The Michael Eric Dyson Reader

by Michael Eric Dyson

  In “Thriller” Jackson has managed, in his own peculiar and idiosyncratic manner, to encapsulate and represent certain of his views about evil and about human nature and human identity. Jackson as werewolf indicates the possibility of the radical instability of human nature and reflects the underlining of absolute distinctions between good and evil. The werewolf indicates the possibility of human beings embodying radical forms of evil and inflicting evil on other human beings, whether psychologically or in empirical events of social malevolence. The werewolf also indicates the Other, whose very embodiment occasions fear in those he or she encounters.

  In his song and video “Bad,” Jackson turns to more familiar cultural and social territory, as he examines the terms of existence for those who must straddle barriers between two worlds divided by race and class. Jackson searingly probes the complexities of making judgments about moral issues generated in the urban inner city. “Bad” is a takeoff on the Edmund Perry story.21 Edmund Perry was a brilliant Harlem youth who graduated with honors from Phillips Exeter Academy, a prestigious prep school in New Hampshire, and was awarded a full scholarship to Stanford University. Ten days after his graduation, while back home in Harlem, he was killed on New York City’s Upper West Side by a white policeman, Lee Van Houten, who claimed that Perry and his brother Jonah had viciously beaten him during a robbery attempt. Perry’s story is told in a controversial book, Best Intentions, by Robert Sam Anson.22

  “Bad” opens with a full camera view of Duxston prep school, couched in winter snow and obvious opulence, supported by ominous strains of music. As with “Thriller,” the serenity and wholesome environment masks the potential for evil that lurks within, as Hitchcock’s proverbial clean suburban landscape conceals the absurdity underneath. We then see the empty hallways and neat stairways of Duxston, followed by a full-face shot of Jackson slowly raising his head from a bowed position, indicating that the story and world we will see are his. The camera breaks to students running down the stairs and halls of Duxston, exulting in glee over the apparent winter break. Jackson is seen running down the hall and being stopped by a white male student who says that he wants to tell Darryl (Jackson’s character) that he has done a good job this term, that he has worked hard, and that he is proud of Darryl. Darryl thanks him, after which the white student says, “High five, man. Take care.” Darryl exchanges the high five gesture with the white student, and other students are shown running out of school.

  The next scene switches to Jackson riding on the train, viewing the world outside his window. The camera pans back to a full view of the aisle and seats, showing Darryl talking to a white schoolmate while other white schoolmates make a mess of the train. To the left corner of the camera, and the train, sits a student of Latino descent with an open book, unsmilingly surveying the scene of recreative havoc created by the white students and glancing toward Darryl as he continues his conversation with the white student.

  The scene dissolves, and Darryl and the Latino student are now the focus of the camera, with a mostly deserted background, indicating the passage of time. The Latino student begins to look at Darryl, peering at him as Darryl now sits alone. Over the loudspeaker, the announcer declares that the next station is Grand Central Terminal, the final stop of the train. The camera then pans in to a full-faced shot of the Latino student directing a piercing smirk and cutting glance at Darryl, who is foregrounded in a visually blurred manner while strains of troubling music insinuate themselves in the background. Darryl looks at the Latino student and gives a tentative smile that tests the tension of their nonverbal exchange, then looks away. The two of them, along with the few other passengers, get off the train.

  The next scene shows a crowded subway, as the camera pans down a row of riding passengers: first a middle-aged black woman with her eyes closed after an apparently hard day of work; a pensive white woman; an elderly couple who look to be slightly worried; a young black woman looking down; a stern white woman blankly staring forward, the perfect exemplar of a person dulled by mindnumbing, alienated work in a Marxist vision; and finally the Latino student with Darryl next to him, both of their heads involuntarily shaking to the rhythm of the subway’s movement.

  The Latino student turns to Darryl, and as the camera focuses on Darryl’s face, the Latino student asks him, “How many guys proud of you?” Darryl quietly counts with his lips and, without looking at the Latino student, says, “Three.” With an ironic smile, the Latino student holds up four fingers and says, “Shoot, four guys proud of me!” Darryl looks at him and they smile, both recognizing that it is a source of perennial surprise to their fellow white students that they are able to excel at school. This is a subtle but powerful critique by Jackson of white liberalism, which has the power to stigmatize and punish with its often unconscious condescension even as it intends to single out and celebrate. This form of critique, of course, is linked to potent traditions of African-American religious and cultural criticism developed over centuries of protest against injustice and struggle for freedom.

  As the Latino student prepares to leave his stop on the subway, he gives Darryl a soul brother handshake and says, “Be the man.” Darryl responds to him, “Be the man.” The significance here is that the high five of the white student earlier is juxtaposed against the soul handclasp of the Latino student. The high five, in this case, is a stylized, fashionable handshake that signifies an ephemeral, external code of relationship between Darryl and the white student. Although the white student is expressing attempted camaraderie and friendship, the high five is more a testament of the cultural distance between them than an acknowledgment of their bonds of social intimacy.

  The Latino student’s soul handclasp, however, is a meaningful, internal code of unspoken solidarity generated out of common circumstances of victimization and objectification. Furthermore, the Latino student’s parting exhortation to Darryl to “be the man” is a culturally encoded signifier that subverts the usual semantic meaning of the term and counsels a steadfast resolve to remain strong and rooted in one’s own cultural identity while achieving success at “the man’s” (white man’s) institution.

  The next scene shows a row of dilapidated, boarded-up brownstones in Harlem and a row of men standing around twenty-gallon oil drums, warming themselves over the fires they have started within, not an inappropriate metaphor for the condition of black men in contemporary American culture. As Darryl walks down the street a black man hollers at him, “Yo. Yo, blood. Yo.” When Darryl does not answer him (perhaps because he knows that what the man wants he cannot give, or that what he wants he should not have), the man shrugs him off with hand gestures that say, “Forget it.”

  As Darryl continues to amble down the street, three other “brothers” catch sight of him, and one of them declares, as he hugs Darryl, “The Black is back. Yo. Black is back, my man,” and the other two fellows joyfully greet him. After this, Darryl goes up into his apartment telling the “fellas” that he’ll be down later. After Darryl goes into his apartment and reads a note of welcome from his mother who has to work late, until seven, he finds a window and looks out over the material morass and spiritual squalor that litter his neighborhood, a Harlem gutted by social misery and urban stench. The next scene shows Darryl and his three friends in the hallways of a building engaging in harmless chitchat and ribbing, as one of his friends inquires about Darryl’s major. When Darryl responds that he is in high school, which requires no major, the friend asks, “Then what’s your minor?” All of them, including Darryl, have a good laugh. Not so funny later on, and indicative of the trouble to come, is when Darryl is asked if the “white boys” at his school wear “turtle shells.” “That’s tortoise shells,” Darryl replies. There is icy silence in the room, thick with resentment over Darryl’s benignly intentioned correction.

  After the leader of the group indicates that it is time to “go” (i.e., engage in petty criminal behavior), the scene changes to a street corner, where a man with a cane is transacting a drug sa
le with another man. After the man with the cane completes the sale, Darryl and his friends are seen leaning against a car, regarding him with a cautious silence. The man pulls back his jacket to reveal a revolver and asks if they are looking for somebody. The fellas, getting the message, depart.

  Later, back in a building, the leader declares to Darryl, “Hunts up. Hunts up, homeboy. There are victims out there waitin’ for us.” Darryl utters a defiant question—“ What?”—that rebuts the leader’s criminal intentions. The leader declares, “‘What?’ Shit! Homeboy ain’t home. Naw, see he up at Dunesbury playin’ tennis with his turtle shells.” Thus the struggle to maintain one’s integrity and to construct a stable identity as a member of the underclass in the inner-city community surfaces. Jackson’s video focuses sharply on the central problems of defining identity and examining the moral character of decisions that take account of the social and economic forces that form the background against which these choices must be made. Darryl responds to the leader, “Back off.” After a rough verbal encounter, the leader grabs Darryl and says, “Yo man, what’s wrong? Are you bad? Or is that what they teach you up at that sissy school of yours: how to forget who your friends are? Well let me tell you somethin’, I don’t care what they teach you up there. You either down or you ain’t down. So the question is, are you bad or what?” The basis of their past relationship is shattered, and Darryl must renegotiate the terms of his relationship to his “in-group” if any form of that relationship is to survive.

  Darryl tells the leader to leave him alone, that he’s tired of him “messin’” with him. Finally he takes off his gloves and jacket and says that if the leader really wants to see what is bad, then he will show him. At this point we (and Darryl) are still in a morally ambiguous position, because we cannot ascertain the particular nature of Darryl’s challenge, whether it will be a show of neighborhood machismo that revels in theft and crime, or whether it will be to subvert neighborhood conceptions of what is “bad,” similar to what happened between Darryl and the Latino student’s subversion of the code of success in the white world. This is an implicit appeal to the culturally encoded practice that uses words like “tough” and “bad” to mean something different, often their opposite. Jackson skillfully displays the dual tensions that define Darryl’s world and that, in much more detail and depth, defined Edmund Perry’s world. Moral choice is seen against a background of several factors that must be considered when one judges the actions of inner-city youth who resort to a life of crime to “make it.” Jackson’s moral vision, unquestionably formed by his own religious views, is able to appreciate these subtleties and promotes a vision that combines compassion and criticism.

  The next scene shows Darryl and the fellas at a deserted section of the subway, awaiting a lone man walking down the corridor. Darryl, under the pressure to prove his “badness,” is poised to pounce and prey upon the man, but at the last moment decides to tell him to flee. The man speaks no English, reinforcing the fact that victims of ghetto machismo or criminal activity are often other underclass and struggling people. The fellas become angry with Darryl, and declare, “You aren’t down with us no more,” and Darryl responds, “You ain’t bad, you ain’t nothin.’” Here again, Jackson’s own moral perspective is informed by an understanding of human nature that acknowledges that all human beings embody the potential for wrongdoing. But as is clear in his reading of the story, all human beings have the ability to contribute to their own future by the choices they make and the options they exercise. This is no static conception of human nature and identity, no social determinism that locks human beings into predestined choice. It is rather a Christian understanding of human nature that appreciates the complexity and ambiguity that surrounds our moral choices, that posits an ambivalent disposition toward the desires that occupy our social landscape, and that accentuates the historical formation of the virtues we attempt to nourish.

  At this juncture, the scene, until now black and white, blooms in full color, as dancers emerge from either side of the columns in the subway, rupturing the realism that has informed the video to this point. From then on, Darryl’s message is communicated in Jackson’s powerful singing voice, accompanied by extraordinarily skillful dancing that choreographs his message to the fellas. Jackson reverses the power arrangement between Darryl and the fellas that has defined their relationship as he sings:

  Your butt is mine / Gonna tell you right /Just show your face / In broad daylight / I’m telling you / On how I feel / Gonna hurt your mind / Don’t shoot to kill / . . . I’m giving you / On count of three / To show your stuff / Or let it be . . . / I’m telling you /Just watch your mouth / I know your game / What you’re about / Well they say the sky’s the limit / And to me that’s really true / But my friend you have seen nothin’ / Just wait ’til I get through . . . / Because I’m bad, I’m bad—come on.

  At the climax of his melodied oration, Darryl comes face to face with the leader of the fellas in a dramatic encounter reminiscent of the machismo-laden stare-downs between prizefighters. Darryl scorns their wrongdoing in a fusion of speech and song that is the strongest evocation of the African-American religious rhetorical practice of “whooping,” “chanting,” or “tuning” since the advent of rap music. Darryl’s lyrical preachment is accented by the antiphonal response of his amen chorus of backup dancer/singers, who meet his every word and gesture with a rising spiral of vocal support that crescendos with a hissing noise meant to seal their message and admonish their hearers.

  At the end, Darryl and the leader lock arms and finally engage in a soul handshake, sealing the leader’s respect for Darryl, as he intones, “That’s the way it goes down, huh?” The soul handshake reinstitutes the possibility for personal and social solidarity between Darryl and the leader, functioning, as it did with the Latino student, to strengthen the ties of mutuality and community. As the fellas depart, one of the brothers removes his hat, acknowledging the power of Darryl’s perspective, even as the scene returns to black and white and Darryl’s garb returns to his jacket and street clothes.

  Jackson’s “Bad” video premiered on a CBS television special that aired August 31, 1987, before a national viewing audience. It conveyed a moving message about struggling with racial identity, forms of machismo, and the problems of underclass black men in a potent mix of song and dance. It also testified to the national, even worldwide, influence of Jackson’s African-American secular spirituality.

  Perhaps the most poignant and powerfully explicit display of Jackson’s brand of secular spirituality was reserved for the 1988 Grammy Awards Show, beamed to millions of people around the world. As the auditorium faded to dark, a white screen was shown, silhouetting Jackson’s lithe image, his head topped by a dark-brown fedora, his palm facing outward to the right on the end of his stiffened right arm, and his left leg extended, capped off by his trademark high-water pants, with a blue shirt circled at the waist by a white sash, and white socks and black shoes. As the audience screamed, strains of harmonies filled the air, and Jackson enacted ten seconds of solo dance movements, pantomiming some of his most agile poses. As the screen rose, Jackson began to sing, in an impassioned voice, a slow gospel-cadenced version of his song, “The Way You Make Me Feel.” As Jackson gyrated on stage, the female dancer-actress Tatiana, famous from the video version of the song, emerged from the side of the stage. Jackson was also joined by four dancers who, with him, re-created the moves performed in the video.

  Jackson then did a phenomenal foursquare version of the moonwalk, the dance that he made famous. The auditorium again faded to dark, with the spotlight on Jackson. He bowed, took the microphone handed to him, and began singing stanzas to “Man in the Mirror:”

  I’m gonna make a change, for once in my life / It’s gonna feel real good, gonna make a difference / Gonna make it right . . . / As I turn up the collar on my favorite winter coat / This wind is blowin’ my mind / I see the kids in the street, with not enough to eat / Who am I, to be blind? / Pretendi
ng not to see their needs / A summer’s disregard, a broken bottle top / And a one man’s soul / They follow each other on the wind, ya’ know / ’Cause they got nowhere to go / That’s why I want you to know / I’m starting with the man in the mirror / I’m asking him to change his ways / And no message could have been any clearer / If you wanna make the world a better place / Take a look at yourself, and then make a change

  As he sang, the camera panned into his face as people from either side of the stage emerged from the wings. To his left were two singers, including Siedah Garrett, coauthor of “Man in The Mirror.” To his right were three singers, including contemporary gospel great Andrae Crouch.

  Jackson was singing, with their support, about the necessity for beginning the change in the world with one’s self. As he stated in Moonwalk:

  “Man in the Mirror” is a great message. I love that song. If John Lennon was alive, he could really relate to that song because it says that if you want to make the world a better place, you have to work on yourself and change first. It’s the same thing Kennedy was talking about when he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change. Start with the man in the mirror. Start with yourself. Don’t be looking at all the other things. Start with you. That’s the truth. That’s what Martin Luther King meant and Gandhi too. That’s what I believe. (pp. 267–268)

  As Jackson, Crouch, Garrett, and the others continued to sing, the choir from New York’s New Hope Baptist Church emerged from the back of the stage, augmenting the vocal power of Jackson’s message. The religious nature of Jackson’s interpretation became visually apparent, and the implicitly religious sensibilities of his performance became explicitly captured in the religious symbols surrounding Jackson. Jackson spun and fell on his knees, dramatizing his message of the dialectical relationship between personal change and social transformation. Back on his feet, Jackson pleaded once more for the world to change. Again he fell to his knees, but this time he succumbed to the spirit and passion of the moment and remained there. Jackson was spontaneously touched by what was occurring, as if he were a spectator to the event, as if he were only a vehicle, an agent of a transcendent power. Jackson was as shaken by the power of the message as if he were hearing and delivering it for the first time, a lesson that great gospel singers and preachers have mastered. Andrae Crouch then moved over from the side of the stage, as if he were in a church service where someone was “slain in the spirit,” and after wiping Jackson’s brow, he helped him to his feet. Jackson, with new vitality breathed into him, “got happy” again, turning several times, spinning joyously, and spontaneously jumping up and down, shaking his hands, and doing a complex walk-skip-jump movement.