Michael Jackson: A Study of Identity

The story of any human being's transformation from a loved artist to a cultural commodity is always a tragic one. But the process is never immediate, rather a forced progression in which a malleable person is molded and shaped by society into a superhuman (or "iconic") figure. While this could certainly be said about Elvis Presley, possibly the most dramatic instance of this transformation can be seen in the person of Michael Jackson. This essay will explore Michael Jackson's progression in a topical manner, identifying the elements that molded him into the being who existed up until his death. But this exploration, rather than tracing the pattern through personal circumstances, will derive its substance from the body of his work.

Michael Jackson first entered the mainstream consciousness through his work with The Jackson 5 in 1964. His early performance was driven by a father who Michael famously called "abusive" in an 1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey, he describes his childhood in the same interview:

"I remember going to the record studio and there was a park across the street/ And I'd see all the children playing and I would cry because it would make me sad that I would have to work instead." (The Oprah Winfrey Show, 1993)

Michael became an obvious front-man for the group, with an ease of stage presence and convicting vocal style that would even more fully developed later in his career. As The Jackson Five, after a string of hits including "I Want You Back" and "ABC," continued to grow, they later dropped the "Five" and became The Jacksons. But Michael had other plans, and in 1979, Michael Jackson released Off the Wall.

His breakthrough solo track "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" served to cement him as an artist in his own right, described at the time as "probably the best singer in the world right now in terms of style and technique" (Maker 67). His string of successes continued with the album's other singles, including the still-relevant and widely circulated "Rock with You." However, it is with Jackson's next release that the world began to see Jackson transform from a likable and talented vocalist into the biggest musical superstar in the world, a force of nature that literally burst onto the scene as something other than human (specifically a werewolf).

Thriller (1983) was a light-concept album that toyed with themes of horror and paranoia juxtaposed with themes of childlike like, wonder, and romance. A musical tour de force, the album became an international sensation. With this album, Jackson broke a number of existing genre, race, and even sexual barriers. Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman write:

"Thriller represented an effort to find ways to mediate among various genres of early 80's pop music, to create points of effective synthesis from the welter of apparently competing styles, and to bridge the divides - actual or potential - separating different segments of the pop music audience." (Starr and Waterman 248)

This mediation occurred at the most apparent level as a bending and streamlining of genres. From featuring Eddie Van Halen on "Beat It" to Paul McCartney on "The Girl Is Mine" (note also the subtle deviation from existing racial lines), Jackson represented a wide variety of styles throughout the album and presented them in a way that was coherent to mainstream audiences.

Beyond the issues of genre, Jackson first introduced choreography into his work with this album, performing the iconic "moonwalk" during his performance of "Billie Jean" at the Motown tribute show. Jim Curtis notes also that the song itself seems to be a nod to Jackson's Motown roots as he seems to slyly reference the Miracles' "Shop Around" (Curtis 326). Michael later released the groundbreaking long-form music video for "Thriller." It was during this phase that Jackson's appearance began to change, with his facial features becoming noticeably sharper. He also borrowed a page from Elvis Presley's play-book as he introduced a sexualized element to his movement and persona.

Margo Jefferson describes Jackson's increasing androgyny comparing him to Diana Ross in a photo featuring the two of them hand in hand. She notes that they seemed to be in competition "twinned" with Michael being the "younger, fresher object of aesthetic and sexual desire," "tantalized" by "merging identities" (Jefferson 91). This ambiguous, accessible, yet always eccentrically out-of-reach persona made Michael a figure of public adoration and scrutiny as he began to craft a being that would start to transcend performance and uncomfortably meld itself to his individual.

Coming off the heels of the groundbreakingly successful Thriller, Michael Jackson released the much-anticipated follow-up in 1987. The album, titled Bad, revealed a starkly different Jackson. Aside from his gang-chic attire on the album cover, Jackson was suddenly and inexplicably white. Attributed to vitiligo, Jackson brushed off the transformation as though it hadn't even happened.

Jackson suddenly possessed a sexual aggression, as his "long fingers are often lunging for his penis" in a sort of "stripper's taunt," Jackson "plays up, down and around masculine sexuality" (Jefferson 97). "Bad" marked the first time Jackson aggressively grabbed his crotch, and he did so in a way that almost could have made a mid-80's Madonna blush. Ambiguous and aggressive, exactly what was meant by this display is still debated.

Michael curiously seemed to play every sexual role simultaneously. In "The Way You Make Me Feel," Jackson presents himself as the object of the gaze all-the-while lustily chasing a girl down the street, thrusting into thin air (and even the ground at one point) as he objectifies this woman whilst forcing the audience to gaze vicariously at her through his own performance.

Coupled with this aggression lies a sort of paranoid misogyny as Jackson presents woman as a mystical villainous concept. He praises the exotic mystique of his "Liberian Girl," but before long listeners are swept into Michael's strangely horrific-sounding rock-infused narrative about a crazed groupie vixen who woos even the strongest of men into her sexual tapestry ("Dirty Diana"). More perplexing is the ambiguous "Smooth Criminal," in which Jackson seems to both exalt the criminal all-the-while frantically chanting "Annie, are you okay?! Will you tell us, are you okay?!"

This period saw the eccentric Jackson become an increasing figure of interest for tabloid scrutiny, most often at the time for his bizarre appearance. Jackson plead to the gossip mills: "Leave Me Alone." But given his now iconic status, the childlike star was forced to endure speculation regarding his satisfaction with his racial identity to even stranger stories of sleeping in anti-aging chambers and owning a pet monkey ("Bubbles"). Jackson rapidly began to embody the cartoonish character he portrayed in his music, amping up the theatrics while lamenting the resulting scrutiny.

With 1991 came the release of Dangerous. Ever aware of the trending hip-hop music and culture, Michael reconnected with figures associated with urban music and culture, most notably Heavy D and Michael Jordan. In possibly the most androgynous performance of his lifetime, Michael's "Remember the Time" music video finds the singer wearing an Egyptian-inspired skirt while his hair remains in a stylish, flared bob.

Were it not for the voice, one would most likely assume the character on the screen was a woman, as Michael's performance contains no elements of drag camp, rather he actually seems to be this androgynous femininity. Not only is there no identifiable gender, but his racial identity has become completely absorbed into this character he's created, and arguable no specific gender or racial construct reenters Jackson's performance at any time past this point. Whether or not this persona is conscious remains largely debatable as Michael either didn't notice or didn't acknowledge it.

Usually one for sexual subtlety as far as lyrical content is concerned, "In the Closet" remains the grittiest and dirtiest of Jackson's sexual diatribes but also provides the single most interesting moment during his career for discussing both his gender identity and sexual construct. The video is filmed in sepia tones as Naomi Campbell dances hyper-suggestively for Michael, the camera cutting and dividing her body in an almost intentionally overstated manner to resemble something pornographic.

But by her side is the sexually energized Michael, wearing a white, fitted V-neck shirt and tight black pants. As he moves in calculated sexual rhythms, the aesthetic veers toward the homoerotic as Michael's presence is strikingly feminine. The video almost operates as a gender-bending lesbian fantasy as Michael coos, "Whatever we say or do to each other, for now we'll make a vow to just... keep it in the closet." It's as if the forbidden tryst is understood by both of them to be a subversion of stated roles, the typical Jackson insistence and paranoia shining through as he attempts to negotiate a situation that almost seems to be confusing him. (This sexual confusion seems evident given Michael's later insistence that his incessant crotch-grabbing is non-sexual, unconscious and reflexive, a strange description given it seemed to appear from thin air in 1987 [Boteach 153].)

Michael did a great deal of identity renegotiation with Dangerous, but it didn't stop with sexuality and gender. While infamous for the censorships and masturbatory antics of the video's ending in which "every few beats he strokes, snatches at, caresses his... phallus," the majority of his "Black or White" video finds Jackson playing a sort of multicultural superman (Jefferson 102). He glides and dances various cultural routines across coasts, seemingly streamlined yet separate from each displayed culture. It's as though he unifies the planet in is ambiguity, joining the hands of others while he remains a sort of extraterrestrial meta-cognitive force.

Never one to embrace a single identity for more than a moment, if at all, Jackson's 1995 release HIStory: Past, Present, and Future is one of the most affronting and aggressive mainstream releases in recent memory, riddled with controversy and confusion from consumers. The album finds an even more elevated level of paranoia permeating Michael's performance, with him adopting a raspy biting tone. "Stop fuckin' with me!" the usually polite Jackson heatedly snips on the Janet-duet "Scream."

The video holds the world record from Guinness as the most expensive music video of all time and features Michael and Janet trading angry looks and choreography against a black-and-white outer space. Michael and Janet's character's seem to often blend into each other, leaving untrained viewers to guess which is which through some segments as it is Michael, not Janet, who has the long flowing hair and delicate features, all while Janet portrays a sort of phallic woman, penetrating her surroundings with various objects while sporting a dangerous scowl.

The album still retained Jackson's signature rhythmic dance-driven melodies, Fred Shuster wrote of "This Time Around", "Money" and "D.S." by calling them "superb slices of organic funk that will fuel many of the summer's busiest dance floors" (Shuster). And while Jackson took the time to elaborate on the reasons behind his anger in a candid way, from the painfully vulnerable "Childhood" to the plea of "Earth Song," anger was the driving force behind this album.

While his appearance was even more bizarre at this stage of his career, his uncharacteristic vitriol took front and center, pushing any discussions about race, gender, and the like aside. This is partially because, for the first time, Jackson tackles these topics head on, displaying a humanity many probably wondered if he possessed. "Don't you black or white me!" he snaps on "They Don't Care About Us." Of the L.A. District attorney, Michael flatly attacks him on "D.S.": "They wanna get my ass dead or alive... Tom Sneddon is a cold man!" In a particularly eerie segment, Jackson narrates a murder as he laments a child's death at the hands of a cold killer. One cannot help but notice the fear in Jackson's arrangement as he narrates his dark view of the world.

But even still Michael hadn't finished his rant, and in 1997 he released a hybrid album of remixes from HIStory and new tracks. The album was titled Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix. Easily the most insightful, and tragically prophetic, of his albums, Michael pours his soul into the new tracks, giving up on the world. "If you want to see eccentricality, I'll be grotesque before your eyes... Am I amusing you, am I the beast you visualize?" Jackson sings on "Is it Scary?" before reaching the crescendo: "I think the evil is you! You know you're scaring me too!" The track ends with Jackson alone, let out by only a set of strings and melancholy piano accompaniment. Neil Strous comments that in such tracks Michael begins to resemble Marilyn Manson than a prodigy of Motown (Strous, paragraph 2). Interestingly, Jackson had a noted distaste for Manson, as Jackson believed his behavior to be abhorrent (Boteach, 2009).

In the chilling, sinister industrial-R&B track "Morphine," Jackson seems to go as far as allegorically chronicling his death by drug overdose, even down to the detail of the overdose being an administered (as opposed to self-inflicted) one. From the opening lines, "He got flat (flat-lined), baby... a heart attack, baby!" to the death scream ("Ohhh!") followed by an abrupt stop, listeners are given vivid mental images of Jackson's demise.

During an uncharacteristically dark moment, apparently post-death sounds are heard, as blurred voices speak and unidentified persons bang on the door to check on the presumably dead Demerol-overdose victim. He even embodies the doctor and drug at different points, sighing, "Relax, this won't hurt you" and, "Trust in me. Trust in me. Put all your trust in me," respectively. It''s as though Jackson was single-handedly unraveling the mystery of his blurred identities by peeling back a layer to reveal their irrelevance. Jackson was hurt, angry, and, by his own admission in the lengthy interview with Rabbi Shmuley, wanting to die young (Boteach, 2009).

Jackson released his last major studio album in 2001, titled Invincible. Neither as angry or elated as his previous works with a more traditional sexuality on display and obviously reduced sense of paranoia, Invincible is possibly the only album he released that attempts to convince listeners that he is an "everyman" of sorts. He wears men's clothing in the music videos, has short hair, likes women, and plays the roles of lothario ("Break of Dawn"), human rights advocate ("Cry," "The Lost Children"), and a swaggering gangsta of sorts ("Threatened").

While technically precise and easily one of the best pop albums of the decade, if not the best, Jackson still seemed in some way to be waving a white flag. He wasn't interested in aggressively breaking barriers or shocking audiences, he just wanted to be left alone ("Privacy"). While a commercial success by typical standards, the album revealed that Jackson's previous iconographic persona had faded. And judging by the lyrics, he didn't want to keep playing the role he'd been playing for the last thirty years anyway.

Jackson was tired and, we now know, an addict (Cashmere, paragraph 1). As his personality drained due to the strong medications he was abusing, he tried over and over to reenter the spotlight, and was greeted only with true success after selling out the O2 Arena in London for an unprecedented number of dates to perform a comeback/farewell tour or sorts. But before even the first show had been performed, Jackson was given what proved to be a lethal dose of Propofol, and died in his sleep. His death by 'acute propol intoxication' was ruled a homicide (Burgess, paragraphs 1-2). Not since the death of Princess Dianna had a public figures funeral attracted nearly the amount of attention. And in a rapid turn of events, the entire world began the process of re-iconifying Michael Jackson with a newly constructed persona.

Due to the numerous unpaid debts left to Jackson's estate, Sony Pictures released a documentary film titled This Is It (2009) to chronicle the final days of Jackson's rehearsal. Sony knew that if done properly, they had one last opportunity to mold Jackson as into new and relevant product. With nostalgia on their side, the slick film was released to reveal yet another Jackson. This Jackson was an in control musical director ("Let it simmer..." the world now recalls with a smile), a fierce child advocate (as the film portrays a Jackson that is fatherly, not predatory), and a loving, caring, religious person. Jackson somehow went from being the world's most infamous celebrity to an all-American male, a loving dad who just happened to be a brilliant (now non-affronting) performer.

Gone for the most part was the freakish, angry being of "Scream," the hypersexualized ambiguity of "In the Closet," the paranoid misogyny of "Dirty Diana," and especially the drug-obsessed, profane ranting of "Morphine." This Jackson followed a formula, performing new renditions of beloved favorite like the exciting "Thriller" and airy "Human Nature." His newer songs were limited to the environmental consciousness of "Earth Song" and racial equality advocacy of "They Don't Care About Us."

Roger Ebert gave the film four-out-of-four stars, raving,

"The result is one of the most revealing music documentaries I've seen... And it's more than that. It's a portrait of Michael Jackson that belies all the rumors that he would have been too weak to tour. That shows not the slightest trace of a spoiled prima donna... Here we see that he was the auteur of his shows."

The film found whole families going to the PG-rated show, taking the very children they previously would have kept as far from Michael Jackson as possible. Michael was no longer a freakish man alleged to have engaged in horrific behaviors toward children, rather, he was a heroic figure who embodied the best of our culture. Jackson had suddenly become the figure he had spent decades begging the world to see. This unifying identity had, according to Michael in the years prior to his death, always been his goal.

Individuals who knew Jackson personally always described him as closer to this newly minted being than the outlandish one in the first place. But given his naivety, Jackson created a being that literally couldn't survive the world. And as his state deteriorated, commercial interests trumped the need for intervention. The loss of true identity coupled with the creation of conflicting and competing ones is a tragic story.

While most celebrities never face the heightened nature of Jackson's situation, this cycle of identity can be found to a great extent in most rock stars. While artists such as Madonna find a way to negatiate this, others like Jackson and Elvis Presley do not. As one traces the tragic steps leading to the death of such beings, important questions regarding the place of rock stars in society are raised. Jackson's death isn't merely an indictment of a single doctor, rather a combined effect of the commodification of a human being.

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Jackson, Michael. Blood on the Dancefloor: HIStory in the Mix (1997) Epic.

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Jackson, Michael. Thriller (1982) Epic.

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Strauss, Neil. "Stars Adrift: Further Out, Further In." (May 20, 1997) The New York Times. Retrieved December 22, 2008.