Michael Jackson was –and is
still-- very fascinating because of the way he floated between different racial
and gender codes and even stereotypes. I think this originality, this unseen ‘persona’
is “what made him such a sensation” and allowed to highlight his great talent. But
how this anti mass stereotypes persona has been generating such a mass appeal? And
did the persona became more important than the singer?
As Mercer explains, Jackson
was deeply tied to soul music, but was able to appeal to the mainstream thanks
to his originality; his ambiguous sensualilty, style, dance, racial features
and rock and roll dress. This ability to blur the line between black and
white, masculine and feminine, and sexual and asexual is what makes him a myth
and still fascinates.
Probably Jackson is one of the
most loved and criticized/speculated stars in the mean time of all time. The public has always loved to revere and
criticize what it doesn’t fully understand, and Jackson’s bizarre, insane
actions and physical evolution lead people to be fascinated by what seem to be
a marketing character, while it was actually the expression of a deep malaise and
the reaction to a violent (racial) oppression; remember his father making fun
of his nose when his was a child.
Indeed, one of the major point
is that black men are usually considered as the extreme of masculinity (more
masculine than white men) and black stars often viewed as being sexy in
terms of their strength and ‘real masculinity’, while Jackson refuted this
stereotype with his slender body, nearly feminine looking features, high
pitched voice and constant skin whitening. Despite this, he was still looked at
as emanating sexuality through his performance (even ‘erotic’ as Dyer shows)
and this unseen originality/bizarre made him an international mainstream
superstar unable to be understood by the masses, instead of highlighting the
extremity he had to reach to break racial barriers and get rid of the black masculinity
stereotypes/oppression.
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