Ethics in Art: The Life and Legacy of Michael Jackson
By BARCODE 2x
Go back to the old days. Thriller was an instant and enduring classic whose immediate and lasting impact could be palpably felt. Michael Jackson was a humanitarian too, a beautiful, gentle soul who seemed to have an endless supply of magic and power. He was in Africa, he was in the news, he was an eccentric and a mystery.
As the mystery unraveled over the years, his character revealed itself to be darker, more complicated, and more criminal than anyone could have imagined. We were in the conflict that we have explored many times here at a2ethics.org. How can you continue to love an artist when they are personally very difficult, doing unethical or even illegal things in their walled-off worlds? How can you separate and compartmentalize your appreciation of their art, when you know what nasty secrets lurk behind the music? No case of ethics and art are more dicey than Michael Jackson's.
Everyone is bound to feel differently. That's ethics. The heart is conflicted, and our sense of right and wrong is bent and twisted to make special allowances for artists. Artists are allowed special privileges in this world. And super-stardom affords these individuals an extra ethical cushion. Artists can buy their way out of legal tangles, scandals in the media, and almost any other ethical dilemma. Their art preserves them; we want to protect their art, and meanwhile we feel conflicted about buying their product. When you buy a Michael Jackson record, are you funding his bizarre indulgences? His drug habit? Are you alleviating his massive debt, estimated now at over $400 million? Are we more comfortable buying his music now that he is gone? Are we more comfortable admitting we love his work, now that he has passed on? Is Michael Jackson back in our comfort zone now that he is dead?
Imagine the album sales since the news of his death. Imagine the millions of instant downloads. Imagine what happens on iTunes. Imagine what happens on illegal music sites where downloads are guilt-free. Is Jackson a popular illegal download? Are illegal downloads a more comfortable option for listeners in ethical conflict? Let us imagine the figures. Out of all purchases of Jackson's music that will occur in the next few weeks, how many will occur today? And what is the cause of this outpouring, this sudden mass-purchase? Did we love him all these years in secret?
His work in his early career carved out a special place in our hearts. His electrifying effect over his millions of fans was unlike anything we have seen in this lifetime. The outpouring of love and conflict over internet sites such as Facebook, Google and Twitter are evidence to his power. This event clearly establishes person-to-person news as a definitive source of information in this world. While Yahoo! News was still carrying the news that Jackson had been rushed to hospital, Facebook users were reporting his death. No one waited for the morning paper this time around. The lightning-fast spread of this news around this world was astonishing. It is terrifying, in its power. The information flooded out. Google and Twitter both experienced such high activity that they shut down temporarily. The flood of information was so tremendous that people lost their internet connections. The news is bigger than the medium itself, bigger than the technological infrastructure. Jackson was big enough to temporarily knock out the giant media machine. The media was always his undoing. Now, once in a while, a mega-star gets their revenge on the system. Michael Jackson was powerful. The fainting fans, the 61 million albums he sold, the billions of tweets and Facebook updates, all of these are part of the same phenomenon. Michael Jackson's life and death were measured like tidal waves, like seismic activity.
His name was hushed all of these years. We may have loved his music, but we were saddened, and sickened, by his life. Now, can we unearth our feelings for him? Can we listen to his music again, without the strings attached?
Al Sharpton has made a public statement praising Jackson for his work. He cited him as a great example of a person of color who crossed over and affected the entire world. Before Oprah Winfrey, before Barack Obama, he said, there was Michael Jackson. There was his music, and his legendary performances. At one point in time, the world was in his debt. His contributions to music and media are beyond measure. His humanitarian efforts were equally inspiring and empowering. He will be remembered, like many successful and tortured artists, as a conflicted, scandalized, and controversial figure. His psychology is dense.
One shudders at the thought of his deeds. What he did in isolation, we cannot forgive, forget, or begin to understand.But the world is not willing to dismiss Michael Jackson so easily. He could solve his legal troubles with large financial settlements. He could solve his public image problems with his music and his passionate, otherworldly performances.
Now that he is gone, we have to settle a conflict in ourselves. Do we hate the artist and love the art? And when another giant celebrity comes along and missteps so grandly as Jackson did, will we forgive him or her? Will we forgive but not forget? Is that the answer when it comes to art? Is great art enough to surpass the wicked deeds of the individual who created it? Can his positive contributions to the world outweigh his dark personal transgressions?
