Michael's cautious approach to the pop experience appeared as much in his singing, songwriting, and dancing as in his public gestures. There is no more perfect revelation of this than in his performance of "Billie Jean," both on record and on stage. The version of the dance which he performed on Motown 25 created pleasure through the achievement of mastery over chaotic forces, not through the traditional rock 'n' roll approach of creating chaos in the midst of oppressive serenity. Michael, clearly, worked from a position where there was no fundamental assumption of serenity to shatter. There were, instead, masses of threatening, chaotic, unknowable forces which presented a clear and present danger. Michael's solution within the piece itself was to corral the forces, then, quite literally, glide over them. In Greil Marcus's words, he "walk(ed) the television stage not as if he owned it, not as if if was built for him, but as if his very presence had called it into being." In Marcus's view, "he shocked the nation." (Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces - A Secret History of the 20th Century, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1989, p. 97)
For an observer like Marcus, Jackson's display was a representation of pure, unlimited power: a power which was shocking. But what, indeed was shocking about it? What did this performance subjectively feel like to this "nation" which was "shocked" by it? To some, the answer lay not in the realm of experience, but in ideology. For Anthony DeCurtis ("Victory On The Road," Musician, October, 1984, pp. 24-30), the tense control that Michael exerts over his performance emerges from keeping various ideological contradictions in "balance" instead of "exploding . . . in fragments." For DeCurtis, Jackson reflects the contemporary cultural struggle to be both hyper-sexual and innocent, to be true to one's roots (in Jackson's case - his African-American heritage) while trying make it and assimilate, to be eternally youthful yet wized-up enough to succeed in a society which rewards self-interest. "That the same oppositions stretching and straining Michael," DeCurtis says, "struggle in less compelling ways within every member of his audience only strengthens the pull of that contradiction - this is the real magic of Michael Jackson - and hardens the kick." (Musician, October, 1984, p. 30)
As with Marcus, there are problems with DeCurtis's approach. To begin with, it cannot be assumed that everyone in the viewing audience experienced this "shock" (Marcus) in the same way. If the subjective experience of the performance turned on the issue of power (a point Marcus more astutely grasps), then the experience of any one viewer would depend on that viewer's relationship to power in his or her own life. Since most Americans live in subordinated relations of power in most aspects of their lives, Jackson's "powerful" display could only be shocking if he, too, appeared subordinated in the context of the performance. The explosion of "cool" could be experienced as shocking only if the performance contained intense contradictory significations of ease and constraint. Then the subjective experience of watching Jackson glide "shock"ingly across the stage would suggest what it might be like to see a drowning man begin to swim. DeCurtis was able catch this from Michael's presentation, where Marcus may have "moonwalked" over this point. The performance piece produced excitement precisely when success did not come easily, but through a hair-raising struggle.
In the case of the dance, those uncontrollable forces were signified by Jackson's occasional lack of grace, combated with hard-won gracefulness which was truly nothing less than thrilling. When he sang (or, here, lip-synched the record), there was an outright admission of sheer confusion, a doubting of everything in the world (of the song) expressed in anguished low moans and fear-filled, high-pitched lamentations. When he sang with anger, it was often drawn back into his throat with a sense of trepidation. The anger in "Billie Jean," as Marcus pointed out (1989, p. 112), was not "fierce," but, instead, overcome by dread. And the lyrics about a paternity suit (no paternity suits were ever filed against Michael Jackson until after the release of this record) are a classic study in paranoid confusion complicated by guilt: "the smell of sweet perfume/This happened much too soon/ . . . Billie Jean is not my lover/ And the kid is not my son." He both tries and tries not to remember what happened on the night he danced with "Billie Jean" at a disco. The entire performance represents a titanic and only partially successful struggle to control the dangerous, unknowable forces surrounding the performer, some of which emanate from his own desire.
The most important question is how it could feel so good to watch and listen to someone struggle to gain control over the uncontrollable. The only answer to this is a social one: to some, this was pleasurable because they actually wanted to identify with the protagonist's struggle -it was something they lived out every day- while for others who either didn't share or rejected this identification (once they became aware of the nature of it), it was simply incomprehensible, or worse than that, disturbing. For some, it was a satisfying validation of their knowledge that ordinary life (which Michael dramatizes in his song about an unexpected sexual encounter in a disco) could be experienced as terrifying and unknowable, while others refused to accept this knowledge, even as they may have felt pleasure while watching and enjoying the performance. It was for critics like Marsh and Marcus, an ego-dystonic pleasure which created an equal degree of displeasure. Such observers must have felt that they did not live their lives in dread; instead, they lived fearlessly, always courting the edge. This they could be sure of, that is, until he came along, and through their own fascination, made them wonder who they really were.
It was not a matter of mere sexual anxiety, but anxiety rooted in the premises upon which sexuality in our society is based. Even gay men, lesbian women, and other sexual outsiders could experience this anxiety if they lived their lives feeling as though control over the uncontrollable was theirs for the taking. Their outsider status wouldn't matter as long as they considered themselves self-possessed men and women. But in his performance Michael posed a weakness that was too complete; a weakness which suggested that self-possession was something he could perhaps only hope for. Rather like the helpless children with whom he claims to identify, he had to struggle for it every moment in order to live. Under these circumstances, then, it wouldn't be all that easy to smile.
©1992 by Robin Markowitz. All rights reserved. Published by University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, MI.
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