Dance Magazine: I was on my favorite treadmill when it happened.
My best running buddy was on my left. To my right, a total stranger with whom I'd suddenly become competitive. As the 15-person group headed into a two-minute push, the instructor got hyped, and the remix blasting Rihanna's "We Found Love" transitioned to "Smooth Criminal."
At the first familiar beat, I felt sick. I waited for the instructor to stop circling the room and to hustle back to the iPhone dock to advance the playlist. Surely she wasn't going to let us keep running to the beat of Michael Jackson, right?
4 comments:
I feel very conflicted reading this article. I am someone who truly appreciates Michael Jackson's artistry, from his music, to his dance - basically only the stuff you see on stage. This is conflicting because at the same time, I cannot ignore things he has done, and the events which surround him and others. I want to continue listening to his music, but at the same time I don't want to do so and ignore how upsetting it may be to others. The continued playing of his music, even while he is not alive, continues to preserve his memory, and this supports him and his image. The author said that the man and the music are the same, so there is no way to support the art without supporting the artist. This argument has been going on for quite a while, and I am still unsure on whether or not there is an answer for that. I don't like the idea of someone being affected by MJ and his actions, and then having to hear his song on the radio, and their own sense of safety being threatened by this, but it is going to take a lot to completely rid a society of MJ's music. While I agree with the author on many of these topics, I think more conversations need to take place, because we cannot handle this lightly.
My dad was always a HUGE Michael Jackson fan, so I listened to it a lot when growing up and became one too. I haven’t even thought about him in YEARS, however, because after his death he seemed to disappear from our house. I never knew why but this article gives me an idea. Somehow, it’s 2019 and I have never heard about any of the stuff this article confronted, including Finding Neverland. How? I literally have no idea how I could be so unaware of this. Maybe my dad tried to shield me from the news as to not ruin a childhood icon when I was younger? Maybe not. I don’t know how I managed to miss all of this, but this article really made me rethink like the past ten years of my life. I don’t even know what I’m feeling right now but I want to delete MJ from every playlist I have and just everything in general. My family always calls me MJ (Miranda Jae) and now that nickname has such an unpleasant taste to it. I’m just really disappointed right now.
Situations like these can be really tough. The entire world had been idolizing this one person for so long, and their entire realities are shattered. It almost heartbreaking in a way, it feels as though you’ve been lied to almost for about a decade since he passed. In the article the author talked about what if the person playing his music never saw Leaving Neverland, like me. I had never seen it, but I’m still aware of everything that's going on with him. I remember the day I walked into school in the 4th grade and everyone around me was crying. It was the first time I saw my teacher cry. It’s sad to think that someone can have such a strong impact on another, even if you’ve never met them. Its as if everything they are and stand for is what you aspire- and then soon enough that hope and idolization is proved negative or wrong, and everything that you thought you knew is a complete lie.
This is a hot topic right now and I think it’s an interesting and multi-faceted conversation with many, many gray areas. We were discussing this exact topic with regards to Michael Jackson in Passport to the Arts earlier today, and the bigger question – beyond what is acceptable and what is not – is can we separate the art from the artist? And if so, to what extent? Should I never watch the Usual Suspects again because of Kevin Spacey’s actions? Do the unacceptable things he’s done invalidate the genius of his performances? And what of the other actors? Should we discredit an entire creative team of performers, designers, and production staff because of the actions of one person, or should we just not hire that one person again and move on to the future? I don’t have an answer to this. Or to the question of whether or not Michael Jackson’s music should be played on the radio or listened to in fitness class, etc. I think that there is no right or wrong answer in the case of the content created, but there is in regard to the person and their hire-ability and continued involvement in the industry. In Michael Jackson’s case, he’s dead, so we can’t really fire him from anything, but these things still need to be thought about and applied to those people in the same situation who are still living.
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