Perhaps it needs to go on record that no study or article solely dedicated to Michael Jackson has ever appeared in Popular Music since its launch in 1981. In retrospect, it is understandable that scholars seem puzzled by this. Only in the wake of Jackson's death has serious research into his life and music emerged. Building on a wealth of perspectives that have fascinated public imagination throughout the 40-year career of Michael Jackson, Christopher R. Smit's edited volume, Michael Jackson: Grasping the Spectacle addresses a range of issues that centre upon this enigmatic figure's identity.
As one would expect in a volume of this kind, a range of disciplinary areas is activated: musicology, cultural theory, art history, sociology, religious studies, cultural anthropology, gender studies, film studies and African American studies. The editor's own introductory chapter testifies to the layers of excavation required to understand Jackson. Entitled ‘Chasing the Spectacle of Michael Jackson’, Smit draws on Guy Debord's seminal thesis The Society of The Spectacle from 1967 to frame the debate on representation politics and the confusion that separates the spectacle from reality. The film documentary Michael Jackson's This Is It (2009) is an ideal text for unravelling the spectacle of Jackson from his ‘real self’ where layers can be peeled off to reveal the physical properties of Jackson's body on display. This requires a careful consideration of psychological, mythological and cultural values, which Smit aptly applies in his discourse on the ‘layer of death’. That Jackson's death produced a cultural moment that resulted in a ‘postmodern intimacy’ in the form of an authentic reaction was verified by the outpourings of grief through Facebook, Twitter, blog posts and television documentaries. This introductory chapter helps ignite a much-needed discussion that starts well but then is curiously severed. The debate stops abruptly and I could not help feel that several extra pages would have been useful to expand upon before ushering in the 14 chapters that fall under three parts.
‘Mythology and Identity’, Part I, consists of essays by Margo Jefferson, Julian Vigo, Amy C. Billone and Sherrow O. Pinder which probe into the complexities of Jackson's career. Notably, Jefferson's chapter, comprising one of the few serious journalist studies prior to Jackson's death, is a reprint from her book published in 2006. Of the other contributions I found Billone's ‘Sentenced to Neverland’ to be quite tricky. With a background in English studies, it is somewhat bewildering that the author appears oblivious to the critical work undertaken in the broader field of popular music studies on pop and queerness (Susan Fast, Freya Jarman, Sheila Whiteley, Paul Attinello, Jennifer Rycenga, to name a few). Moreover, it was of some surprise to me that no reference to Judith Halberstam's work on identity performance was forthcoming, especially when dealing with the queering of time and space. Undoubtedly Jackson's queerness and quirkiness is most relevant when tackling the topics of Neverland and Peter Pan, but in the main this chapter required greater critical reflection. At the expense of a certain degree of rhetorical flush on the part of the author, Jackson's demise by the media was not thoroughly enough critiqued.
In Part II, ‘Music and Image’, contributions continue by writers with vastly different academic backgrounds. On the whole, these essays are well grouped together, with a notable contribution from Jesse Schlotterbeck who investigates fandom through a discussion of the ambivalence Jackson solicited in terms of identification. Schlotterbeck concludes that the variations of Jackson's ‘split-self’ encouraged audiences to read him ambivalently. In another chapter, Christopher Wiley discourses on Jackson's videos and their cultural value as performance spectacles. The discussion entered into here concentrates on the work of a range of authors who have written about his videos (mostly non-musicologists). While Wiley makes a convincing, albeit well-rehearsed case for more emphasis on Jackson's musical output, I found it odd that he himself skirts the challenge of analysing the music and coming up with a personal model of interpretation in the vibrant visual context of the pop artist's video productions. This chapter would have worked better had Wiley, ostensibly a music scholar, come up with his own reflections on the audiovisual properties of Jackson's videos that attempted to re-orientate the earlier work of other scholars.
Part III, ‘Body and Death’, also comprises five essays from a diverse interdisciplinary catchment area. Three of these are worth singling out. To start with, Zack Steigler, in the final chapter of the book, provides a fitting eulogy by focussing on the last 20 years of the artist's life. Functioning as a main discursive thread, the concept of ‘apology’ is intelligently woven into the argument as a means for contemplating the role of social media and audience reception. I found this piece articulate and highly reflective. Well worth mentioning is Raphael Raphael's contribution, which considers Jackson's classification as ‘freak’ by the media. It is clear from the outset that the author is keen to position Jackson as a person with a disability. On a general level, the terms of this assertion are plausible – the vitiligo condition (as verified in the autopsy) is now common knowledge, as well as the fact that Jackson had lupus. By historicising the ‘celebrity freak’ through Jackson as ‘startext’, Raphael draws on an earlier (and arguably stronger) piece by David Yuan (which he admittedly states he is indebted to). It struck me, however, that the video reading of Black or White would have profited better from a more rounded debate on the freakshow. On balance, though, Raphael's chapter constitutes an important study into representations of disability in popular music.
Transgressing norms and conventions, Jackson inspired personal transformation for millions of his fans, an achievement Diane York Blaine picks up on in her chapter. The poignant reminder here is that it was only in death that stability was attained which, in turn, would produce meaning. Appropriately, Jackson's memorial service receives full consideration and Blaine's detailed readings of this spectacular event as a convergence of Judeo-Christianity through celebrity culture and late capitalism are compelling. Offering up an opportunity to exonerate Jackson of a range of charges through ritual, the memorial service, beamed to an estimated 2.5 billion viewers from Staples Center in Los Angeles, positioned him as an immortal Christ figure through live performances, eulogies and video montages.
This collection of essays fluctuates in terms of quality. Some chapters are stronger than others, which tend to hold their ground less well scholastically. An ambitious project of this type might have benefited from fewer essays, with more extended debates that could fill up its 221 pages better. Nonetheless, this collection signals an important incursion into the scholarly work on Michael Jackson, and I am sure that during the next few years it will form a precursor for countless more publications on this inimitable pop star the world is never going to forget.
