Text and Meaning in Michael Jackson's Xscape (part 4) - by Aberjhani
“It is difficult to listen to [Michael Jackson’s] ‘Do You Know Where Your Children Are’ without thinking about the ongoing #BringBackOurGirls campaign.” –Article Excerpt (Aberjhani)
What television audiences experienced with the debut of “Slave to the Rhythm” was Mr. Jackson as transhumanist art in its more positive and inspiring holographic form. Anyone who finds that statement unsettling probably should not.
At least one potential definition of transhumanist art is the creative representation of a person, such as in a work of visual art or literature, which utilizes advanced technologies (or allusion to such technologies) to symbolize humanity as an enhanced species closer to cyborgs or angels than to apes. In its broader philosophical framework, transhumanism is a futuristic ideology that studies both the likely pitfalls and potential benefits of employing technology to enhance the physical, intellectual, and overall psychic capacities of human beings.
If you accept the above definitions and are comfortable acknowledging that transhumanism
as a concept, art form, and movement are quite real, then it should not be too difficult to consider that Jackson himself often employed elements of transhumanist art in his work. The King of Pop in fact utilized his own physical being as a canvas upon which to paint conceptions of humanity that went beyond socially-assigned demographics.
as a concept, art form, and movement are quite real, then it should not be too difficult to consider that Jackson himself often employed elements of transhumanist art in his work. The King of Pop in fact utilized his own physical being as a canvas upon which to paint conceptions of humanity that went beyond socially-assigned demographics.
Critics and Categories
Neither color, nor gender, nor nationalities were categories comprehensive enough to fully define him. Images such as that of the giant statue of himself in the History video (there were nine of them actually), the defiance of gravity in “Scream,” and the body and facial morphing at the end of “Black or White” reveal an entity hungry for an existence without falsely-imposed boundaries. There are other examples as well.
his work as a humanitarian leaves no doubt about his deepest concerns. A more valuable way to acknowledge his use of the genre might be to recognize how it sometimes suited, or accommodated, his battles to break down racial and social barriers, encourage self-empowerment, and replace the impulse to blindly destroy and pollute beauty with a will to consciously create and sustain it.
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Text and Meaning in Michael Jackson's Xscape (part 4) - National African-American Art | Examiner.com
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