Skip to main content

Wasn't nothing strange about your daddy

I wish to make something of a Jackson retraction. My post of yesterday was written before I had watched Michael Jackson's memorial in Los Angeles. In hindsight, it was no circus, but a very stately, and mostly classy event. I was particularly moved by Al Sharpton's pulpit rhetoric, and the phrase he coined - surely to go down in American history - "Wasn't nothing strange about your daddy. It was strange what he had to deal with". As a comment on both racism and the hard road of African-Americans to achieve dignity, but also as a comment on the weirdness of ultra-fame, it is superb. But as a gift to the children, it is even more profound and generous. My own father was strange - and what he had to deal with was too; I am not sure it is always best to deny the strangeness of persons.

I suspect Jackson was, all things considered, not mentally well at all times, and had eccentricities and disorders of the personality that, at the least, led him to modify his body needlessly. However, he was also, on the basis of last night's celebration, a one of a kind guy - or, as the head of Motown (himself a legend) put it - the greatest entertainer of all time. Maybe.

There have been other African-American icons - and I think that Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Martin Luther King Jr., and Ali all did as much or more for America, culturally and politically - not to mention the great Jesse Owens, my hero. Prince, also, musically, is a genius. Billy Strayhorn and Ralph Ellison, and Langston Hughes. What of the great black actors and comedians? Pryor, and Cosby?

Jackson - though - was universal - since song and dance reach all of the globe. He was honoured well and truly last night, with distinction. The BBC coverage was disrespectful, and filled with snarky asides - why were comedians involved? Jackson was not first and foremost a spectacle, and the constant urge to make him into one turned his life into a show that could not go on.
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
Well, I think that is the question: the creative person who allows himself to become a celebrity begs the immediate question: why? Fame wasn't something which happened to Michael Jackson and was out of his hands, it was something he wanted (as far as I can tell). He actively courted it along with the Neverland lifestyle and the fortune which came with it (viz his quite ruthless dealings over the Beatles estate and opportunistic being in places where paparazzi lenses were out and hunting). For all the individual tragedy of his death (and every death is a tragedy, which is something that politicians should possibly be reminded of, at least every now and then... another eight dead in Afghanistan etc etc), the worldwide reaction (whether that be in the form of virtual flowers on virtual graves or cheapo sick jokes on show-off bitchy blogs) has been out of all proportion. That a man who was stupid enough to dangle his child over a balcony is revered while a man who was stupid enough to join the British army and be sent to Afghanistan (and maybe wasn't that stupid but simply had no other choice) to be shot in Helmand Province seems to me to show an ill-judged valuation of human life.
Mon Jul 13, 12:30:00 am 2009
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?
3 comments
Read more

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".
1 comment
Read more

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise
1 comment
Read more