HIStory Teaser, Part 1: Triumph of the Will

Willa:  Probably the one work by Michael Jackson that perplexes me the most is the promotional video for his HIStory album, commonly referred to as the “HIStory teaser.” It’s loosely based on Helene “Leni” Riefenstahl’s 1934 Nazi propaganda film, Triumph of the Will, which is such an unlikely source of inspiration for a Michael Jackson video – in fact, I can’t imagine a less likely source! I’ve thought about this promo film for years, trying to understand it, but never arriving at a completely satisfactory answer. I’m always left with the nagging feeling that there’s something important happening with this film that I’m just not seeing.

So I was very intrigued when our friend Eleanor Bowman told me she’d been doing historical research for her three-book series, The Algorithm of Desire, and that her research had given her new insights into this unsettling film. Thank you so much for joining me, Eleanor! I’m really eager to hear what you’ve been discovering.

Eleanor:  Hi Willa. Thanks for inviting me to join this wonderful, ongoing – and much needed – conversation about Michael Jackson. It is always a pleasure, and I learn so much.

You are not the only one who has been perplexed by the HIStory teaser. In fact, I found it really troubling. Looked at superficially, it seems to provide proof positive that MJ was a megalomaniac.

Willa: Which is how many critics interpreted it. Diane Sawyer quotes one of those critics in her 1995 interview with Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley:

The critics have said that it’s “the most boldly vain-glorious self-deification a pop singer ever undertook with a straight face.”

(This part of the interview is about 21 minutes in.) She also questions him about the military imagery in a way that suggests he’s promoting Nazi ideology, which he denies. Diane Sawyer then shows the film and makes it pretty clear afterwards that she agrees with what those critics have been saying.

Eleanor: Which is no surprise. Neither the critics nor the media ever seemed to “get” MJ. For example, to believe he did it “with a straight face,” as Diane Sawyer suggests, is to miss the point of the film entirely. Such an interpretation makes no sense at all in terms of who MJ was and what he stood for.

However, the question remains, how does the HIStory teaser make sense, given what we know about MJ? Because, you can be sure it does. HIStory, like the man whose story it is, is a mystery, but a mystery with the clues laid out for us, often in plain sight. I have found that those things that seem to make no sense on the surface often point to an underlying, but hidden, logic, if you dig deep enough.

Willa: Yes, I’ve found that too. And sometimes the films that perplexed me the most, and were even kind of off-putting at first – like Smooth Criminal and You Rock My World – are really powerful once I’ve found a key for interpreting them.

Eleanor:  Right. And the HIStory teaser is no exception. Although billed as a teaser for the HIStory album, the HIStory teaser is a work of art in and of itself.  It tells Michael Jackson’s story – his story, his side of the distorted and misbegotten story that was being told about him at the time; and, as the word “HIStory” suggests, it shows how Michael Jackson’s own personal story, and his situation, fits into a larger history and is even emblematic of that history. So, the film references in HIStory, including Triumph of the Will, are there because he believed they were relevant to, and would give us an understanding of, his situation.

Just as “Dangerous is Michael Jackson’s “coming of age album,” as Susan Fast says in her book, Dangerous, HIStory – the film and the album – fleshes out who he was in context, the context of his own life as a visionary and an artist, the context of the African-American experience, and the context of imperial culture. It is a damning political critique, an astute cultural analysis, and a powerful personal declaration, revealing heretofore hidden complexities, hidden reservoirs of knowledge, hidden depths.

As you and other contributors to your site have often pointed out, Willa, Michael Jackson’s incongruities frequently make us uncomfortable. And, to me, the most incongruous incongruity of all is his appearance in the HIStory teaser surrounded by the trappings of the most vicious, the most oppressive, military dictatorships in recent history. The juxtaposition of MJ with these images questions our notions of who he is, what he’s about. (“What was he thinking?!”)  No doubt about it, HIStory is risky. But Michael Jackson was a risk taker …

Willa: Yes, I agree. It’s one of his defining characteristics as an artist, I think.

Eleanor:  But, Michael Jackson was never unconscious of what he was about, so he must have thought the HIStory teaser was worth the risk, given what he was up against. He needed a way to get through to people, and with HIStory he found it. HIStory challenges us – it gets our attention – it makes us uncomfortable enough, or mystified enough, to look beneath the surface.

Willa: And according to the Diane Sawyer interview, that was his goal. As he tells her, “I wanted to get everyone’s attention.”

Eleanor:  Well, he certainly got mine! And keeping the faith and reading between the frames as I studied this film gave me a deeper understanding of the man he was and the visionary he is, as well as a greater appreciation of the magnitude of the challenges he faced. Lastly, I see it as proof of his indomitable spirit and his enduring hope for the future.

Having been the object of a vilification campaign that would have flattened anyone else, brutalized by the police, and hounded and harassed by the prosecutor of Santa Barbara County – attacks that on the surface made no sense whatsoever given the lack of evidence against him and the mountain of evidence for him – he analyzed them in terms of the history of the culture to discover what was really behind them. HIStory gives us the results of that analysis. In HIStory, Michael Jackson turns the tables on his accusers, criminalizing the society that was seeking to criminalize him.

Using imagery associated with the evils of empire, but juxtaposing that imagery with images of a man whose deepest desire was to heal the world, HIStory contrasts Michael Jackson’s values with the values of the people acting against him and exposes the origins of those values. Presenting a new kind – a new species – of cultural hero, HIStory makes a compelling argument that the vicious attacks on Michael Jackson arose from the fear that, in his person and his art, he undermined all the assumptions that prop up an imperialist society, a society whose functioning depends on dividing, not uniting, frequently on the basis of race.

HIStory reveals the nature of the attacks on Michael Jackson as political and cultural, the take-no-prisoners approach, itself, proof of his political and cultural power and the magnitude of the threat he represented – and continues to represent – to the status quo – a power and a threat that Susan Woodward recognizes and analyzes in her very interesting book, Otherness and Power: Michael Jackson and His Media Critics.

Willa: I learned a lot from Susan’s book as well. In fact, she’ll be joining me soon in a post about it. But getting back to what you were saying about HIStory, it’s true that it was the first album to come out after the 1993 allegations broke, and the HIStory teaser kicked off the release of that album. And wow … he made it very clear he was not going to be shamed into silence by everything that was being said about him, and by what the police and press had put him through. The HIStory film is boldly defiant. That much is certain.

But it’s interesting that you also see it as directly challenging the “political and cultural” ideology behind it all – not just the allegations themselves, but the way those allegations tapped into pre-existing prejudices and unleashed the cultural fury that followed. I’m really curious to learn more about that.

Eleanor: Well, Willa, as it happens, I am happy to share my thoughts. As you mentioned, while working on my book this summer – and thinking about the relationship of empire to racism, specifically the role imperial cultural values played in the treatment of Michael Jackson – the “imperial” images from the HIStory teaser kept coming to mind.

My book deals in general with the power of myth to shape a society’s way of life, and specifically with the power of the creation myth in Genesis to shape and maintain the imperial way of life through instilling belief in a disembodied God who transcends matter. Genesis removes God, and the sacred, from nature and the material world, elevates him above it, puts him in charge, and creates humanity in his image, creating a transcendent worldview and value system based on division and hierarchy, dividing humanity from nature and mind from body.

Throughout the history of the Christian West, empire after empire has used this worldview to identify a select group or race or nation as those most perfectly “made in God’s image,” and defined them as the “fully human,” elevating them above everyone else, placing them in control, and associating them with mind rather than matter. Those who are controlled, rather than controlling, are defined in terms of body, mindless body. They are generally consigned to doing the less culturally valuable, physical work, and identified as less than fully human – if human at all. For example, in the U.S. Constitution (Article 1, section 2), the slaves were assigned only ⅗ the value of a free person.

Willa: We talked with you about the connections between this ideology of “transcendence” and how it leads to misogyny and racism in a post a while back. In that post, you discussed how “transcendence” is the central concept of Judeo-Christian culture, and suggested that Michael Jackson was literally embodying a new ideology, one of “immanence.” It was so fascinating – one of those conversations that really changed how I see the world. You also explained the dire consequences of this ideology of transcendence, both for humans and the environment.

Eleanor:  Yes, to me, Michael Jackson’s cultural significance lies in the fact that he is the avatar of immanence. Representing an alternative to the transcendent worldview, he also is the embodiment of anti-imperialistic values. So it is fascinating to me that in HIStory, he references Triumph of the Will, which was possibly the most effective piece of imperialist propaganda ever created.

I had always assumed that Triumph was filmed when the Nazi regime was at the peak of its power and that it was a straightforward documentary of an important Nazi gathering. But, actually, as you point out, it was filmed early on, in 1934, and the gathering was organized specifically for the film. So Riefenstahl was not documenting reality but constructing it, providing the visual images that would not only reflect the Nazi worldview, but create it. Riefenstahl was creating the myth that would create and sustain Nazi Germany.

Willa:  Wow, Eleanor, that is fascinating.

Eleanor: According to an article written shortly after her death in 2003, “No documentation of National Socialism today is released without pictures from this film, no other film has formed our visual impression of what National Socialism was, as much as this film.”

Willa:  This so interesting, and actually it ties in with something I’ve been very interested in for a long time – the power of art not only to reflect reality, but to create a new reality.

For example, two very important trends happened simultaneously in the 18th Century: the rise of a new social class that hadn’t existed before (the middle class) and the rise of a new art form that hadn’t existed before (the novel). In Desire and Domestic Fiction: a Political History of the Novel, Nancy Armstrong suggests that this new literary form didn’t just reflect the interests of this new social class, which is how scholars have tended to look at their intertwined history, but that the novel actually helped create the middle class. Armstrong argues that the novel created a new kind of social awareness where people were judged not by their social standing but by their “qualities of mind,” and that this new awareness created the ideological basis for social mobility, and therefore the middle class.

This is the exact same process you’re talking about with Triumph of the Will. It doesn’t document broad public acceptance of Nazi ideology so much as provide a vision of what a Nazi triumph might look like, and in that way helped to make it come true.

I see something very similar with Michael Jackson. Throughout his work, he isn’t just creating powerful art – though he is doing that – but also a new cultural awareness that makes social change possible. He shows us how our current social structures have failed, especially for those who have been excluded or rendered powerless by them, and suggests new cultural possibilities.

Eleanor:  Exactly. He is, as you say, creating “a new cultural awareness that makes social change possible.” Michael Jackson, like Riefenstahl, understood the power of art, in this case, film, to shape and influence how we see the world. Referencing Riefenstahl in his film, HIStory, he announces that he, too, is a myth maker, but he is creating a new myth to create a new reality. And, instead of celebrating and setting the stage for yet another empire and “deifying” himself, as the media and critics thought (see the Diane Sawyer quote above), his myth takes issue with the very idea that some are more equal than others and shatters the imperialistic myth altogether.

He knew that, for most people, HIStory’s Riefenstahl-like imagery – the monumental architecture, the broad expanses of boulevard and city square, rank upon rank of men marching in lockstep – calls to mind Nazi atrocities, not imperial glory, and he had faith that his fans, if not the critics and the media, knew the difference between what Michael Jackson stood for and what Adolf Hitler stood for.

Interestingly, as an African-American musician, MJ represented a group whom the Nazis despised as much as they did the Jews. Listening to “degenerate” African-American music (at that time, jazz) was prohibited by the Nazis and punishable by imprisonment or even death as part of their drive to purify the so-called Aryan race and culture. Here’s a really interesting article that deals with the Nazi’s fear and loathing of jazz, explaining that “in Nazi occupied Europe, … jazz was suppressed; … it bore the stigma of impurity, innovation, passion… all qualities totalitarians frown on (even anti-fascist theorist Theodor Adorno had a serious beef with jazz).”

Willa: This is a very important topic – something I knew nothing about until Midnight Boomer and Ultravioletrae discussed it in comments last June. I’d really like to discuss this in depth. Maybe we could all get together and do a post about it sometime …

So in the HIStory teaser, you see Michael Jackson both evoking and rewriting the narrative of empire and imperialism?

Eleanor: Yes. Costuming the soldiers in the uniforms of the Soviet Union, HIStory puts another nail in the imperial coffin, bringing back memories of the gulag and the KGB (“was doggin’ me”). Adding an American swat team, notorious in African-American neighborhoods for battering in doors and asking questions later, HIStory ups the ante, bringing the evils of empire up close and personal.

Associating Soviet totalitarianism and the American police state (coming soon to your neighborhood) with Nazi fascism, HIStory associates all three with imperial oppression, past and present. Adding Michael Jackson, a black artist with a remarkable vision and a great heart, and his history – both personal and racial – to the mix, HIStory offers hope for the future while reminding us of the past – including his.

Willa: And we know from his other work that this issue of empire is an important one to him. Repeatedly we see him subtly evoking our colonial past, and opposing the lingering consequences of colonialism and imperialism. For example, we’ve talked about that a bit in posts about the short films for Black or White, They Don’t Care About Us, and Liberian Girl. And this longtime concern with the ongoing effects of imperialism is a very important context for approaching the HIStory teaser, I think.

So you believe that, in HIStory, he extends that ongoing concern with empire to include fascism and other authoritarian social structures? That’s really interesting – and it helps explain why he would draw on Triumph of the Will as a model.

To be honest, I’d never watched that film before, but I found the entire thing on YouTube. (Just about everything is on YouTube!) Here’s a link:

I have to say, knowing what we know about how everything went terribly wrong with the Nazi movement, I approached this film with dread …

Eleanor: Before doing this post, I hadn’t seen it either, Willa, only snippets. And I felt the same way. In fact, I even approached HIStory with dread.

Willa: Triumph is very unsettling, as you said earlier. And that fascist imagery is another reason I was so reluctant to watch it. But it wasn’t at all what I expected. And in fact, there were some aspects of it that directly tie in with Michael Jackson in surprising ways.

For example, the film emphasizes that Hitler envisions Nazism as a youth-based movement. Hitler gives five very short speeches over the course of the film, and perhaps his best speech is addressed to what looks like a sea of 12-year-old boys. (This scene starts about 45 minutes in). Here’s what he tells them:

We want to be one people. And you, my youth, are to be this people. We want to see no more class divisions. You must not let this grow up amongst you.

So he’s directing his message to children, pre-teens, and his emphasis is that they are all “one people” – a very Michael Jackson sort of concept. Hitler goes on to say,

And I know this cannot be otherwise because you are the flesh of our flesh, and the blood of our blood. And in your young heads burns the same spirit that rules us. You cannot be other than united with us.

These words – “you are the flesh of our flesh, and the blood of our blood” – really caught my attention, for a couple of reasons. For one, while Hitler is saying that they are “one people” without “class divisions,” he did not in any way believe that all humans or even all Germans were “one people.” Just the opposite. He wanted to maintain absolute divisions between some groups of people, such as Jews and Gentiles, blacks and whites, heterosexuals and homosexuals, the able-bodied and those with disabilities, especially those with genetic disabilities.

He subtly alludes to this in his final speech in the film when he says, “the divisions of the past have been replaced by a high standard leading the nation. We carry the best blood and we know this.” So this issue of blood is a very important one for Hitler because he uses it to promote his ideas of racial purity.

Eleanor:  Yes, knowing what we know, these words make my own blood run cold. Hitler is not talking about just any blood, but “the best blood” – the blood of “our people,” who were created by God.

Nothing will come from nothing if it is not grounded on a greater order. This order was not given to us by an earthly superior. It was given to us by God who created our people.

In these words, Hitler references the first creation story in Genesis to buttress his own ambition, claiming that the social and political order imposed by the Nazis – fascism – comes from God, and that the German people (at least some of them) are made in God’s image, the image of omnipotent and omniscient and transcendent mind. Or as Riefenstahl puts it in the case of Hitler and the Nazis, in terms of “the will.”

Although born a Catholic, Hitler himself was not a believer, but the majority of the German people were. So to legitimize his own agenda, he contextualizes his own views within the framework of Christian belief.  Based on studying this film (and what I know in general about Hitler) it appears to me that he is marketing the Germans and the Nazi party and his own ambitions as representing the purest expression of divine will.

Willa: So is that where the title Triumph of the Will comes from? I’ve been wondering what that title meant …

Eleanor: Well, Willa, I am only guessing. But, will is a manifestation of mind and God’s will, as in “thy will be done,” is an important Christian concept which is pretty widely known. It is also highly probable that the term “will” is a reference to the title of Schopenhauer’s book, The World as Will and Idea. (In German, both titles use the same word for “will.”) As a great mythmaker, Riefenstahl is probably making a number of unconscious and conscious associations – getting as much mileage as possible out of a single word – just as MJ, through multiple associations, is getting tremendous mileage out of a four-minute film. Triumph is Riefenstahl’s rendering of Hitler’s version of the myth of transcendence. Hitler’s will, the will of the German people, and the German people themselves, are mythologized by Riefenstahl as the triumph of God’s will, but what we are really witnessing is the triumph of Hitler’s will.

Those who exercise their will to control others – the master race – are viewed as naturally and essentially superior to those identified with the body, providing a rationale for the systematic dehumanization, exploitation, abuse, and even eradication (in the case of the Nazis) of other peoples, especially people of other races. In Hitler’s world, only the Aryans, only those who carry the “best blood,” were viewed as fully human – all others were seen as vermin, something to be exterminated.

Willa: It’s really horrifying how this idea of pure blood or “best blood” was used to justify racism and genocide. But then looking at Michael Jackson, it’s fascinating that the image of blood is very important for him as well, for the exact opposite reason: to deny racial divisions and other artificial boundaries between us. It’s almost like a metaphor for what he’s doing throughout the HIStory film – he’s taking a cultural narrative propounded by Hitler and completely reversing it.

In Michael Jackson’s vision, blood is one element that unites us. All of us – all races, all religions, all nationalities – we all have blood in our veins. We all bleed when we’re wounded. Our human blood is one of the things that signifies us all as “one people” – truly one people. Michael Jackson beautifully expresses this in “Can You Feel It” when he sings, “We’re all the same / Yes, the blood inside of me is inside of you … Yes, the blood inside my veins is inside of you.”

Eleanor: Yes, he not only denies the validity of the concept that some are more human than others, he redefines what it means to be human in terms of connection, rather than separation, putting mind back in body and humanity in nature. His vision not only erases divisions, it is all encompassing. Expressed in “Planet Earth,” it extends the idea of blood kinship beyond the human, to all life throughout all time, when he says,

In my veins I’ve felt the mystery
Of corridors of time, books of history
Life songs of ages throbbing in my blood
Have danced the rhythm of the tide and flood

Unlike Hitler, who uses blood to symbolize a mind and spirit (and will) unique to the German people (“you are … the blood of our blood … united with us. In your young heads burns the same spirit that rules us”), Michael Jackson uses blood to symbolize the life force which is common to us all. All life, including humanity, is an expression of the sacred power within nature which pulses through our bodies and our veins.

His role in the HIStory teaser is to offer an alternative to the dominant and dominating paradigm and discredit it at the same time. By juxtaposing images of himself – a man who has demonstrated his “humanity” repeatedly – to images of empire, specifically those empires that have ghetto-ized (and worse) the oppressed peoples that he as a black man represents, HIStory exposes the imperial idea of the “fully human” as inhumane, as cruel and corrupt, promoting death instead of life.

In Michael Jackson’s world, no one is more “fully” human than anyone else.  No one is essentially more – or less – valuable based on race or sex or religion or nationality. In Michael Jackson’s world, the desire for kinship and connection and empathy replaces the drive to separate and achieve superiority. Compassion replaces control.

If one’s deepest desire is to join the select club of the fully human, as defined by imperial values, then that desire affirms those values, and the existing order. But if you reject the club and everything it stands for, and you have the power of Michael Jackson, then you could bring the whole power structure down. Which is why he was so dangerous.

Willa:  Yes, but his “power” is an interesting one because he derives his power in large part from desire – from our desire for him and for what he represents, his vision of the future. And this is going to sound really outrageous at first, so bear with me while I explain, but this is another important parallel between Hitler and Michael Jackson, between Triumph of the Will and the HIStory promo film.

I was really surprised by Triumph of the Will because it wasn’t the long speech justifying Nazi values that I was expecting. In fact, it doesn’t go into much detail at all about Nazi ideology, and Hitler’s speeches are very short – mostly 2 or 3 minutes long. The final speech is by far the longest, but even it’s only about 9 minutes. It’s a propaganda film, but swaying an audience through rhetoric doesn’t seem to be the point. Instead, the goal of the film seems to be to create desire – specifically, desire for Hitler and for a vibrant, healthy, strong Germany.

Triumph of the Will begins with 20 minutes of music and images – no dialogue. Twenty minutes is a really long time in a film, especially one that’s less than two hours long. And we see very little of Hitler himself in those first 20 minutes. Instead we see an aerial view of the beautiful architecture of Nuremberg (we as an audience are flying into Nuremberg as Hitler is) and still from the air, we also see massive numbers of troops, columns of troops – like in the HIStory film – marching to the place where Hitler will speak.

Then we see his plane land – there’s a quick glimpse of him descending the steps of the plane – and then we follow his motorcade into town. But we see much more footage of the crowd and their enthusiastic reception of him than we do of Hitler himself.

The point of all this is to build anticipation, to whet desire, and the HIStory film begins the exact same way. In the first half we see troops marching toward the center of town and steelworkers preparing for his arrival. We also see screaming fans, excited children, fainting women. But we see very little of Michael Jackson himself. We don’t even see his face until halfway through this first part, and even then it’s only brief glimpses.

So the first half of the HIStory film precisely parallels the first 20 minutes of Triumph of the Will. Both of these films are building anticipation, creating desire – and it’s a very similar kind of desire. It’s almost a type of romantic love, or even sexual ecstasy. That’s another reason that line “you are the flesh of our flesh, and the blood of our blood” really jumped out at me.

In the Bible, in Genesis, Adam tells Eve that she is “flesh of my flesh,” and this line is often repeated at wedding ceremonies. So when Hitler speaks these words, he is subtly implying that his relationship with his audience is like the bond between a man and a woman. And repeatedly in his songs and films, Michael Jackson implies the same thing – that his relationship with his audience is like a love affair. That idea is reinforced in the many crowd shots in both Triumph of the Will and the HIStory teaser, especially the shots of fainting women, swooning as if in a state of ecstasy.

Eleanor: You are right. Riefenstahl herself was in love with him, and I guess all of Germany fell in love with him – and he had admirers outside of Germany, including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. I was really shocked when I ran across this article on the Express website, published in 2009, which claimed that “The former British monarch told the journalist it would be tragic for the world if the Nazi ­dictator were overthrown. Hitler was not just the right and logical leader of the German people, the Duke insisted, he was also a great man.”

Willa: Wow, that entire article is shocking. I knew he supported Hitler at one time, but I thought that was early on – before the war. I didn’t realize it continued during the war, and even included passing information to the Germans and trying to sway Roosevelt against helping Great Britain. If this is true, it’s very fortunate that he abdicated the throne. I’m going to have to learn more about this …

But I think Riefenstahl’s relationship with Hitler was complicated. I recently read an interview where Quincy Jones describes having lunch with her, and he implies she was rather critical of the Nazi leadership, including Hitler, and said they were all addicted to cocaine. (Jones goes on to say that cocaine “closes down any fear or problem with violence,” which is interesting, especially in connection with the Nazi leadership.)

But of course, Quincy Jones met Riefenstahl long after World War II had ended, and the full horror of what had happened had been exposed. Her feelings were probably very different when she made the film in 1934, before the concentration camps and other atrocities had happened – back when Hitler appeared like a kind of savior promising a new beginning for Germany.

Eleanor: I read that article, too. Isn’t it interesting that Quincy Jones met Leni Riefenstahl?

Willa:  It really is.

Eleanor: In that article, he says he was a big fan. I wonder if MJ learned about Triumph from him. I had assumed it was through his interest in Chaplin. But, maybe not …

Willa:  I had the exact same reaction. It certainly adds another dimension to Michael Jackson’s use of Triumph in the HIStory teaser, doesn’t it?

Eleanor:  As you say, that meeting took place long after the events of World War II. At the time she was making Triumph she said,

To me Hitler is the greatest man who ever lived. He is really faultless, so simple yet so filled with manly power… He is really beautiful, he is wise. Radiance streams from him. All the great men of Germany – Friedrich, Nietzsche, Bismarck – have all had faults. Hitler’s followers are not spotless. Only he is pure.

To me, these are the words of a woman in love. So if Riefenstahl’s feelings are any indication of how people felt about Hitler, desire was a component to his appeal.

But comparing Michael to Hitler in this way is still almost more than I can handle. That’s how toxic this stuff is. That’s why what Michael did in HIStory was so risky.

Willa: I know what you mean. Comparing Michael Jackson to Hitler just feels wrong, on so many levels. Their beliefs, perceptions, vision for the future, emotional response to suffering – everything about them seems diametrically opposed. But Michael Jackson himself drew the comparison in his conversations with Rabbi Boteach, which were published in 2009 as The Michael Jackson Tapes. When talking with Rabbi Boteach about Hitler and the Holocaust, he was clearly horrified:

When I found out the count of how many children in the Holocaust alone died… [starts to break down]. What man can do something like that? I don’t understand. It doesn’t matter what race it is. I don’t get it. I don’t understand at all. I really don’t. What kind of conditioning… I don’t understand that kind of thing. Does someone condition you to hate that much? Is it possible that they could do that to your heart?

(By the way, the parenthetical note that he “starts to break down” while speaking of the Holocaust is Rabbi Boteach’s.) So Michael Jackson is completely opposed to Nazi ideology. Of course.

Eleanor: Of course. It is beyond me how anyone could believe otherwise.  But I guess they did, which is why they were willing to believe that the lyrics “kike me,” etc. in “They Don’t Care About Us” were anti-Semitic (further proof of his “Nazi leanings,” no doubt), when he was speaking for the Jews, not against them. The critics and the media and those who have invested and succeeded in the existing system are its gatekeepers. To defuse his power, they denied it, ridiculing him as an uppity, empty-headed pop star making a fool of himself by puffing himself up and identifying himself with imperial power, when he was clearly critiquing it, as an ideology of hate.

Willa: It is “an ideology of hate.” As he told Boteach, “Does someone condition you to hate that much?” And this ideology of hate is completely antithetical to everything he stands for and believes in.

But as his conversation with Rabbi Boteach continues, he goes on to say this:

Hitler was a genius orator. He was [able] to make that many people turn and change and hate. He had to be a showman and he was. Before he could speak, he would pause, drink a bit of water, and then he would clear his throat, and look around. It was what an entertainer would do trying to work out how to play his audience.

Eleanor: OMG, Willa. I will never be able to look at MJ, standing stock still for a full minute or so and then slowly taking off his Ray-Bans, in the same way again!

Willa: Well, I don’t think Hitler invented that strategy of delaying his “performance” to build anticipation, but he certainly used it very effectively – and so did Michael Jackson. It’s very unsettling to think about, but it’s true.

So it’s completely wrong to suggest Michael Jackson was a Nazi sympathizer as some critics have done, in part because of those passages from Rabbi Boteach’s book. In fact, Rabbi Boteach himself has repeatedly defended Michael Jackson and said the people accusing him are misinterpreting those passages – for example, in a Huffington Post article in November 2009, and another article a couple years later in May 2012.

But while it’s wrong to call Michael Jackson a Nazi sympathizer – far from it, he represents just the opposite – nevertheless, he understood the power of a compelling performer to sway an audience, either for good or evil, and it’s fascinating that that’s how he sees Hitler: as “a genius orator,” “a showman,” and a performer. Rabbi Boteach asks him about this, just to clarify:

Are you the opposite of Hitler? God gave you this phenomenal charisma and while he [Hitler] brought out the beast in man, you want to bring out some of that innocence and goodness in man.

Michael Jackson agrees with Boteach’s assessment, saying “I believe that.”

Eleanor:  Yes, from an early age, he believed he had a special role to play, a destiny. And, I believe that as well.

Willa: I don’t know if it was destiny or not, but he certainly became an incredibly powerful cultural figure – one who literally changed the world.

So it’s important to separate out Hitler’s skill as a propagandist from his ideology. Michael Jackson apparently felt nothing but horror for Hitler’s message, but expressed a grudging admiration for his charisma and his ability to convey that message. Hitler used his talents to promote prejudice and hatred – and in the HIStory film, Michael Jackson is appropriating some of his techniques to promote “love,” as he told Diane Sawyer. Or rather desire. I think it’s more about desire actually, but desire is closely aligned with love.

Eleanor:  Yes, and desire is clearly linked to charisma, although charisma remains a mystery, but a mystery MJ was very interested in understanding.

Charisma is more than a matter of technique. It is tied to the power of the message – and the messenger – to tap into deep and collectively-held emotions, to satisfy deeply felt needs and longings – as you say, desires – the deepest being those associated with survival. Hitler aroused desire in the German people, appealing to their drive to survive, by convincing them that their survival depended on him, and that, under his leadership, they would not only survive but rise again out of the ashes of WWI.

Willa:  That is such an important point, Eleanor, and highlights another important parallel between Triumph of the Will and the HIStory teaser: they were both filmed at a time of deep humiliation and presumed defeat. Triumph begins with these lines written across the screen:

5 September 1934
20 years after the outbreak of the World War
16 years after the start of the German suffering
19 months after the start of Germany’s rebirth
Adolf Hitler flew once again to Nuremberg to hold a military display

(This is a translation – the actual words are written in German.) So the film places itself within the context of Germany’s defeat in World War I and the crippling economic conditions that followed, which was truly a time of great “suffering” in Germany. And Michael Jackson created the HIStory film in 1995 following the false allegations of child sexual abuse, which was a time of great suffering for him. People around the world were twisting his message and calling him a child molester.

But despite this suffering and humiliation, both films announce that they will not be defeated, they will not be shamed. Michael Jackson will not allow others to put their labels onto him – he will define himself – and so will Germany. They will both rise again, on their own terms. As the text at the beginning of Triumph says, this film is documenting and celebrating “the start of Germany’s rebirth.”

Eleanor:  However, Hitler’s vision was not just a vision of rebirth, but a vision of conquest, a vision in which a reborn Germany proved their superiority to all others, and we know where that led.

Willa: Yes, absolutely. That’s why watching that film now, knowing what happened soon after, is so chilling.

Eleanor: And Riefenstahl’s film was very important in creating the desire to see his vision fulfilled – in making the connection between Hitler’s vision and their survival, in showing Hitler as their hero, their salvation. And the desire created, as you say is “almost a type of romantic love, or even sexual ecstasy.”

Collective survival, the survival of a people or a nation, involves more than relationships to other peoples and the land. It also involves sexual relationships which ensure survival from one generation to the next. So, appealing to the drive to survive also arouses sexual desire. And, it is very possible that Hitler used a phrase like “flesh of my flesh” – and Riefenstahl highlighted it in her film – as a deliberate reference to Adam and Eve and sexual love.

So Triumph can be read as a sexual display of sorts. The imagery in Triumph is all about dominance and power and strength, in other words, macho-ness. Think of all those images at the beginning of beautiful young males, emerging half dressed into the early morning mist. Associating images of male beauty with images of political and military strength associates military prowess with sexual prowess.

Willa:  That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about that before, but it’s true that Triumph is filled with images of male power in many different forms …

Eleanor: And as you say, HIStory, like Triumph, builds anticipation and whets sexual desire. Just as we see very little of Hitler in the opening sequences of Triumph, we see very little of MJ. As a matter of fact, we don’t see much of MJ at all, but what we do see of him is really interesting. Before that great shot of his beautiful smiling face, we see his sexy boots and his skin-tight pants. We see him walking – and how he walks! That graceful swagger, the utter confidence.

And just before he salutes, a salute that conveys feelings of empathy and respect for his troops, and leaves the scene altogether, the camera focuses on … his crotch!  A very different kind of, but very effective, male display. Maleness, like humanity, embodied in Michael Jackson, has nothing to do with conquest, and desire for him has nothing to do with the desire to be conquered (à la the romance novels known as “bodice rippers”).

To bring about radical change, to dig up the roots of empire, which he saw as threatening the survival of the planet and the human species – especially one particular member of the human species, himself – Michael Jackson had to use the power of his art to create a new paradigm of survival – a new algorithm of desire.

Willa:  Which is the title of your book series. So we’ve kind of come full circle …

Eleanor: Yes, how did that happen? The algorithm of desire defines the terms of collective survival – from day to day and from one generation to the next. Empires have based survival, both kinds, on the idea of “divide and conquer.”

To bring about radical change, Michael Jackson had to de-link the drive to survive – which drives our interactions with other lands and other peoples, as well as sexual desire – from ideas of separation and control, which meant that he had to redefine the erotic, which I believe he did. Through the power of his art to reach deeply into and touch our emotions, he created new associations. He rewired our brains. He changed what turns people on. A lot for one slim young man to take on – and accomplish.

Willa: Yes, it is. But redefining the erotic is something he successfully achieved throughout his career. I mean, he was the first black teen idol – an object of desire for millions of teenagers around the world: white, black, Asian, all races. That in itself is a powerful redefinition of the erotic.

And he was sexy in a very different way than most of his predecessors. He was incredibly hot, but not in a macho way. He redefined what it means for a man to be sexy.

Eleanor: Yes, she said yes….

Willa: Ha! That’s funny. So you believe that one thing he’s doing in the HIStory promo film is breaking the symbolic linkage between military might and sexual virility, between empire and machismo?

Eleanor: Exactly. What a great way to put it!  And what better way to discredit empire than by referencing the most notorious example of the paradigm of transcendence in recent memory, Nazi Germany. And what better way to reference Nazi Germany than by using the techniques of Triumph of the Will, which displayed both Hitler’s oratory and Riefenstahl’s art, and exploit them to forward his own agenda.

As we have discussed, HIStory was filmed at a very difficult time in Michael’s life. But, looked at more broadly. Michael Jackson appeared on the world stage at a time when people were losing faith in the old solutions and were desperately seeking something new. He knew that the tide was turning, and “the tide, when taken at the full, leads on to fortune” – so, he took it.

HIStory offers us the vision of a new kind of hero, one who is committed to compassion rather than conquest. The power of his art touches us so deeply it changes our lives – opening our hearts and our eyes, making us feel and see things differently, moving us to dance the dance of life, not death.

Willa:  And this idea of a “new kind of hero” is something we also see in Charlie Chaplin’s brilliant satirical film, The Great Dictator, which also works off of and against Triumph of the Will and served as an important influence for the HIStory teaser. That’s what we’ll focus on when we continue this discussion in a second post.

In the meantime, thank you, Eleanor, for joining me. You’ve certainly given us a lot to think about!