Jackson: The Tragic 'Genetically Modified' Icon of Globalization
"Fleeing his roots, pushing the negation of self to the limit,
he created an entirely ambiguous character for himself that was neither male
nor female, adult nor child, Black nor White - half angel, half monster."
On Wednesday, for the first
time since being appointed, the new Minister for French Culture, Frédéric Mitterrand
said, "We all have a Michael Jackson within." Blacks and Whites,
young and old, Westerners and Asians, the entire world in effect, has a hit by
the "king of pop" ringing in their heads. One statistic is all it
takes to reflect the global scale of the Jackson phenomenon: hundreds of
millions of his albums have been sold, a hundred million of which were the
single Thriller, which was released twenty-five years ago. No other
artist on the international stage can compete with him.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
This global appeal doesn't
suffice to explain the manifestations of idolatry that have emerged since his
death. The story of Michael Jackson went far beyond the musical arena. This
child who refused to grow up, a rock version of the Peter Pan syndrome, has
risen to the rank of a modern myth - a paradoxical and terrifying myth. The
last star of the 20th century - he was a star of the vinyl and CD eras and not the
Internet - but also the first icon of 21st century globalization.
Reconciling Black music with White,
and African-American soul with international pop, his songs are a cosmopolitan
and eclectic soundtrack that great numbers of people easily assimilate. As the
first Black singer to appear on music television channel MTV, Jackson
understood the global process of cultural standardization before anyone else.
His pop videos, which were massive communication tools produced by the biggest
names in cinema, propelled him into every home. While in night clubs, meanwhile,
his electric beats became the most sensual of all universal languages.
At the same time, he will
always remain an American icon, with his Chaplin-style cropped trousers and his
property called Neverland - which sounds so similar to Elvis Presley’s
Graceland. Wasn’t it also said that this was a "Disneyland for him alone"?
Having died in his prime, he joins Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and John
Fitzgerald Kennedy in the pantheon of American legends whose lives were cut
short.
It will also be recalled how,
in the 1980s, he was the architect of charity concerts for the children of
Ethiopia, bringing together artists from across the globe. Media-based philanthropy
was born.
But what fascinates us most
of all about him is the hybrid, "genetically modified" creature that
he eventually came to resemble. Fleeing his roots, pushing the negation of self
to the limit, he created an entirely ambiguous character for himself that was
neither male nor female, adult nor child, Black nor White - half angel, half
monster. He conjured up these living-dead that appeared in his most famous
video, Thriller. This truly unreal creature pre-dated the virtual world
in which we are evolving into today. The dance move that he invented, the
moonwalk, gave the strange impression that he was hovering above the ground.
His fans understood him well: they take him for a god.
