With due respect to ...

[blamebrampton]

... those of you who are mourning him, I am probably going to bite the next person who tells me that Michael Jackson was a revolutionary figure in the fight for equality by African Americans. I hasten to add that this has so far been three in real life and double the number of media foik: my flist has been a bastion of sanity.

Aesthetic irony aside, it belittles genuine revolutionary figures. And I am not even talking about political giants like Dr King; there were many entertainers who walked a far more difficult path earlier and with more grace and charity, such as Ella Fitzgerald, Paul Robeson, Josephine Baker, Sammy Davis Jnr and Nina Simone.

I'm all for people loving the heroes they choose, but I would love a bit of perspective at times like these. And perhaps a little sense of history.

Flistees who are just missing the singing and dancing, I apologise for intruding on your sad day. 

Comments

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I see what you're saying ... but I think it's the other way around. The Beatles weren't an instrument of social change (despite what they liked to allege), they were a band that was made incredibly popular because they *coincided* with a moment of broad social change.

If Lennon and McCartney had never met, then The Who, or The Rolling Stones, or Donovan would have been even bigger and more famous. Just as if Jackson Pere had been stopped from ruthlessly manipulating his children, then Smokey Robinson and Earth Wind and Fire would have been more famous, and perhaps Marvin Gaye or Prince would have been the first hugely popular African-American artist.

Because the stage was already set: culturally the battles had been hard fought by many others for years, even in the entertainment industry, there were fifty years of black singers and musicians, from Satchmo to Ella, to James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Marvin Gaye who had already achieved very broad and significant commercial success.

So I can accept that for many Americans he marked the first black crossover artist and in that way he paved the way for others to follow, but I think that this was an accident of time, place and talent rather than his intent. He just wanted to sing, dance and be famous.

Regardless, it's a very sad loss for his children and the rest of his family and friends.

[sarcasticpixie.livejournal.com]

Just popping in to note that on a personal level, I'd be WAY sadder if Prince had died. I'm a few years too young to remember MJ as anything besides a Grade-A nutcase, but Prince! I love that little man and his absurdly sexy songs. He's merely a Grade-C nutcase, what with being a Jehovah's Witness and a vegan (which are perfectly common and not totally unreasonable life changes to make) and renaming himself O(+> (which is, admittedly, not, but which is probably a more healthy way to rebel against a record company trying to own your soul than, say, building Neverland Ranch and hanging around small children).

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

This is beyond significant personal success. I guess my point is that, from the American perspective, Michael Jackson just wasn't in the right place at the right time. He was the man. They are obviously extremely talented musicians out there ), but Marvin Gaye had been around for years and Prince hadn't yet arrived (and I believe that Prince benefitted enormously from MJ's success. I will grant you that it is impossible to divorce MJ's success from the advent of MTV. However, I still maintain that he was completely unique in his appeal and that there weren't others who could have filled the gap. There wasn't a "slot" to be filled. He made it. He took it for all it was worth. And he paved the way for musicians like Prince.

I will say that I say "Purple Rain" when it came out. I was living in Berkeley at the time. We went with another couple and we were the ONLY white people in the audience. Which was filled. So even someone as talented as Prince had to "prove" himself to the larger American audience. Which, of course, he did.

I think that his enormous abilities have been overshadowed by his strange dive into teh crazy. However, that doesn't diminish what he accomplished.

And I guess this goes back to the question I posted in romaine's journal. Is the larger issue more important than the man (or woman). Is the fact that he was suspected of being a pedofile (with some fairly damning evidence) detract from the fact that he blew apart the racist glass ceiling in the music industry? I don't know. I wasn't a big fan of his so I haven't had to make that leap. However, I was a big Woody Allen fan and now I can't watch his movies. Can I disabuse his affect on American cinima? No.

So what I am asking is the intent more important than the results? Does the fact that he wanted to be famous and found a sound and a move that was so unique that it crossed racial lines, diminish what he accomplished?