Narcissus and the myth of origins
Who is this "me”?
We are tempted to claim that the origin of the voice Is Michael Jackson. We are tempted to believe that the real Michael Jackson is that which you get behind all the glitter and the glasses. That underneath the tattooed eye-liner, the nose job, the bleached skin; and beyond all these stories about Michael we can get back to some true, authentic Michael. That through the reflections, fascination, deflections, commodification, we can strip back to the man behind the mask.
The question here is the question of origin. To posit an origin is to posit Michael as a creator: the mind behind the man behind the mask. However, what is interesting is that Michael Jackson is not so much the wearer of a mask, as both the ·maker of the mask· and at the same time "the mask itself".
To the extent that "Michael Jackson· is seen to have made his face, written his songs and danced to them; he is star and creator, body and body-maker, Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde, Wolfman, Frankenstein, as well as his own monster. lt seems that this doubling of "Michael Jackson· (self and other, man and beast) takes its place within a myth of origin. Trying to account for origin has always articulated itself In a myth: chicken and egg, how the camel got its hump, author as origin of text, and so on. The standard (romantic) version of the artistic origin myth is that the artistic production becomes the ·other" of an author almost as though the offspring of a father. Pygmalion (My Fair Lady) as another myth about this relationship, the artist "breathes lite· as... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline
From Michael Jackson’s video clip Bad, 1987
