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“Who’s Bad?” Disrupting Cultural (Re)Production Through Representations of Michael Jackson
Abstract: The dynamic process of producing and consuming commodities shapes not only individuals but also their relations with each other and their societies. Although popular culture theorists have often attributed to popular music the effect of securing the consent of subordinated people for their own domination, Michael Jackson’s pop music has the opposite effect: it […]
CHAPTER 6 – “I DON’T KNOW” BODIES DISRUPTING CULTURAL REPRODUCTION
Jackson ends the Bad album the same way he commenced it: with a question. In the same way that it is impossible to answer the question “Who’s Bad?” in any definitive way, the final question leaves us profoundly unsure. “Are you okay?” is sung dozens of times in the song “Smooth Criminal,” and the information […]
CHAPTER 3 – “EXACTLY WHICH MICHAEL JACKSON ARE WE TALKING ABOUT ANYWAY?” AGENCY AND IDENTITY IN BAD
Songs: “The Way You Make Me Feel,” “Speed Demon,” “Liberian Girl” The next three songs introduce the more specific normative constructs of gender, identity, and agency and go beyond troubling or disrupting them the way “Bad” did. They envision alternatives to hegemonic constructs and playfully experiment with different answers to questions such as these: What […]
CHAPTER 5 – DOUBLE ENTENDRE: THE MAN AND THE MEDIA
Songs: “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You,” “Dirty Diana,” “Leave Me Alone” Michael Jackson’s post-Bad career was very explicitly about redefining, questioning, subverting, and casting a critical eye on cultural assumptions (as Susan Fast documents in Dangerous). But he started these challenges on Bad. Hegemony has never been keen on admitting defeat, though, and the […]
APPENDIX A: LIST OF SOURCES FOR SONGS AND VIDEOS
Sources for Songs and Videos: Songs: Jackson, Michael. Bad. Epic Records, 1987. CD. All songs used. Jackson, Michael and John Barnes. “We Are Here to Change the World.” Michael Jackson: The Ultimate Collection. MJJ Productions, 2004. CD. Videos: “Bad,” dir. Martin Scorsese. Part 1: Gentili, Kelly. “Michael Jackson Bad Part 1.” YouTube video. YouTube.com. 12 […]
CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION: LOCATING BAD’S PLACE IN POP CULTURE AND POP CULTURE’S PLACE IN SOCIETY
“I love to create magic—to put something together that’s so unusual, so unexpected that it blows people’s heads off. Something ahead of the times.” (Michael Jackson to Interview Magazine, October 1982). As you walk down the aisle at a record store, you spot a copy of Michael Jackson’s Bad. What strikes you about it? It […]
REFERENCES
Adorno, Theodor. “On Popular Music.” Storey Reader 73-84. Albrecht, Michael Mario. “Dead Man in the Mirror: The Performative Aspects of Michael Jackson’s Posthumous Body.” Journal of Popular Culture. 46.4 (2013): 705-724. Web. Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” Storey Reader 336-346. “Bad, adj., n.2, and adv.” Oxford English Dictionary. Web. 5 Nov. 2015. Barthes, […]
CHAPTER 2 – THE COUNTER-HEGEMONIC COMMODITY: A “BAD” SOLUTION TO THE HEGEMONY PROBLEM
Michael Jackson doesn’t fit neatly into the role of producer, since we consume not only the music he makes but also him and his performances. This signals that a more comprehensive model than the two presented in the introduction must be constructed to better understand the way he and his music affect cultural reproduction. Stuart […]

