exalt people like Tina Turner and Johnny Cash and Ray Charles who lived just as troubled and sinful lives as Michael Jackson. I pray you'll stick to focusing on the truth and not dishonoring it with little sympathy or regard for sufferring people. The bottom line was he was a person, and no matter how misdirected and devoid of truth his life was, that was within the sovereignty of God to allow. He was a very gifted musician, with or without microphone (!?!?!?), and if we need to focus on anything it is how the misuse of our gifts can carry us so far from our Creator.

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  3. SEMIFL SAID:

    “I think this post is sad, edpecially because you are saying these things about a person who was abused his entire life.”

    If he had an abusive childhood, then how does that give him the right to abuse other children once he grows up?

    “Its ashame to hear christians speak of such a lost soul with so little regard, especially when you expressly have little knowledge of anything about him.”

    i) I commented on things which were well-documented.

    ii) Moreover, the Bible often comments on the death of individuals. And it sometimes uses the death of a wicked individual as an object lesson. A cautionary tale.

    The Bible records many fatalities. Sometimes involving named individuals, and sometimes anonymous casualties. Do Bible writers automatically express sympathy when they comment on the demise of Athaliah, Belshazzar, Eli, Haman, Judas, Jezebel, or Herod Agrippa I (to name a few)? They had families to, you know. Peter spoke about Judas shortly after he committed suicide. There's no uniform approach we should take in how or whether to comment someone's death. That varies from one situation to the next.

    “And then to exalt people like Tina Turner and Johnny Cash and Ray Charles who lived just as troubled and sinful lives as Michael Jackson.”

    i) I drew an artistic comparison, not a moral comparison.

    ii) And even if I were drawing a moral comparison, what makes you think the life of Johnny Cash was just a sinful as the life of Michael Jackson? To say that all men are sinners is not to say that all men are equally sinful.

    “I pray you'll stick to focusing on the truth and not dishonoring it with little sympathy or regard for sufferring people.”

    i) Demonstrate where I said something untrue.

    ii) You dishonor the truth when you reserve your sympathy for Jackson rather than the children he probably abused. What about their suffering?

    “The bottom line was he was a person.”

    The bottom line is that, as a person, he was morally accountable for his actions.

    “And no matter how misdirected and devoid of truth his life was, that was within the sovereignty of God to allow.”

    The Bible often renders a harsh value judgment on individuals whose lives were misdirected and devoid of truth. Divine sovereignty in no way suspends a moral evaluation of their lives.

    “He was a very gifted musician.”

    If you think you’re entitled to judge his artistry, then so am I.

    “And if we need to focus on anything it is how the misuse of our gifts can carry us so far from our Creator.”

    No, we can also focus on what a bad role model he was.

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  4. Ok then you're right. Carry on.

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  5. As far as flamboyantly dressed androgynous, racially indistinct, high-pitched singing, crotch-grabbing formerly black pop artists stuck in adolescence go, I think Prince was/is more talented.

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  6. I don't know, Steve. Michael Jackson might just be this era's Liberace.

    If we were to dismiss Jackson as a capable dancer, a weak singer, and a terrible actor we could do the same to Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. In fact it's no surprise Jackson turned to both men for advice on how to refine his work as an entertainer. Jackson's appeal is obviously a gestalt. If you isolate any single element of his appeal he's going to be inexplicable.

    Now I have thought for years that michael Jackson assimilated and defanged the style of Stevie Wonder just in time so that when Wonder's star was on the wane Jackson had finessed his sound into a pop music juggernaut. Plus Wonder was obviously not the song-and-dance man for obvious reasons.

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