Volume 1: Issue 4
Abstract
At the end of the first year of the journal we found a considerable amount of academic work. In this issue we published an German translation of a chapter of Dangerous by Susan Fast, an essay from 1989 by Michele Wallace, an article by Toni Bowers, the and we finish with an essay by Karin Merx. In this issue we also included the very first podcast ‘The Dream Lives On: An Academic Conversation’.
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Content
1. Editorial by Karin Merx
2. Susan Fast – ‘Seele’
by Ilke Lenz-Nolte and M.V.D. Linden
3. Michael Jackson, Black Modernisms and ‘The Ecstasy of Communication’
by Michele Wallace
4. LARB – Dancing with Michael Jackson
by Toni Bowers
5. ‘The Dream Lives On’: An Academic Conversation (Podcast)
by Elizabeth Amisu and Karin Merx
6. From Throne to Wilderness: Michael Jackson’s ‘Stranger in Moscow’ and the Foucauldian Outlaw
by Karin Merx
1. Editorial
With this issue we have reached the end of our first year of The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies. When we started with this journal, it was considerably difficult to find a wide range of academic sources on Jackson’s art and life. However, in this year we have collected a considerable amount of sources, essays and journal articles that have been written over the last thirty years.
The starting point of this issue is the German translation of the first chapter of Susan Fast’s book, Dangerous. Bloomsbury were so kind to give translators Ilke Lenz-Nolte and M.V.D. Linden permission to translate one chapter of the Dangerous book by Susan Fast. In turn we are pleased to feature this contribution in the final issue of Volume 1.
Our second contribution is a fantastic 1989-essay by academic, Michele Wallace, ‘Michael Jackson, Black Modernisms and ‘The Ecstasy of Communication’. In this essay Wallace discusses the album and short film Bad of Michael Jackson and how white critics received the album as well as how his art ‘must constantly struggle for space alongside considerations of consumerism and televisual postmodernism.’[1]
Another excellent feature in this issue is ‘Dancing with Michael Jackson’ by Toni Bowers, which sets an example of how we should be more responsible and have more empathy towards each other, in order to refute self-judgement and rejoice.
We set out a goal to become a centre for the proliferation of Michael Jackson Studies, and after a year we can say we are on the right track. However, there is still a lot to be done and many wishes to fulfil. One of these wishes was to start an academic conversation by way of a podcast. We gave the podcast the title, The Dream Lives On: An Academic Conversation. The first conversation we had we discussed Michael Jackson as artist and whether the ‘Panther Dance’ could be considered art.
Finally, academic Karin Merx examines Jackson’s 1996 short film, Stranger in Moscow, and explores how both the song and short film relate to the concept of power used by philosopher, Michel Foucault.
Karin Merx
[1] http://michaeljacksonstudies.org/article/michael-jackson-black-modernisms-and-the-ecstasy-of-communication/ [accessed 21 July 2015].
2. Susan Fast – ‘Seele’
By Ilke Lenz-Nolte and M.V.D. Linden
This chapter, ‘Soul’, from the book Dangerous by Dr. Susan Fast was translated by M.V.D. Linden & Ilke Lenz-Nolte from the site, www.allformichael.com. It has been published with the permission of Susan Fast and its translators. Kopieren des Texts nur mit Genehmigung des Bloomsbury Verlags © Dr. Susan Fast, 2014, Michael Jackson’s Dangerous, Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
3. Michael Jackson, Black Modernisms and ‘The Ecstasy of Communication’
By Michele Wallace
Any evaluative interpretation of Michael Jackson’s recent contribution to the music video scene must constantly struggle for space alongside considerations of consumerism and televisual postmodernism. But perhaps it is precisely these conditions that provide the ground for a different conception of ‘the disinherited and essentially modernist language of subversion and negation’. Music videos are a prime example of how consumer society or late capitalism has co-opted the alternative and/or the oppositional in a once avant-garde rock ‘n’ roll/rhythm & blues aesthetic. A hybrid of music performance documentaries and television ads, music videos not only sell us what we expect to be free, namely our own private and unfulfillable desires, but they also make it increasingly impossible to distinguish between the genuine mass appeal of an artist and the music industry’s simulation of that appeal.
4. LARB – Dancing with Michael Jackson
By Toni Bowers
“Reeves’s powerful dance reminds us that Jackson achieved more than irresistible, superbly marketable tracks, or even magnificent music. His work also remains politically potent. One reason for that is Jackson’s insistence on responsibility and empathy — who am I to be blind, pretending not to see their need? Another is his work’s constantly reiterated invitation: Come and dance with me. We busy shoppers declined to dance and the loss was ours; but Dimitri Reeves and his neighbors chose, more wisely, to dance with Michael Jackson: to turn it way up, take it to others, refuse self-consciousness and judgment, and rejoice.”
http://michaeljacksonstudies.org/article/dancing-with-michael-jackson-by-toni-bowers/
5. ‘The Dream Lives On’: An Academic Conversation (Podcast)
By Elizabeth Amisu and Karin Merx
In this first ever episode of Michael Jackson’s Dream Lives On: An Academic Conversation, Karin and Elizabeth discuss Michael Jackson’s 1991 Black or White short film, directed by John Landis, who was also the director of the Thriller short film. The discussion of Jackson’s ‘Panther Dance’, also known as the ‘Coda’, leads into a conversation on whether or not the Black or White short film is art and whether Michael Jackson himself can really be considered an artist.
http://michaeljacksonstudies.org/the-dream-lives-on-an-academic-conversation/
6. From Throne to Wilderness: Michael Jackson’s ‘Stranger in Moscow’ and the Foucauldian Outlaw
By Karin Merx
In 1993, a horde of Californian ‘police and prosecutors spent millions of dollars to create a case whose foundation never existed’. Their fruitless efforts were to incriminate Michael Jackson, a black artist who was the most commercially successful in the world. Jackson, who was in Russia on his Dangerous tour, wrote the song, Stranger in Moscow, in response to the severity of his accusations, the eagerness of the media to sensationalize them and the willingness of the public to believe them. This essay examines how Michael Jackson’s Stranger in Moscow, relates to philosopher, Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘power’.