Why Didn't I Go to Grad School??? Why I Didn't Go to Grad School...

I've been trolling the internets for days looking for excerpts from the Yale University conference on Michael Jackson, "Regarding Michael Jackson: Performing Racial, Gender and Sexual Difference Center Stage." I just didn't expect to find them in today's New York Times. Read 'em and weep...

[I]n this mirrored space..., there is a blurring between Jackson himself and his commodified image, an image reflected in his typically theatrical costume which signifies Jackson-as-pop-star/Jackson-as-product. This blurring of self and image occurs to such an extent that these become simulations of each other, thereby precluding any possibility for a self-realization based on a separation between self and image/other. ... In the sartorial lushness of the photograph, there is a spectacularization... of the body: in terms of this spectacularization, the reflected image is sited in what Baudrillard would refer to as the "hyperreal" - the more real than real - where the self is controlled by, and in fact becomes coextensive with, the aesthetic of its spectacularized image - in Jackson's case, the image of the superstar. ...
This leads one to ask the inevitable question: does this, in effect, mean that Michael Jackson is impersonating himself?

Posted by Jason at October 24, 2024 01:00 PM