Michael Jackson: Grasping the Spectacle - Chris Smit (ch. 12 & 13)

1. Name of author, name of essay/chapter reporting on:

Christopher Smit, Michael Jackson: Grasping the Spectacle, chapters 12 and 13

2. Your articulation of their thesis:

Chapter 12 describes the religion of Michael Jackson – how Michael himself came to be almost a religious symbol in the world, with his many acts of humanitarian aid, but also how his personal religion affected his image, choices, and career. The author explores what it means to be religious, quoting a source that claims that “we can never escape a religious interpretation of the world.” It is certainly easy to describe Michael in religious terms – his personal religion led him to write music that would inspire his audience, to drive himself as hard as he could to perfect his performances, and to behave in what he would consider a “godlike” fashion. The author of chapter 12 in essence argues that one cannot look at Michael Jackson’s life without considering his religion and the way religion/religious imagery/language fashioned his life.

Chapter 13 posits that after Michael’s death, his memorial service was an attempt to revise any odd, unusual, ‘wrong’ things in his life – after his death, the people in his life trying to erase parts of his identity to perfect it and turn it into something more easily-consumable. Thus, they offered to the audience a morally-perfect kind of Christ figure – even in his existing strangeness, he became a sort of sacred figure to society, immortalizing him in his uniqueness and portraying him as existing on a transcendent plane.

3. At least three links or images that illustrate the ideas of the article:

1. The author of chapter 12 describes Michael’s religion using the term ‘bodhisattva’ to describe him. I didn’t know what this word meant, so I looked it up. While the author doesn’t try to argue Michael as a Christ-figure at all, and thinks that that position is simply one extreme that it’s possible to inhabit on the spectrum (the other extreme is Michael as the Devil), I thought this use of the word shows a lot about how the author really feels about Michael – the author saw Michael as a man who was undergoing a lot of stress and persecution and judgment so that others wouldn’t have to, and that sounds a lot like Jesus to me.

2. The author of chapter 13 describes how Michael appealed to his fanbase so well because of his striking difference from the “majority” of society – he was strange, and odd, and abnormal, and this appealed to others who felt the same way. This strongly reminded me of another pop star who’s pretty famous these days: Lady GaGa. Lady GaGa is such a decidedly abnormal individual, yet she has a gigantic fanbase. The author would argue (and I think I would agree) that these fans identify with Lady GaGa because they don’t feel normal and/or accepted, either. Lady GaGa has given her fans their own social-networking-type-site on the internet where they can exchange their stories and what makes them “Little Monsters” (the title her fans go by).

3. In chapter 13, the author mentions that, in his memorial service, the different speakers all emphasized how “real” Michael was – how normal and unremarkable he was. I feel like this happens to celebrities all the time – people (for whatever reason) assume they must be different from non-famous people somehow, but really they’re just like everybody else. The most recent example of this that I have seen is a tweetfrom Liam Payne, a member of the biggest boyband in the world, One Direction. After meeting Jay-Z, Liam tweeted that he ‘met his biggest idol and couldn’t even look him in the eye.’ Awww! Celebrities get nervous when they meet famous people, too – no matter how famous you are, it’s still exciting and nervewracking!

4. At least two discussion questions that will help your reader develop the ideas of the article:

1. The author of chapter 12 quotes a writer who states that “we can never escape a religious interpretation of the world.” Do you agree with this (or does religion sometimes simply not play a part in some aspects of the world)? (Perhaps a better place to start might be by asking what the author of chapter 12 means by “religion.” How does he/she define it?)

2. The author of chapter 13 discusses different crimes and their varying depths of unforgivable-ness, illustrating to the reader how sexual immorality is much more easily-forgiven than pedophilia, and pedophilia is even more difficult to “forgive” than murder is. As a Christian, do you think it should be equally easy to attain forgiveness for any sin? Should there be sins that are more difficult to forgive/atone for, or that are simply unforgivable and impossible to repent for?