I made this with my hands...
(please excuse the polyticks portion, it was a class requirement
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Michael and Me
“Opinions are like noses: everybody has one.” That was my grandmother’s P.C. version of the old adage. It’s a simple enough phrase, but if you really dig into it, you’ll find it to be a rather complex theory. But breaking anything down to its elemental properties, be it a phrase, a lifestyle, a car, a religion, a song or even something as simple as somebody’s nose takes time. Rarely do any of us have the time it takes to go about deconstructing everyday things. A large portion of our day is spent taking in things superficially. Quick observations lead to quick assessments with opinions formed in the blink of an eye. A brief study of just about anything will reveal little more than just an object’s form. It takes time and a little mental spelunking to reveal a subject’s content. For the most part, posthaste assessments are not that big a deal, but sometimes, depending on its relevance, choosing to skim a subject’s surface can have detrimental consequences. This takes me back to noses, Michael Jackson’s nose to be precise. Without trying to sound gross, if you look deeply enough into something as mundane as Michael’s nose, you will see the importance of a subject’s content, or lack thereof, and the roles content and form play when forming an opinion, especially in a climate that celebrates pop culture.
I guess I should preface this paper by stating that I’m not a rabid MJ fan. I grew up listening to the Jackson 5 and have been known to sing along with most of his songs while driving alone in the car, but I’ve never purchased anything Michael put out. I do, however, in a very detached way, feel a certain connection with the man. Not on an entertainment level, but in that as children of the same era, we essentially grew up together. Because he and I were close in age, our physical and mental evolution should have been on par with each other. I write “grew up together” because we both did, in fact, physically grow; only Michael seemed to purposely halt his mental and emotional growth. During the time in his life when intellectual growth should have been occurring within Michael, an odd surface transformation began: his nose began to change. The longer he fought off the natural progression of intellect, the smaller his nose became, almost to the point where it appeared to be a fake, empty prosthetic device. It’s as if his body and mind struggled to remain balanced. Michael died looking, acting, and sounding nothing like the fifty year-old man he was. I, on the other hand, a typical human with average IQ, have found my interests becoming more cerebral as I age. Those quick superficial decisions I made in my youth have been replaced by more drawn out, time intensive analyses of things. Not only do I think smarter, I still have the same misshapen nose I started out with. Michael’s nose ties into the discussion of form and content and why a balance between the two is necessary in the digital age where computer users are more likely to skim through information sources just because it’s faster.
I think it’s safe to say that electronic sources like computers and other forms of digital media are the primary sources the current generation uses to take in information. Computer processors help dictate the speed with which information can be accessed while online. Moore’s Law states that “the number of transistors incorporated in a chip, will approximately double every 24 months,” essentially meaning that computers will double their speed every two years. Gordon Moore is a cofounder of Intel, a leader in computer processors and he penned this law in 1965, oddly enough, right about the time Joe Jackson was molding his boys into the Jackson 5. The speed with which a computer can provide a human with information appears to have limitless bounds. But the speed with which a human can process that information has its limitations, thereby creating a struggle within the human for balance. Author and Researcher Nicholas Carr explains the experience in his book The Shallows: “We’re distracted by the medium’s rapid-fire delivery of competing messages and stimuli”(118). When distracted, the brain shifts focus, leaving any content discarded in its wake, much the same way the fibro-fatty content of Michael’s nose was discarded in favor of a simplistic form.
Michael was the undisputed King of Pop. The pop medium is, by design, something that is fast paced and easy for the mind to digest. Most pop items like art, literature and music are form-driven entities, meaning the artist is looking for more of a sensory response from the audience than an analytical response. Looking back into songs that Michael recorded at different stages of his development as an artist provides a glimpse into where Michael was in his development as a human. When you compare and contrast Michael’s work against that of his peers, it becomes clear that Michael chose to retard his brain’s natural evolution. But this requires looking at Michael as a simple human being, and not as a larger than life manifestation of all things pop who lived outside the same mental constraints all the rest of us are subjected to.
One of Michael’s musical counterparts of the time is Andy Partridge. Andy is the driving force behind a rather obscure band (at least in the States) called XTC. XTC quickly rose within the British pop community playing original songs with quick tempos and simple rhythms. “This is Pop” was one of their earlier hits. Written in 1978, its unsophisticated lyrics and catchy beat is indicative of the type of song an artist would put out early in his or her career. The phrase “this is pop” cycles through the song so many times one might think Andy ran out of words that rhymed together and used the phrase as filler. Twenty six years later, a look into Andy’s lyrical content finds him no longer swimming within the shallow constraints of the pop pool. In a self-reflective song titled “The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul”, Andy writes, “The man who sailed around his soul, from East to West, from pole to pole, with ego as his drunken captain, greed, the mutineer had trapped all reason in the hold. The man who walked across his heart, who took no compass, guide or chart, to rope and tar his blood congealed when he found his-self revealed ugly and cold” (Chalkhills). It’s clear that Andy has not only grown as a lyricist, but as an introspective human as well.
A look into Michael’s craft and the songs he chose paints a much different portrait of a man and his journey through life when contrasted to that of his peer Andy. Trowbridge Publishing is an online resource for transcribed interviews and quotes from people within the music industry. In October 2002, Trowbridge published a transcript of a VH1 interview with Michael. In the interview Michael is asked which of his songs were autobiographical. Michael responded by citing several from his collection, but the first he mentioned was “Stranger in Moscow”. Musically, the song has a quiet flowing melody with Michael’s voice gently floating over the notes. The lyrics are almost hidden within the song. If you pull the lyrics out and look at them separated from the music, the words appear to be somewhat juvenile: “Here abandoned in my fame, armageddon of the brain, KGB was doggin' me, take my name and just let me be, then a beggar boy called my name, happy days will drown the pain, on and on and on it came” (AZLyrics). When you compare these lyrics to those Michael wrote fourteen years earlier for “Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough”, there is no real difference in depth. Fast forward to 2001. In Michael’s last studio album Invincible, you see no more depth in lyrical content than when he first ventured out on his own and away from his brothers at the age of seventeen. Michael made his money, not by asking listeners to dive into his soul via the lyrics: He wanted them skimming the dance floor’s surface.
The human mind grows and expands not only in a physical sense, but in a literal sense as well. A semi-simplistic explanation is that there are three stages of development where form and content play different roles. In the early stages of development, form plays the more dominant role. During the middle stage, the weight that form carries and weight that content carries have a tendency to balance each other out. In the later stage of development, content is in the forefront. As a father of four, teacher’s aide in Alternative Education and Special Education classrooms, and all-around old guy who’s learned a thing or two, I know this to be true. As a child you want the shiny thing dangled in front of you, then as a young adult, you try to balance having fun with earning a living. The golden years are spent wandering the aisles of Barnes and Noble looking for a copy of Walden while wearing black socks and sandals because they are comfortable and you’ve learned not to care what people think. The art of writing an essay is also a good example. In grade school, the essays basic form (structure) is stressed by the teacher. As you age, form remains relevant, but content starts to play a more involved role. At the collegiate level, basic form should almost be invisible to the reader, leaving content left to do the heavy lifting.
Let’s get back to Michael’s nose for a second. It would appear that staying relevant within the pop community meant Michael felt forced to reign in the body’s natural aging process, not only in the mental sense, but in the physical sense as well. Pop music has traditionally been the sport of youth, with young artists seeking the admiration and wallets of their fans. Many people, fans or not, speculate as to why he went about the physical transformation process that he did. Some think he did it because his father was abusive and some are inclined to think that he wanted to appear more “white”. I think, that by accident or design, it was the manifestation of an inner struggle within Michael’s mind. The natural evolution where content attempted to push past form for superiority was purposely being held in check by Michael in an attempt to remain King in a superficial realm. It’s almost as if his nose said “Fine, you want no content… I’ll show you no content.” I had a pair of shoes when I was sixteen that I thought were unbelievably cool. They fit for about two months before my feet outgrew them. I chose to continue wearing them, favoring the style/form over the pain caused by cramming my foot’s content into a restricted space. Remembering the discomfort I dealt with during that short time frame, I can’t imagine the pain Michael felt restricting his mind’s expansion for as long as he did.
The proper balance between form and content is all relative to whatever the subject is. In his book Everything Bad is Good For You, author Steven Johnson uses current pop media staples like Grand Theft Auto and The Real World to help build upon his theory that even those things that are widely acknowledged as “bad” can, in fact, be viewed as beneficial in regards to cognitive learning. He refers to the process as The Sleeper Curve. In the book’s introduction he writes, “I believe that the sleeper curve is the single most important new force altering the mental development of young people today” (12). The problem with this statement is that, later on in his book, Johnson asks his readers to remove any negative and potentially destructive content from this developmental process. Jello is a food source that has form but no content (spend a day eating nothing but Jello and you’ll see what I mean). The implications of filling your body with a substance devoid of content, much like Jello, where you are conscious of the fact that you are ingesting something without content, is far less destructive than purposely immersing yourself in something with known bad attributes. It’s like eating a shit sandwich and telling yourself, “Well, it looked like a sandwich and sandwiches are nutritious” all the while ignoring the crap between the bread, not to mention the bad taste in your mouth. Johnson appears to be a “the glass is hall full” kind of guy, and I commend him for that, but in selling his theory of subliminal learning, he neglects the reality that most things that reside within the pop world are, in fact, by design, more half empty than they are half full. I find this approach to be somewhat disingenuous and in some ways dangerous.
So you may be asking yourself, “Why is there a push to sell form over content, and why does this even matter?” The world’s population is currently hovering somewhere around seven billion and most of us fall within the average IQ range. Those of us with low to average IQ’s do not buy/use/understand the same things the “gifted” ones do. There is an intelligence ceiling that all are subjected to. But the reverse is true with regards to simple understanding. The MENSA member not only gets to partake in more complex thought, but he or she is afforded the opportunity to skim simplistic concepts as well. Pop mediums like art, music, movies, and advertising share a much wider market thanks to this. The larger the role content plays within a subject, the narrower the audience gets. People of all IQ’s can listen to a Michael Jackson album and take something away from it, but not all will listen to an Andy Partridge and Harold Budd collaboration and appreciate the depth of its content. In his research paper The Messages of “The Medium is The Message” author and researcher Jay Rosen writes in his review of Marshal McLuhan’s book The Mechanical Bride, how McLuhan was embarrassed by his book’s thesis that “the medium was the message” or more simply stated, that form was more important than content (45). Rosen goes on to add that while McLuhan’s original theory was relevant, his interpretation of McLuhan’s embarrassment stemmed from the realization that the average person of average IQ would not take the time to fully understand those distinctions (46). Simply stated: simplicity sells.
For most of us, music, art, and advertising play a part in our everyday lives. Typically, those roles are superficial and insignificant, not part of any “big picture”. Politics, on the other hand plays a much larger role. For the bulk of us, that role is hidden from view. We go about our days, not giving much thought to the depth, complexities and underlying reach that politics has on our everyday lives. During his 2008 Presidential campaign, Barack Obama utilized pop media like no other candidate before him. In a recent commentary titled The Pop Presidency of Barack Obama, author Tevi Troy paints a picture of a candidate well-versed in not only what out there makes up pop culture, but how best to use those same pop entities as a way to sell himself. Using celebrities to help sell a candidate is nothing new, but as Troy points out, “Obama has sold himself as the pop culture president when pop culture had evolved to a point where no single source-no Walter Cronkite, no New York Time, no I love Lucy-either dictated or reflected the nation’s tastes” (46). Obama was/is the master at picking media outlets that are inclined to cast him in a positive light. Advertising his agenda by utilizing pop sources known to attract people who just skim the surface, meant that he not only picked up votes from the intellects that agreed with and understood his agenda, but he also appealed to the much larger market, those of us who don’t break the surface looking for depth. With recent events regarding the President’s healthcare initiative, we see President Obama’s approval numbers slipping to dangerous lows. Those people who were sold a simplistic version of a complex issue via pop mediums are pushing back against the reality of having a complex content-driven structure forced upon them, much like the concept Nicholas Carr talks about in regards to computers and how humans react to digital overload. I find it ironic that chief amongst the health care complaints, are those directed at the federal website. According to Stephen Johnson, “There is a kind of exploratory wonder in downloading a new application, and meandering through its commands and dialog boxes” (122,123). People meandering on the Obamacare website are actually pissed about having to deal with the very same things Johnson claims we subliminally enjoy.
A much quoted phrase states “You live by the sword, you die by the sword.” It would appear that “pop” and “sword” are interchangeable words. It can be argued that restricting his mind and body’s natural evolution caused Michael’s premature death. The official cause of Michael’s death was drug-related. I believe Michael used the drugs as a way to quell the pain caused by restricting the natural evolution of his intellect. During the child molestation trial of 2004 (a critical moment in his life) Michael, who, at age forty-five should have had the intellect to properly articulate his innocence, chose instead to express himself in the form of a show by dancing on the roof of an SUV parked outside the courthouse (CNN). Will all artists who fight a similar battle suffer the same fate? It’s hard to say. Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber are two examples of prominent figures within the pop community who appear to be headed down the same path Michael took, slowly deteriorating before the public’s eye. Their surface appearances and actions have left many scratching their head thinking “WTF” much the same way many of us did when Michael took the bandages off his face.
Not all pop figures or mediums are bad for you, it’s all relative. The danger comes when important issues like education, politics, or even religion are formatted in such a way that favors the medium over its message. Procedures involving rhinoplasty and gastrointestinal complications due to digesting fecal matter will no longer be covered under the new health care law as of 2014, regardless of preexisting conditions.
