On Michael Jackson [Paperback]

Margo Jefferson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 2007

Michael Jackson was once universally acclaimed as a song-and-dance man of genius; Wacko Jacko is now, more often than not, dismissed for his bizarre race and gender transformations and confounding antics, even as he is commonly reviled for the child molestation charges twice brought against him. Whence the weirdness and alleged criminality? How to account for Michael Jackson’s rise and fall? In On Michael Jackson—an at once passionate, incisive, and bracing work of cultural analysis—Pulitzer Prize–winning critic for The New York Times Margo Jefferson brilliantly unravels the complexities of one of the most enigmatic figures of our time.

Who is Michael Jackson and what does it mean to call him a “What Is It”? What do P. T. Barnum, Peter Pan, and Edgar Allan Poe have to do with our fascination with Jackson? How did his curious Victorian upbringing and his tenure as a child prodigy on the “chitlin’ circuit” inform his character and multiplicity of selves? How is Michael Jackson’s celebrity related to the outrageous popularity of nineteenth-century minstrelsy? What is the perverse appeal of child stars for grown-ups and what is the price of such stardom for these children and for us? What uncanniness provoked Michael Jackson to become “Alone of All His Race, Alone of All Her Sex,” while establishing himself as an undeniably great performer with neo-Gothic, dandy proclivities and a producer of visionary music videos? What do we find so unnerving about Michael Jackson’s presumed monstrosity? In short, how are we all of us implicated?

In her stunning first book, Margo Jefferson gives us the incontrovertible lowdown on call-him-what-you-wish; she offers a powerful reckoning with a quintessential, richly allusive signifier of American society and popular culture.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Book Description
Margo Jefferson’s On Michael Jackson is a lucid and elegant cultural analysis of the rise and fall of the King of Pop.

An award-winning cultural critic, Jefferson brings an unexpected compassion as well as her sharp intellect and incomparable insight to Jackson’s 2005 trial for child molestation, startling us with her erudite illumination of a media-drenched circus that we only thought we understood. As only she can, Jefferson reads between the lines of Jackson’s 1998 autobiography as well as published accounts of his childhood, his family, and Motown--where Michael and his brothers first made the Jackson 5 a household name--leaving us with provocative and perhaps unanswerable questions about Jackson, child stardom, and fame itself.

---

Margo Jefferson on the Life and Death of Michael Jackson
Pundits love to talk about the crises and cultural flashpoints that give Americans the chance to grow up and think outside of the usual dualities: this is good, that is evil; we hate her, we love him. Michael Jackson’s death gives us yet another chance.

Talent, scandal, sudden death, and a 24/7 media cycle make us very worshipful or very cynical. We can do better this time around. We don’t have to sneer or be pious. We know Michael Jackson was a genius, and we know he became a tortured soul. The first three days after his death were our grace period. We watched videos, replayed our favorite songs relived our youth, and waxed nostalgia about the good old days when all we had to deal with was his enormous talent. And though I never much liked the song, "we" were definitely the world--crowding onto streets, into theaters and parks, dancing (or at least swaying) to his music. North and South America. Europe. Africa. Asia. Only Antarctica and most of the animal kingdom stayed uninvolved.

Then the nasty stuff started creeping out again, like the ghouls in Thriller. Drug reports, rumors of custody wars, tours of an empty Neverland, memorial extravaganza plans; the sight of Michael’s father hustling family unity along with his new record company; the statements and counter-statements of siblings, lawyers, ex-employees, companions and bottom-feeders. And, of course, the three children. Whatever we don’t know about them, we do know they’re worth their weight in gold records and posthumous business deals. And it’s only just begun.

But we can live with the damaged life and the great work: both of them, all at once. We have to. So much of Michael Jackson’s damage reflects the worst in our culture, and so much of his talent reflects the best.--Margo Jefferson

(Photo © Brent Murray)

From Publishers Weekly

Pulitzer-winning New York Times critic Jefferson collects her meditations on what may be the oddest show-biz figure of all time. "Freaks" is the title of her first essay, and she notes Jackson's attraction to Barnum as well as the strangely apt imagery of his best-known video, "Thriller." Born in 1958 to a bullying father and a mother who was a Jehovah's Witness convert, the youngest member of the Jackson Five quickly became its VIP. Child stars are never "normal," and Jefferson glances at Buster Keaton, Jackie Coogan, Sammy Davis Jr. and, of course, Shirley Temple, the only one of them even more famous than Jackson, unless you count Elizabeth Taylor, Jackson's "best friend," who supplanted Diana Ross as his apparent role model. Jackson, Jefferson believes, is a "sexual impersonator," imitating, at times, a gay man, a white woman, a "gangsta" and a "pop Count Dracula." His bizarre looks and behavior drew literally thousands of cameras to his 2005 trial for child molestation. Jefferson concludes that Jackson may be a "monstrous child," but that he is, to a degree, a mirror of us all. Her slim, smart volume of cultural analysis may remind readers of Susan Sontag's early, brilliant essays on pop culture. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (January 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307277658
• ISBN-13: 978-0307277657
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #794,225 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #83 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( J ) > Jackson, Michael

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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent read marred by factual errors., May 11, 2007

By 

J. Coyle "rolling stock" (Lancaster, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: On Michael Jackson (Paperback)

This is a very well thought out book - musings - on the life and work of Michael Jackson. It is especially fascinating on child stars and what we ask of them.

Research-wise, she does lose sight of the facts surrounding MJ at times and chooses supposition over evidence on occasion. For example, she does not seem to give much credence to his vitilgo yet he first consulted a doctor about it in 1981 or thereabouts, long before the public had any idea of it. A picture exists of him from the early eighties which shows what he looked like with out make up to cover the patches.
She also makes out that Michael dismissed Debbie Rowe when hed had enough of her - but I believe this was not the case. She twists the facts somewhat.
But on the whole this book is worth reading by anyone interested in fame, our celebrity culture, race, gender.

Some MJ fans won't like this book and I'd say it is aimed at the general reader, the curious or the fan who is open minded. Though her language may seem harsh, on reflection, Margo Jefferson does come down on MJ's side in the end.

27 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Around Jackson, not "on" him, January 16, 2006

By 

Tom O'Carroll - See all my reviews

This review is from: On Michael Jackson (Hardcover)

In the eloquent prose of a Pulitzer prize-winning critic for the New York Times, Margo Jefferson does one thing rather well. She puts Michael Jackson into cultural context. The most valuable contribution of this slim volume is to demonstrate that although her subject may appear to be the strangest human on the planet, he also exemplifies major themes in American popular culture.

Jefferson's exploration of this terrain succeeds not in normalising Jackson, but rather in linking him to a broader stream of strangeness - the freak show element present in American showbiz at least since the days of P. T. Barnum, whose methods Michael himself once studied avidly. The author's other principal strength is her rich appreciation of Michael's art: her rapturous riffs on his music and its meaning smack more of the fan than the detached critic.

Her title, On Michael Jackson, suggests a high-brow essay. Stylistically, she does not disappoint, delivering many fresh insights in diamond-sharp language. Scholastically, though, she fails. The book is "on" Michael Jackson but she never tells us what she is "on" about. What is the objective? Much of the time she is actually talking not about Michael Jackson at all but rather - in "cultural studies" vein - about public perception of the superstar. This enables her, like all that mealy-mouthed academic tribe, to be vague and evasive on the big issues, in this case whether Michael has or has not been sexually involved with young boys. Her unspoken agenda seems to be Michael's rehabilitation, judging by her emphasis on what his art has meant for her and her generation. I have no quarrel with that mission. It's fine by me.

What is a good deal less fine is her sly disinclination to confront inconvenient facts. She has a chapter on Michael's trial but totally ignores the evidence of sexual conduct given by his accuser. Likewise she refers obliquely to the earlier crisis of 1993-4 but never touches on what the boy in that case told the authorities. She prefers instead to ramble on about the competing lawyers and their tactics. What a sense of priorities!

It is not just sly, it is slipshod, relying on research she did a decade or more ago, if at all. For instance, she cites J. Randy Taraborrelli as an important biographical source. Fair enough, but had she done her homework she would have known about, read, and cited the 2004 edition of his work, not, as she does, the 1991 one, which obviously could not have covered Jackson's first brush with the law. Likewise, despite pretending to some knowledge of "child sex abuse", it is obvious from the uncritical way she buys into the abuse industry's language, and from the paucity of her (dated) references, that her understanding is as near to zero as makes no difference. It is embarrassingly clear she has not the foggiest notion of why boys are so important to Michael Jackson or indeed to other men who wreck their lives in pursuit of taboo relationships.

24 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Readers, please!, January 30, 2006

By 

Arthur Boehm - See all my reviews
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This review is from: On Michael Jackson (Hardcover)

I must take issue with those reviewers who make a point of Margo Jefferson's factual errors, as if her book was meant to be definitively biographic. The title--"On Michael Jackson"--reveals her approach from the git. Hers is an extended--and exquisitely attuned--essay; a volume of musings on a deeply paradoxical subject that dips profoundly into cultural issues, and continually delivers treasure. The misguided will demand a summation, a tying-up; but this is a book of and about perception. Don't miss it if you enjoy the play of an extraordinary mind on an extraordinary subject.