Laurie Essig

Michael Jackson was a freak and that ' s why we loved him

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="147" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption]

American popular culture was born at the freak show.  It was P.T. Barnum who figured out that by displaying freaks for fun and profit, and then circulating images and stories of the freaks thoughout the country and even the world, fortunes could be made. And who were the freaks?  They were, as freak show scholar Robert Bogdan pointed out, performances, acts, lies, and fantasies.  The freaks were any one of us.  Are you tall?  Really tall?  You could be a giant.  Are you a woman with facial hair?  Stop plucking and you could be the bearded lady. And if you happen to inhabit a body that is anomalous, what  a freak P.T. Barnum would have made of you.  Anomalous bodies, the "born" freaks, were easy to make money off of.  Unusually formed hands? Let's say you're half lobster, half boy.  Unusually hairy? How about half wolf, half man. By making exhibits half human, half something else, Barnum could engage his audience's sense of wonder and awe and even, sometimes, outrage over the obviousness of his humbug.  The hybridity of these bodies, a hybridity that were lessons from God before Barnum, made onlookers feel both fully human and left them wanting another look. No one understood the genius of P.T. Barnum, the absolute centrality of the freak show to American popular culture like Michael Jackson, who died tonight at the age of 50. Michael Jackson, Pop Icon, Is Dead at 50 - NYTimes.com. When Jackson grew up, he turned his back on the religion he'd been raised in (Jehovah Witness) and handed his manager P.T. Barnum's autobiography.  Supposedly Jackson said of the book "this is my bible now." Jackson spent years making himself hybrid.  Was he black or white, male or female, straight or gay, adult or child?  When asked to define himself, he refused and became even more famous and more beloved. But Jackson made one fatal, perhaps even postmodern, mistake.  Unlike his god, P.T. Barnum, Jackson put himself , not others, on display.  He invited us to look, to gawk, at his hybridity.  While at first Jackson could play with the figure of the freak, like when he pretended to buy the bones of the Elephant Man, by mid career Jackson was no longer able to stop us from defining him.  Child molester.  Innocent victim.  Musical genius.  Nutcase. But what Jackson really was was a freak.  And that's why we loved him.

Michael Jackson was a freak and that ' s why we loved him

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="147" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption]

American popular culture was born at the freak show.  It was P.T. Barnum who figured out that by displaying freaks for fun and profit, and then circulating images and stories of the freaks thoughout the country and even the world, fortunes could be made. And who were the freaks?  They were, as freak show scholar Robert Bogdan pointed out, performances, acts, lies, and fantasies.  The freaks were any one of us.  Are you tall?  Really tall?  You could be a giant.  Are you a woman with facial hair?  Stop plucking and you could be the bearded lady. And if you happen to inhabit a body that is anomalous, what  a freak P.T. Barnum would have made of you.  Anomalous bodies, the "born" freaks, were easy to make money off of.  Unusually formed hands? Let's say you're half lobster, half boy.  Unusually hairy? How about half wolf, half man. By making exhibits half human, half something else, Barnum could engage his audience's sense of wonder and awe and even, sometimes, outrage over the obviousness of his humbug.  The hybridity of these bodies, a hybridity that were lessons from God before Barnum, made onlookers feel both fully human and left them wanting another look. No one understood the genius of P.T. Barnum, the absolute centrality of the freak show to American popular culture like Michael Jackson, who died tonight at the age of 50. Michael Jackson, Pop Icon, Is Dead at 50 - NYTimes.com. When Jackson grew up, he turned his back on the religion he'd been raised in (Jehovah Witness) and handed his manager P.T. Barnum's autobiography.  Supposedly Jackson said of the book "this is my bible now." Jackson spent years making himself hybrid.  Was he black or white, male or female, straight or gay, adult or child?  When asked to define himself, he refused and became even more famous and more beloved. But Jackson made one fatal, perhaps even postmodern, mistake.  Unlike his god, P.T. Barnum, Jackson put himself , not others, on display.  He invited us to look, to gawk, at his hybridity.  While at first Jackson could play with the figure of the freak, like when he pretended to buy the bones of the Elephant Man, by mid career Jackson was no longer able to stop us from defining him.  Child molester.  Innocent victim.  Musical genius.  Nutcase. But what Jackson really was was a freak.  And that's why we loved him.