Fish, Céline, Audrey, and (yes) Michael

The word from Wing-Kai in Shanghai is that blogs are still being blocked in China, making Fish's blog on his BSC study-tour a moot point.  However, you just have to think that this could be the seed for a new media / int'l media policy senior-sem kind of paper, right?  In the meantime, if anyone reading this knows Eric Fischer, and is looking for China blogs, you might be best served to check his facebook a/c instead for updates.  We might get a deluge of stuff on the blog once he's back...

In the ever-growing "Things We Like About Toronto" file, let us now praise the 33 1/3 night bringing together readings and discussion on the series' books on Céline Dion and Elliot Smith.  Those who took COMM 399 ("Popular Music, Communication & Culture") with me last fall are nodding knowingly--the rest of you need to check out Carl Wilson's book (subtitled A Journey to the End of Taste) now.  If anyone has read Matt Lemay's book on XO, I'd love to hear what you thought...

Caught a charming little film called How to Steal a Million (1966) last night--Hepburn & O'Toole are solid together, and seeing Hepburn into any number of chic '60s outfits (the dresses!  the hats!  the sunglasses!--seriously!) and one hell of a red subcompact (see above) is worth a look...

And what would this week's blog entries be without yet another MJ reference?  Mowing the lawn and listening to podcasts yesterday, I noted yet another King of Pop moment from left field.  This time it was This American Life, which organized their show in four acts, each named by a Jackson song, topped by the "Man in the Mirror" outro.  I believe the show was sent out on Saturday, so this must have been something of a last-second choice (unless they recycled this particular old show on the basis of the MJ organizational principle).  It was understated, and more poignant for it...

Michael is everywhere!

A postscript of sorts to yesterday's post... Finally sat down this morning to watch (& send off) the Netflix DVD that's been languishing on our kitchen table for at least two weeks, a 2000 Oscar-nominated Belgian film called Everybody's Famous.  I won't give too much away by saying that our protagonist kidnaps a national star in a bid to break out of an increasingly desperate mid-life turn of events--he himself is a frustrated songwriter hoping to jump-start the career of his daughter, who is floundering on the Flemish star-tribute circuit...

Anyhow, the father shows up to negotiate his demands wearing a Michael Jackson mask (which I unfortunately cannot manage to find a picture of on the web--someday I'll sort out how to do screen-shots).  A jarring yet oddly moving moment--and another nod to MJ's global reach...

Remembering: Michael

Time will tell if folks will truly remember when / where they first heard of Michael Jackson's passing (why this particular fascination?  do people need to feel "a part of" the story?  trace it back through not only 9/11, but also Diana, Lennon, Elvis...), but for me, I was folding clothes and listening to NPR.  At that point, it was an unconfirmed report, but I hopped over to CNN while finishing the laundry.  Turns out I watched a lot of TV on MJ this weekend, and heard not a few songs on the radio to boot--collective, mediated mourning...

I was pretty much in Michael's marketing sweet-spot circa Thriller--an 8th grade music (video) enthusiast.  Granted, my copy of this album was in fact one side of a Maxell D90 cassette recorded from Tony Wilson (the other side had a Pat Benetar live set, if I'm not mistaken), and I was never a "fan" the way I was about new wave artists like Mr Numan (or even Prince, for that matter)... But Michael Jackson was someone who really transcended culture cliques--or perhaps better to say, race-based entertainment boundaries of the 1980s...

Favorite musical moments from Jackson's songs returned in force this weekend: the squeal of delight as "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" kicks, the bubblegum fizz of "ABC," afro-beat echos in "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"... Video moments I'd forgotten, like the nod to Do the Right Thing as MJ goes postal at the end of "Black or White," Steve Stevens giving it the ol' college try in "Dirty Diana," Cher trying her best to keep up with a choreographed Jackson 5 (good luck with that)...

Back in the day, I taught a class at BSC called "Mass Communication Theory & Research," and one year we read a solid book by Jason Mittell called Television and Genre, which had a chapter on Michael Jackson and music videos.  MJ is so intertwined with '80s-era MTV that it's hard to imagine one without the other.  So it was eye-opening read for the whole class (myself included) to find that in fact MTV had refused to air Jackson's first single off Thriller.  It took the entire corporate weight of Columbia/Sony to get MTV to ease up on it's lillywhite playlist policy.  (For media studies folks who might be reading this, seek out this chapter--it's an enlightening window into race and pop culture in Reagan's first term.)  This helps to explain why even now I am still sorting out all the solid music made by African American artists in the 1980s that I never really sorted out at the time--to say nothing of whole histories of blues and jazz...

The 24/7 news cycle lumbers on that Friday, with Larry King interviewing Céline Dion & Cher.The most surreal moment of the evening comes with Randy Jackson ("No relation!" King dutifully notes)  on the line.   We see a decontextualized image of a helicopter--King, only mildly flummoxed, learns through his ear that the copter appears to be carrying (Michael) Jackson's body, prompting him to ask (Randy) Jackson if maybe he knows where the flight is headed?  Randy does not...

I've read some pretty nasty stuff on facebook and elsewhere on MJ's passing--and I guess I can understand it, if you believe he was guilty as charged in the various molestation charges.  But it seemed oddly dissonant to me--something even now I'm not terribly excited to engage.  I think of Jackson's struggles these days (or my mediated understanding of them, of course) in terms of Herman Gray's book Watching Race, which is about television, race, and cultural politics in the era of Reaganism (coming this fall to a COMM 300 virtual classroom near you).  MJ's too-overt wrestling with his own racial identity is starting to become a means for to talk about race in the USA in the 1980s (and beyond)...

We flip to MSNBC, where the helicopter has landed--Jackson's body has been moved from UCLA Medical Center to a helipad at USC, which is close to the LAPD Coroner's Office (where by now two autopsies have been carried out and reported upon) and Keith Olbermann narrates the transfer of the body into a waiting van.  Ambulance chasers, all of us--we watch (and watch again) as the nearly-formless, sheet-covered body is slipped into the van, which drives uneventfully to the Coroner.

He is gone.

I turn to my wife and say something inane about the universality of death.  However wrongfully, I can't just not say anything...

Persepolis gets my vote!

Seems to me that the foreign films that have gotten the most buzz / traction this past year (Golden Door, 4 Months..., Persepolis) have unsurprisingly all gotten passed over for the foreign language Oscar. Maybe that's how it should be, as often films get catapulted into our consciousness as "Oscar-nominated" or even "Oscar-winning," and we've already sorted these out. And Persepolis is nominated for best animated feature (what are the odds?!?). So.

My COMM 371 (Global Cinema) students are weighing in on who they think will (or should) get the Oscar on Sunday--I have committed to sorting out my guess / vote by then, too, so look for that later in the week. In the meantime, though....three cheers for Persepolis, which Lorka & I got to see this afternoon. The film is adapted from a graphic novel via animation--I'm embedding a teaser here:



Don't worry--the film has subtitles in US theaters. But what I love about this clip is how American popular culture circulating globally becomes fodder for youthful rebellion....although to placate the Old Lady Morality Police (circa early 80's Iran), the young girl tries to pass Michael Jackson off as Malcolm X. Priceless!