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By Arifa Akbar
The US author talks about her book on the pop star whose life distilled so many of our obsessions with race, gender and the body
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...nterview-on-michael-jackson#comment-115491072
Margo Jefferson is the author of Negroland: A Memoir, which won a National Book Critics Circle award, (for autobiography) and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford prize. Born in Chicago, she lives in New York and has worked as an associate editor for Newsweek, and a book and theatre critic for the New York Times, where she won a Pulitzer prize for criticism. Aged 70, she now teaches at Columbia University School of Arts.
Her book On Michael Jackson will be published on 3 May (Granta, £9.99).
This book is about the life and work of Michael Jackson, from his early years as a child star to the “freak show” aspects of his image later on. Why write about an already well-documented life?
Because I’ve always loved Michael Jackson – first in a “pure fan” way, and then as I got older it became a critic’s fascination. He was the best performer at his peak – an all-encompassing dancing, singing artist in the theatrical tradition of Fred Astaire, Sammy Davis Jr, Jackie Wilson, James Brown, with an acute sense of the mise en scène. He craved omniscient superstar status – a need to top himself with more record sales, bigger audiences, than the last time. By the time I was writing this book, he had become emblematic of complicated dilemmas, cultural obsessions, racial, gender and body metamorphoses.
This book was first published in the US in 2006, three years before Jackson died. It’s now out in the UK with an updated introduction. Has your outlook on his life, and his trial for child molestation, changed since then?
Yes and no. I can now feel my own struggles in this book. I was asking questions that weren’t being asked then except through underground gossip routes – on his vitiligo, on the alleged sex with little boys – to which I could get no firm answers. The final chapter, on his trial, I’d want to think through more carefully now, especially in the context of #MeToo and the Time’s Up movement, and to grapple with the asymmetries of the alleged sex abuse.
You write that Michael Jackson, since his death, has been rehabilitated into the music canon – that “he got it all back with his art” after his death. Do you think we can separate his music, wonderful as it was, from the allegations that dogged him?
No, we can’t. But his death allowed the canon simultaneously to reacknowledge the greatness of his art and to look at him as a damaged, harmed, and harming person. I have to live with, and keep analysing, this contradiction. In deciding I love Michael Jackson I take it all in – his music, the crimes he may have committed, his inner turmoil. I need the pleasure and the complications he gives me. As F Scott Fitzgerald said: “The test of a truly first-rate intelligence is to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
Jackson the child star was thrown into an adult world and abused by his father but you also call him a pioneer. Can he be both victim and pioneer?
I’ve long been interested in child stars. It’s a fascination that goes back to watching Shirley Temple, but in his case, a gifted child star becomes an equally gifted adult, and a ground-breaking figure. Was he a victim? He was conscripted by a domineering father into very tough, demanding work. There are accounts of the hours of rehearsing he did and the travelling. But he was also pioneering. The black child in American culture tended to be seen as someone too young to be dangerous yet. He was the male version of Topsy from Uncle Tom’s Cabin or the hired “piccaninny”. What he managed to do was to transform that “pic” into an adorable, all-American black boy.
You call the adult Jackson a shape-shifter, playing with notions of gender and race. Would he have been more at home today when biology is increasingly being seen and accepted as distinct from gender?
Possibly. He was interested in mixing musical genres so he mixed pop and rock with sentimental Tin Pan Alley, and it was the same with his interior and exterior construction of himself. But he was also very cautious and reticent in talking about gender and sexuality. He didn’t make daring decisions in the way Madonna did, who was willing to be openly transgressive. He was always playing the innocent.
What was the first Michael Jackson record you bought?
I Want You Back by The Jackson 5. It was when they were still putting out 45s. I was dancing to it at every party so I bought the record. His fans then were people in their 20s who’d grown up on Motown but saw the politics of Berry Gordy’s Motown as so middle-of-the-road.
Is there a black singer alive today breaking as many boundaries?
I don’t know yet if they’re breaking the same kind of ground – someone like Kendrick Lamar is addressing race in interesting ways. And Beyoncé is combining music with the theatre and dance tradition – but I have to wait and see.
What kind of music do you listen to?
It depends on the time of day, my mood, what I’m writing. I’ll listen to classical music, jazz, songs from the great American song book, Nigerian pop, minimalism. It’s an unholy mix.
Is the US a better place to live than it used to be for black Americans?
It is in terms of culture. If you look at the arts pages of the New York Times, which are very mainstream, a variety of artists will be represented – Latino, black, Asian. It’s the same with Hollywood, TV and literature. There are nonwhite legacies and traditions pushing forward and being acknowledged in ways they haven’t been before. But it’s a fraught time. Injustices are being acknowledged but the push-back is terrifying.
What’s the last really great book you read?
A book of poems by Layli Long Soldier called Whereas. She is so linguistically sophisticated. The collection is a combination of poetry as personal, family and psychic narrative, with poetry as cultural and political narrative.
Which novelists and nonfiction writers working today do you most admire?
Now that I’m no longer a beat critic, I look for books that provide intellectual stimulation or that might be interesting to teach. Often I’m looking for writers who work in the same form as me, so I like the essayist experimentation of Yiyun Li, and I like Claudia Rankine, Maggie Nelson, Fred Moten. I follow critics, too: Darryl Pinckney in the New York Review of Books and Jacqueline Rose in the London Review of Books. I’ve recently read White Tears by Hari Kunzru, which I loved, and Ayòbámi Adébáyò’s Stay With Me – her writing is a great pleasure. I like reading Nell Zink and I’m just starting Rachel Kushner’s first novel, Telex from Cuba, because I thought her second, The Flamethrowers, was amazing.
Do you prefer to read on paper or a screen?
I still like to read the old-fashioned way but I do read on screen when I travel. I have an iPad and I’m happy to download books but in my house and on the subway I still like reading physical books. I love the way they look and to hold them. I still get the newspaper delivered to my door.
Which classic novel are you most ashamed not to have read?
So many. A few years ago I did War and Peace. That helped assuage my guilt.
The US author talks about her book on the pop star whose life distilled so many of our obsessions with race, gender and the body
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...nterview-on-michael-jackson#comment-115491072
Margo Jefferson is the author of Negroland: A Memoir, which won a National Book Critics Circle award, (for autobiography) and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford prize. Born in Chicago, she lives in New York and has worked as an associate editor for Newsweek, and a book and theatre critic for the New York Times, where she won a Pulitzer prize for criticism. Aged 70, she now teaches at Columbia University School of Arts.
Her book On Michael Jackson will be published on 3 May (Granta, £9.99).
This book is about the life and work of Michael Jackson, from his early years as a child star to the “freak show” aspects of his image later on. Why write about an already well-documented life?
Because I’ve always loved Michael Jackson – first in a “pure fan” way, and then as I got older it became a critic’s fascination. He was the best performer at his peak – an all-encompassing dancing, singing artist in the theatrical tradition of Fred Astaire, Sammy Davis Jr, Jackie Wilson, James Brown, with an acute sense of the mise en scène. He craved omniscient superstar status – a need to top himself with more record sales, bigger audiences, than the last time. By the time I was writing this book, he had become emblematic of complicated dilemmas, cultural obsessions, racial, gender and body metamorphoses.
This book was first published in the US in 2006, three years before Jackson died. It’s now out in the UK with an updated introduction. Has your outlook on his life, and his trial for child molestation, changed since then?
Yes and no. I can now feel my own struggles in this book. I was asking questions that weren’t being asked then except through underground gossip routes – on his vitiligo, on the alleged sex with little boys – to which I could get no firm answers. The final chapter, on his trial, I’d want to think through more carefully now, especially in the context of #MeToo and the Time’s Up movement, and to grapple with the asymmetries of the alleged sex abuse.
You write that Michael Jackson, since his death, has been rehabilitated into the music canon – that “he got it all back with his art” after his death. Do you think we can separate his music, wonderful as it was, from the allegations that dogged him?
No, we can’t. But his death allowed the canon simultaneously to reacknowledge the greatness of his art and to look at him as a damaged, harmed, and harming person. I have to live with, and keep analysing, this contradiction. In deciding I love Michael Jackson I take it all in – his music, the crimes he may have committed, his inner turmoil. I need the pleasure and the complications he gives me. As F Scott Fitzgerald said: “The test of a truly first-rate intelligence is to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
Jackson the child star was thrown into an adult world and abused by his father but you also call him a pioneer. Can he be both victim and pioneer?
I’ve long been interested in child stars. It’s a fascination that goes back to watching Shirley Temple, but in his case, a gifted child star becomes an equally gifted adult, and a ground-breaking figure. Was he a victim? He was conscripted by a domineering father into very tough, demanding work. There are accounts of the hours of rehearsing he did and the travelling. But he was also pioneering. The black child in American culture tended to be seen as someone too young to be dangerous yet. He was the male version of Topsy from Uncle Tom’s Cabin or the hired “piccaninny”. What he managed to do was to transform that “pic” into an adorable, all-American black boy.
You call the adult Jackson a shape-shifter, playing with notions of gender and race. Would he have been more at home today when biology is increasingly being seen and accepted as distinct from gender?
Possibly. He was interested in mixing musical genres so he mixed pop and rock with sentimental Tin Pan Alley, and it was the same with his interior and exterior construction of himself. But he was also very cautious and reticent in talking about gender and sexuality. He didn’t make daring decisions in the way Madonna did, who was willing to be openly transgressive. He was always playing the innocent.
What was the first Michael Jackson record you bought?
I Want You Back by The Jackson 5. It was when they were still putting out 45s. I was dancing to it at every party so I bought the record. His fans then were people in their 20s who’d grown up on Motown but saw the politics of Berry Gordy’s Motown as so middle-of-the-road.
Is there a black singer alive today breaking as many boundaries?
I don’t know yet if they’re breaking the same kind of ground – someone like Kendrick Lamar is addressing race in interesting ways. And Beyoncé is combining music with the theatre and dance tradition – but I have to wait and see.
What kind of music do you listen to?
It depends on the time of day, my mood, what I’m writing. I’ll listen to classical music, jazz, songs from the great American song book, Nigerian pop, minimalism. It’s an unholy mix.
Is the US a better place to live than it used to be for black Americans?
It is in terms of culture. If you look at the arts pages of the New York Times, which are very mainstream, a variety of artists will be represented – Latino, black, Asian. It’s the same with Hollywood, TV and literature. There are nonwhite legacies and traditions pushing forward and being acknowledged in ways they haven’t been before. But it’s a fraught time. Injustices are being acknowledged but the push-back is terrifying.
What’s the last really great book you read?
A book of poems by Layli Long Soldier called Whereas. She is so linguistically sophisticated. The collection is a combination of poetry as personal, family and psychic narrative, with poetry as cultural and political narrative.
Which novelists and nonfiction writers working today do you most admire?
Now that I’m no longer a beat critic, I look for books that provide intellectual stimulation or that might be interesting to teach. Often I’m looking for writers who work in the same form as me, so I like the essayist experimentation of Yiyun Li, and I like Claudia Rankine, Maggie Nelson, Fred Moten. I follow critics, too: Darryl Pinckney in the New York Review of Books and Jacqueline Rose in the London Review of Books. I’ve recently read White Tears by Hari Kunzru, which I loved, and Ayòbámi Adébáyò’s Stay With Me – her writing is a great pleasure. I like reading Nell Zink and I’m just starting Rachel Kushner’s first novel, Telex from Cuba, because I thought her second, The Flamethrowers, was amazing.
Do you prefer to read on paper or a screen?
I still like to read the old-fashioned way but I do read on screen when I travel. I have an iPad and I’m happy to download books but in my house and on the subway I still like reading physical books. I love the way they look and to hold them. I still get the newspaper delivered to my door.
Which classic novel are you most ashamed not to have read?
So many. A few years ago I did War and Peace. That helped assuage my guilt.
off like the rest of these so-called writers....I'm mean cut and paste hacks! :angry: