Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask, Part 1: Wacko Jacko

Willa: So Lisha, it’s been a while since we chatted. It’s so good to talk with you again!

Lisha: You too, Willa! I’m so excited to jump back in!

Willa: I am too! I always get so much out of our conversations. And I’m thrilled that you could join us, Harriet!

Harriet: Me too! Thank you for inviting me to come and chat with you.

Willa: I’m really looking forward to talking about the new edition of your book, Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask. I loved the 2013 edition, so I knew I was in for a treat, but this felt like a completely new book to me – and I have to say I was blown away! Your ideas just astonished me and really opened up how I see American entertainment history and Michael Jackson’s place in it. 

Harriet: Thank you so much for your kind words!

Willa: Oh, your book was such a breath of fresh air! In your introduction, you took the bold step of chastising the media, noting that while there has been some condemnation of how Martin Bashir “commissioned fake documents” to manipulate Princess Diana, this has not extended to “the equally unscrupulous methods” he used on Michael Jackson. Then you extended your critique beyond Bashir:

The more recent recognition of the all-too routine media misrepresentation and dissection of public figures and intrusion into celebrities’ lives has not involved an apology for or even acknowledgement of the systemic abuse to which Jackson was subjected for the best part of his entire adult life.

That is huge! No other academic book has dared talk about “the systemic abuse” Jackson endured, and certainly none has called for an apology. It felt like such validation of what Jackson’s supporters have been saying for a long time.

But it must have been a lot of work to basically rewrite your book from scratch. So I’m curious, what exactly led you to revisit Blackface Mask and rewrite it?

Harriet: Yes, the new edition was a huge undertaking!

There were several reasons why I came to revisit the original 2013 book, but one key factor was the release of the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland in 2019 and all the hoopla and conjecture around that. We don’t need to go into the details of the documentary’s content here – most of us will be more than familiar with it. But in brief, for those who aren’t, its focus was the stories of two young men and the sexual relations they say they had had as children with Michael Jackson.

As a response to this, I felt that focusing anew on the racial history of American popular culture would help provide a valuable context and argument for how we have got to this point – that is, how we have got to this sort of representation of Michael Jackson and why people are so invested in it. The intention was never to completely rewrite the original text, rather draw out with more clarity its key themes, but I found I had some quite different things to say than I had back in 2013 and more rigorous ideas about how to present them. So I just kept going until I had a new book!

Lisha: It’s an extraordinary effort! Your book helped me understand why infotainment products like Leaving Neverland or Audible’s Think Twice get made in the first place. That these productions advocate a certain position without the slightest curiosity about the solid investigative and legal work that contradicts it, is so revealing. Overall, I think you demonstrate that Michael Jackson is actually a much larger figure in music and society than is currently understood. In many ways, he seems to function as the “Man in the Mirror” of American culture and American racism.

Willa: He really does. I get the impression sometimes that when people like Dan Reed (the director of Leaving Neverland) or Diane Dimond or Maureen Orth or the media more generally look at Michael Jackson, they aren’t really seeing him at all – instead, they’re just seeing a reflection of their own fears and desires. And Harriet, your book really explores how that reflection process happens, historically and artistically. That was so interesting to me.

In fact, your book is fascinating in so many areas! I was looking back through it and realized that I have something marked or underlined in almost every paragraph, or a “Wow!” written in the margins, or a note to myself to do more research about something you mentioned. I suddenly started seeing elements of American cultural history in a whole new way. It’s really one of those books that expands how you make sense of the world.

Lisha: This is so true!

Harriet: That is so incredibly kind of you both! But I really see the revised book as having been a collaborative project. It wouldn’t have come into being at all without the inspirational work of many other writers and commentators out there, including those here on Dancing with the Elephant and not least of course the two of you! You’ve nurtured an amazing body of work here, so thank you so much!

Willa: It really does take a village to understand Michael Jackson’s work, doesn’t it? I’ve learned so much from the community here as well.

So Harriet, you said you began working on the new edition of your book to explore the negative imagery surrounding Michael Jackson – as you put it so well, “how we have got to this sort of representation of Michael Jackson and why people are so invested in it.” In your book, you spend quite a bit of time explaining the cultural phenomenon of “Wacko Jacko.” And as I understand it, you see “Wacko Jacko” as a modern manifestation of blackface – basically, of a group of White people imposing their deformed and debased ideas about Blackness onto Michael Jackson for their own political, financial, and psychological purposes. Am I expressing that correctly?

Harriet: Yes, that’s it, Willa.

Lisha: Yes. In my mind, it’s not going too far to think of “Wacko Jacko” as just a straight-up minstrel character, is it?

Harriet: Exactly. So you’ve both hit on one of the fundamental themes of the book! It might be worth first just providing readers with a little background about the tradition of blackface minstrelsy – or what most people know as “blackface” – before explaining further, if that’s okay?

Willa: Yes, please! That would be really helpful.

Harriet: Great! So blackface minstrelsy was the staged caricature of Black people by White actors and dancers, and it stretches back centuries – way further than a lot of people might realize. It appeared as early as the 1820s and its popularity lasted well into the twentieth century, so that is a huge amount of pop culture history! Although forms of blackface predated it (in European folk rituals, Shakespearean plays and opera, for example), blackface minstrelsy – America’s specific version of blackface – was a phenomenon like no other before it.

Blackface minstrelsy was especially significant in its role as being the first form of commercial mass entertainment in America, and it ushered in a new commodity culture. Its biggest stars – Thomas D. Rice, George Washington Dixon and Dan Emmett’s Virginia Minstrels among them – were the nation’s first pop stars who were revered across America and went on to become sensations in Europe too.

Lisha: This is so important to understand! Blackface minstrelsy wasn’t just an insignificant novelty act, but the beginning of a lucrative American industry that came to dominate the globe.

I was quite struck by something you delve into that hadn’t really sunk in for me before, which is that in the early years, Americans were heavily criticized by Europeans for not establishing their own form of music and art that would serve as a kind of national identity. So when the minstrel shows started to catch on, you describe a tremendous sense of national pride in their originality and innovation. It was a uniquely American form of song and dance that people were genuinely proud of, as opposed to today, when blackface minstrelsy is viewed as cruel and shameful. But it is hugely significant that, at the time, this is how Americans chose to express themselves and to establish their national identity. And then they began exporting these ideas as well. It’s rather shocking.

Harriet: Yes, Lisha, that’s right. At the time, Europe and especially the English really had disdain for America, a country they saw as still a colony lacking its own indigenous identity, and Americans felt a deep sense of inferiority because of that. Blackface minstrelsy provided the solution to this by being uniquely American, fusing European folk traditions and White American humor with African American song and dance. It became the nation’s first major cultural export and, as such, a source of great satisfaction and pride.

Lisha: You convincingly show how minstrelsy, as the very foundation of American entertainment, still resonates today throughout the culture industry. We still see it embedded in almost every form of American popular culture.

Harriet: Oh, very much so, and in many different ways.

Lisha: So what kind of meanings were the early Americans attaching to this form of entertainment, which ultimately became so powerful we still see it resonating in the American psyche today?

Harriet: So it is difficult to explain the meaning of blackface minstrelsy as any one thing because it was notoriously complex. But when it first crystallized in the mid-nineteenth century into what became known as the “minstrel show,” it was fundamentally the expression of White racism through the ridicule and dehumanization of Black people, and especially Black men. Its stock caricatures – the slave “Jim Crow” was the most famous but there were many more – were collectively a White version of Blackness that White people wanted to believe as true.

These images worked to maintain the social status quo that relied on Black subordination. They legitimized and justified the horrors of slavery and generally made White audiences feel better about themselves. Fundamentally, blackface minstrelsy ensured Black people were distanced from Whites by presenting them as being everything White people were not, and it symbolically contained and controlled them amidst fears around a rising African American population.

Nathan Huggins, in his acclaimed book Harlem Renaissance, describes blackface minstrelsy as a means to “White psychological peace,” and I think that is a brilliant way to summarize it. White audiences flocked to see blackface performances for the best part of one hundred years – buying them with money and investing in them in psychologically profound ways.

Willa: “White psychological peace” – what an interesting way to think about blackface and the motivation behind it. So blackface must have answered some deep psychological needs for White Americans. I’m going to have to ponder that a while….

So one of those needs was the formation of a distinct American identity, as Lisha mentioned earlier. I never realized that until reading your book, Harriet – that what it means to be an American (implicitly a White American) was created through blackface minstrelsy. Basically, a (White) American was defined in opposition to the figures depicted on the minstrel stage. So if being an American is defined in opposition to Blackness – a distorted image of Blackness created through blackface – then what does it mean to be a Black American?

Harriet: And that is one of the ironies at the heart of blackface minstrelsy. Although the tradition seemed to be all about defining Black people and their culture in very specific and exaggerated ways, it was actually much more about defining White people, their culture and society through, as you identify, a process of definition through opposition.

Willa: Yes, and that was one of those “aha!” moments that just blew my mind when reading your book. It really shows that when Michael Jackson grappled with and redefined the figures of blackface, as you show so brilliantly throughout your book, he was shifting the very foundations of American cultural history and opening up new possibilities for America’s national identity. The more I read your book, the more I came to understand and appreciate the full extent of what he was trying to accomplish.

Another thing that struck me while reading your book is that blackface minstrelsy predated jazz by several decades, right? Jazz is usually celebrated as the first uniquely American art form, but reading your book, I started thinking that actually blackface minstrelsy holds that honor. And doesn’t that cast American cultural history in a different light!

Harriet: Indeed it does, Willa. Because it is so painful to attend to, blackface minstrelsy very often gets overlooked or downplayed in historical accounts of American culture. As Lisha noted earlier, it’s often perceived rather as something that was just a bit of a novelty act.

But the truth is, blackface minstrelsy really is the foundation of American identity and popular entertainment, and its influence is almost immeasurable. Crucially, for example, it set a precedent with regards to the White appropriation of Black cultural forms, not least music and dance. We saw this process feed into the genres of jazz, theatrical dance, rock & roll and hip hop to elevate White artists from Jack Cole and Fred Astaire to Elvis Presley and Eminem. As we have begun to explore, it also set a precedent of finding cultural expression through “Black” figures, as a means to assuage White insecurities and harness threats of racial difference. This has fed into Black stereotyping that is difficult to shift to this day.

Willa: That is such an important point – and another lesson I learned from your book. Americans have learned to be ashamed of the long tradition of blackface and now like to pretend it never happened. But as you show so well, Harriet, we need to take a long, honest look at blackface minstrelsy because it has had such a huge influence on how we Americans see ourselves even now – specifically, how White Americans define ourselves against fictional portrayals of Blackness, and in that way still “assuage White insecurities” through those fictional stereotypes.

Harriet: More specifically, it is so telling of the impact of minstrelsy when you look at the characteristics it assigned to Black people because they chime so closely with more contemporary Black stereotypes. Blackface characters were comic – they were there to be made fun of – but in their simplicity and primitivism they were animal-like, unpredictable, and could typically threaten violence or sexual violence. They were promiscuous, had scant regard for social and cultural conventions, and were untrustworthy. In addition, they were stupid and careless and, in contrast with attributes relating to their sexuality, invariably childlike or naïve.

Lisha: I feel like you have just rattled off some of the defining characteristics of “Wacko Jacko” here! Michael Jackson is a concept that people often have disdain for or snicker at in many ways you just presented.

Harriet: So we’ve got to where we need to be! These parallels are precisely what Willa introduced at the beginning of our conversation as the media’s portrayal of “Wacko Jacko” being “a modern manifestation of blackface.” Or, as you introduced it, Lisha, a “straight-up minstrel character.”

Now that we have a little background, we can see how this is because not only was “Wacko Jacko” a defamatory caricature, but also most if not all of “Wacko Jacko”’s characteristics were the same as or variants of those I’ve just described above. In this regard, there was a distinct trajectory to “Wacko Jacko,” and it escalated over time from comic and relatively harmless to freakish, sexually deviant, and ultimately criminal.

Developing this theory in my book, I go on to argue that “Wacko Jacko” came to serve a very similar function as traditional blackface caricature in the realm of mainstream White culture and psychology. And this is how, I believe, we arrived at a place where Leaving Neverland could be produced and taken as read.

Lisha: Mind blown.

Willa: Yes, it’s mind blowing but also heartbreaking. I keep thinking about your phrase, Harriet, about “the systemic abuse to which Jackson was subjected for the best part of his entire adult life,” and it’s just so tragic. I really wonder sometimes how he was able to endure it for so long. But it really does show how, when White America feels threatened, it defaults right back to the exact same negative tropes that were established two hundred years ago through blackface minstrelsy.

Harriet: Totally. I think it’s really important to remember that it was at the very height of Michael Jackson’s fame that the media’s construction of “Wacko Jacko” really took off. In other words, “Wacko Jacko” really took hold as Michael Jackson posed his greatest threat yet to our social status quo and the structure of our culture industry. His fame and wealth were unprecedented for a White artist, let alone a Black one, after the wild success of Thriller in 1982-83. What’s more, at a similar time, he took ownership of many White artists’ material, including songs performed by the Beatles and Elvis, and this really upended the music industry racially.

As if this wasn’t enough to contend with, Michael Jackson also began to transgress boundaries of race in other ways, through certain aesthetic choices, as well as push boundaries relating to gender and generation by means of how he presented himself and in certain lifestyle choices.

All in all, from the early 1980s, Michael Jackson posed a major threat to how America had traditionally understood and arranged itself and distributed its power. In my book, I argue that, as a response, his reduction to a caricature symbolically harnessed that threat. And through its dogged repetition, this caricature, like the fictitious images of blackface, in many people’s minds came “true.”

Lisha: This imaginary minstrel character is still so shockingly real in American culture that we have to keep in mind Michael Jackson is but one example of a phenomenon that reverberates throughout the culture. You mentioned the ATV purchase and how it coincides with the whole “Wacko Jacko” phenomenon. A big clue for me is how the ATV acquisition is so often represented as being underhanded in some way on MJ’s part, which makes no sense. I have never figured out why it was perfectly acceptable for an Australian businessman to own Beatles and Elvis copyrights, but not Michael Jackson!

Willa: I never thought of it that way, Lisha, but that’s a great way to frame this. Why wasn’t that Australian businessman attacked the way Michael Jackson was?

Lisha: As John Branca has noted, equally puzzled, it was if Michael Jackson somehow didn’t have the right to own them.

Harriet: Yes! John Branca, who was Michael Jackson’s attorney at the time and present when these deals were going on, has recalled how the feeling in the room was that Michael Jackson “didn’t have the right also to be a savvy businessman.” This echoes the sentiment of soul singer James Brown when he once said of Black recording artists as having been traditionally “in the show, but not in show business,” and that dials right back to minstrelsy!

Lisha: And note how this perfectly mimics the whole premise of American slavery. An economic system based on Whites profiting from Black labor.

Harriet: Exactly, Lisha! Over time, for White Americans, Black culture just replaced Black physical toil.

Lisha: And I feel like Michael Jackson’s tremendous success in entertainment was particularly threatening because it spilled over not just into music publishing but into big business and even political power in a way that was previously unmatched. The intensity of the backlash appears relative to it. For example, consider how Michael Jackson handed market dominance to Pepsi Cola with a successful ad campaign, or how his appearance at the White House upstaged even President Reagan. Soon there was a price to pay.

But Michael Jackson addressed these issues head on through his artistic choices in some pretty fascinating ways. In your book, you zero in on the “Billie Jean” Motown 25 performance and the panther dance coda of the Black or White short film.

Willa: Yes, and this is such an important focus of your book, Harriet – that Michael Jackson wasn’t just a passive object of a White American gaze, but that he actively took on and modified blackface imagery. In fact, he took some of the exact elements used in blackface to demean Black people and Black culture – for instance, the white glove, the too-short pants with white socks, the angular dance movements – and made them glamourous!

Lisha: Not to mention – sin of all sins – he was sexually appealing to White women! They were literally fainting in the aisles!

Harriet: Indeed they were, Lisha!

So yes. In the book, I don’t present the relationship between Michael Jackson and blackface minstrelsy as one-directional and certainly don’t present Michael Jackson as passive. Instead, I go on to explore how he actually responded powerfully and ingeniously, and there are two major ways he did that. The first is in relation to the legacy of blackface minstrelsy in the entertainment industry and contemporary American life, and the second is in relation to “Wacko Jacko.”

Willa: And that’s going to be the focus of our next post. I’m really looking forward to it!

But before we go, I wanted to talk a little bit about the cost of your book, Harriet, which on Amazon right now is $144 for a hardback and $43 for the Kindle version. I know that’s really steep and I can sympathize with readers who feel priced out. But authors have no control over the price, and very little of that money comes back to them, right? I mean, people don’t make a living writing academic books….

Lisha: I assume it’s because academic books attract a smaller audience and require a much more intensive review process?

Willa: I think that’s right, though academic peer reviewers (who are recognized experts in the field) are only paid a small stipend, if that, so I don’t think peer review is a significant cost factor. As I understand it, it really comes down to the small audience. The costs for an editor and all the production costs – copyediting and typesetting and layout and cover design and all that – are the same, whether you’re printing 1,000 books or 10,000. But if you’re printing 10,000 you can spread those costs out over more copies and bring down the cost per book.

So for academic books, which tend to be rather niche and generally only sell 500 to 1,000 copies, the price per book is pretty high – and from what I’ve been able to gather, the main buyers are university libraries. They can afford $144 per book, though that’s pretty steep for an individual.

Harriet: Yes, that’s all as I understand it – production costs are high for the publisher and sales are relatively small.

But as well as for the publisher, there are a lot of overheads for an author. These included for me the purchase of resources (such as journal articles and books similarly priced to mine), copyright fees for the use of images, and a substantial fee for a professional index. Not to mention the hours upon hours of time and dedication!

Willa: Jeepers, I hadn’t thought about the overhead costs! So it sounds like authors are lucky if they break even. I did know about the intense work required – it truly must be a labor of love! And while I agree your book is expensive – for reasons completely beyond your control – if readers have access to a university library, they should be able to check it out for free, right Harriet? Or at least an electronic copy?

Harriet: Yes, university libraries should be able to source the book for their students, and/or offer individual chapters, too.

A paperback edition is due out later this year which will be more affordable. But in the meantime, Routledge has kindly offered Dancing with the Elephant readers a 30 percent discount on their website using the promotion code MJBM30.

Willa: That’s great news! And I have to say, if readers can afford it or somehow luck into a used copy, your book is gorgeous! Routledge did a great job with it. It feels really nice to hold in your hands.

Harriet: I agree, Routledge did brilliantly. I like the soft, matte finish.

Willa: I do too, and I love the cover image!

Harriet: Oh, I love it too, Willa! And on that note, I’d really like to express my deepest gratitude to photographer Steven Paul Whitsitt for allowing me to use one of his photographs! It’s such a powerful image – just wow! And Steve chose it, so that makes it even more special.

Willa: It really does. It’s an amazing, defiant picture – one I hadn’t seen before – and it led me to look up and discover other incredible photos he’d taken of Michael Jackson. Here’s a link to some of them, including a series of Charlie Chaplin-style photos that I love, along with a wonderful story he wrote about Michael Jackson’s respect and affection for Chaplin.

Harriet: Oh yes, that story is a treat!

Willa: It really is. So thank you again for joining us, Harriet! I can’t wait to talk with you some more.

Harriet: Thank you both for having me! There’s so much more to explore!