Tributes to the late Michael Jackson have saturated the media this week, and appropriately so. I've long believed that Michael Jackson was among the greatest musical and performing artists of the 20th Century. But perhaps we should also recognize his influence beyond the artistic sphere. One interesting point about Mr. Jackson's impact on society was presented in the pages of The New York Times on Sunday, June 28. Guy Trebay writes that Michael Jackson contributed significantly to—if not outright invented—the public conversation about transforming one's own image."He anticipated the the growing cultural unease with categories and their strictures," Trebay writes. "Was he black or white; old or young; gay or straight or something in between? Long before Thomas Beatie, the female-to-male transsexual, announced his fatherhood on 'Oprah,' or before a closet door was opened to public dialogue about transgender people, Mr. Jackson became the literal embodiment of identity in flux."
"And if his explorations sometimes seemed extreme," Trebay continues, "he remained unapologetic in asserting that his image—in all its curious and repellant, beautiful and alluring, sexy and asexual, masculine and feminine manifestations—was his alone to devise."
I find Trebay's argument compelling. Indeed, Michael Jackson's image was his own creation—a creation that often sparked more public discourse than did his music. He chose to blur the appearance of his race and tinker with the presentation of his gender. He was a paradox. He was without a doubt a powerful man (just look at the ferocity of his dancing), yet he was also obviously a feminine man. His music and musical vocabulary were no doubt anchored in the black tradition in American pop music (and one could even argue: Is there any other tradition in American pop music?), and yet, I assume, by virtue of the sheer volume of record sales, that more white Americans purchased his music than did black Americans.Michael Jackson's death sent a ripple across the globe in no small part because his image provided something for nearly everyone to connect with, or, at least, marvel at.
