Dangerous: The Controversial Life and Legacy of Michael Jackson with Dr. Susan Fast

Michael Jackson is a figure whose complexities fascinate and confound, and he leaves behind a legacy of genius and controversy. Dr. Susan Fast, author of "Michael Jackson's Dangerous" brings her expertise on the King of Pop to this latest episode of Deep Dive.  We journey beyond the moonwalk and the sequined glove to dissect Jackson's "Dangerous" era, where his music took on mature themes of sexuality and politics, challenging fans and reshaping pop culture. This episode promises a deep exploration of an icon's legacy, acknowledging his profound influence and the discomforting controversies that linger.

With anecdotes that resonate and reflections that provoke, the dialogue with Dr. Fast encapsulates Michael Jackson's evolution from a beloved child star to a pioneering black artist confronting the music industry with a bold new vision. The album "Dangerous" stands as a testament to this change, marking a departure from Jackson's earlier work and setting a new standard for future R&B. As we dissect "Dangerous" and share personal insights from Dr. Fast's 33 1/3 series book, we examine the album's authenticity and genre-fluidity, offering an intimate perspective on Michael's artistic journey.

The conversation takes a turn towards the holistic view of Michael Jackson's identity, challenging the media's oversimplified narratives and acknowledging his roots in Black music and politics. Listeners are encouraged to revisit "Off the Wall" and The Jacksons' performances to appreciate the breadth of his contributions. This episode not only pays homage to Jackson's multifaceted nature but also invites a re-examination of how we engage with complex legacies - ultimately leaving us to wonder, how can we engage with Michael's music, if at all?

Companion Spotify Playlist (Shawn & Susan's Favorite MJ Songs)

Recommended:
Michael Jackson's Dangerous - Susan Fast

-------------------------
Follow Deep Dive:
Instagram
Post.news
YouTube

Email: deepdivewithshawn@gmail.com

**Artwork: Dovi Design
**Music: Joystock

Transcript

Dr. Fast: 0:00

My argument in the book is that it's when he at long last presented himself to the world as a unabashedly erotic, sexual, politically-minded, really deep-thinking human being, and I think the reason that the album got panned was that, despite many people writing for years that they wanted Michael Jackson to grow up, when he finally presented himself as an adult, as a grown-up, on this album, I think it scared the hell out of people. It wasn't something that they wanted from him.

Shawn: 0:49

Welcome to Deep Dive with me, s C Fettig. On June 25, 2009, michael Jackson died at the age of 50 from acute propofol intoxication. It was a tragic end to a life filled with groundbreaking achievements and also controversies. Jackson, often hailed as the king of pop, left an indelible mark on the music industry, culture and society at large, and his influence on music, dance and music videos is undeniable, setting new standards for artists across genres and generations. Countless artists, from Beyonce and Justin Timberlake to Usher and Chris Brown, have cited him as a major influence on their careers. His contribution to the industry and to pop culture have left a lasting impact and continue to inspire artists and fans alike. He is, in many ways, a true legend. From his early days with the Jackson 5 through his solo career, michael Jackson was a pioneer in blending pop, rock, r&b and funk, creating a unique sound that appealed to a wide audience. His album Thriller remains the best-selling album of all time, showcasing his ability to cross genre boundaries and appeal to fans worldwide. And Jackson's music videos, such as Thriller and Billie Jean, beat it and Black or White, were revolutionary, turning the music video into an art form and a critical part of an artist's repertoire. Despite his immense popularity, jackson's life was not without controversy. He faced multiple accusations of child molestation, which significantly affected his public image and personal life. Although he was acquitted of all charges, the allegations have continued to affect his legacy.

Shawn: 2:34

When Michael died, it was difficult for me to process. I had grown up listening to Michael Jackson, emulating him, trying to sound like him, dress like him, move like him. Michael Jackson was my first crush. I idolized him when he released Dangerous in 1991, it shook me. It was a new Michael Jackson who seemed more mature, more angry, more aggressive and oozing with sex appeal, and I was all in on it. And then the allegations that dogged him for the rest of his life. I still loved Michael, but something just changed. I was crushed and it made me for a while really skeptical of and cynical about having heroes. I stopped listening to his music pretty much entirely and only recently returned with a changed perspective, a longer view, but still unsure how to engage with his music. Given what we know and what we've been told, I can't shake the man, the music, his influence, and I'm wanting to dig into all of this. So today I'm talking to Dr Susan Fast, a musicologist and former professor at McMaster University in Ontario, canada. She's the author of Michael Jackson Dangerous, a critical analysis of Michael Jackson's album Dangerous, arguing that it's a concept album with a compelling narrative arc dealing with themes of politics, race, sexuality and spirituality, as Jackson presented himself as an adult artist, maybe for the first time, and this led to significant backlash.

Shawn: 4:04

Before we start, I want to let you know that Dr Fast and I have done something we've never done on Deep Dive before. We have compiled a Spotify playlist, as a companion to this episode, of our favorite Michael Jackson songs. You can find a link to that playlist in the show notes. Alright, if you liked this episode or any episode, please give it a like on your favorite podcast platform and or subscribe to the podcast on YouTube. And, as always, if you have any thoughts, questions or comments, please feel free to email me at deepdivewithshaw a gmail. com. Let's do a deep dive, dr Fast. Thanks for being here. How are you?

Dr. Fast: 4:45

I'm great, Shawn. Thanks very much for having me.

Shawn: 4:48

I am not going to lie, I'm particularly excited about this episode. We do a lot of different things on Deep Dive, we kind of jump all over the place, but what really anchors us is some of the more weighty stuff in the world, and so it's fun to be able to take a quote unquote break and focus on some of this other stuff, like, for instance, today we're going to be talking about. You know, the life in times of Michael Jackson, which I don't think it's controversial to say does not come with his own controversy, and I want to talk about all of that. A lot of extreme highs as it relates to Michael Jackson, and a lot of extreme lows, and you've written a lot about this, you've taught about this, you've researched a lot about this. So, truly, I'm honored and excited to have a conversation with you about this.

Dr. Fast: 5:32

Well, it's a pleasure to be here, Thank you.

Shawn: 5:34

Okay, let's just jump right in. First things first, maybe the most important, can you moonwalk?

Dr. Fast: 5:39

Oh God, no, I cannot. I had. I had a 50th birthday celebration some years ago and people moonwalked at my 50th birthday celebration. I think it was before I was working on Michael Jackson as an academic, but, yeah, in my living room, but I was not one of them.

Shawn: 6:03

You know, what I found fascinating about Michael Jackson and moonwalking is so when he first broke that out for the world, he didn't do it for very long. It was only like three back steps, and then he really built that out later in his career, at least around bad.

Dr. Fast: 6:19

Yeah, that's right. At the Motown 25 celebration where he debuted, that it was so few steps. He said afterwards about that, which just goes to show you that as self-critical he was, he was concerned, like really disappointed in himself, that he didn't stick the landing when he went onto his toes in that performance. So you just think, oh, it was groundbreaking in so many ways, very, very short.

Shawn: 6:52

Yeah, I've gone back in the past handful of weeks and prepped for this and I've kind of been living breathing Michael Jackson, which is actually interesting, because now I always have some song in the back of my head and it's been all Michael Jackson like subconsciously in the back of my head and what comes out of that is like some very interesting mashups. Like now I'm like I think I just can't stop loving you and man in the Mirror would make a really good mashup.

Dr. Fast: 7:20

Yeah, well, they would for sure.

Shawn: 7:23

Okay anyway. So let's set the stage a little bit, and this is a question that I'm sure you've gotten numerous times. It's been probably a part of any retrospective related to Michael Jackson, but how would you characterize the impact of Michael Jackson and his music on the industry, the trajectory of the industry and pop culture?

Dr. Fast: 7:43

Well, it's just huge. He transformed the music industry in just so many ways. I don't know if Thriller is still the biggest selling album of all time. That designation might have gone to somebody else in the meantime, but it was for a long, long time and he was a black artist that broke through in that way. Everybody knows about the moonwalk. Everybody was wearing the red Thriller jacket in the 1980s and I would say dangerous is the album that I have written the most about and I was just rereading some criticism about that album, some cultural criticism about that album, and one of the positive things there's a lot of negative journalism about it, but one of the positive things that was said was that it and I believe it was Nelson George who made this comment was that it laid the template for R&B that has come after it in the 90s and early 2000s in a number of different ways. So his cultural impact has just been huge.

Shawn: 9:02

Well, let's talk about Dangerous. I read your. How do you characterize it? It's a book, right, but it's a short analysis of Dangerous.

Dr. Fast: 9:09

Yeah, it was published by Bloomsbury in their 33 and a third series. So every book in that series, they're little books, they're all little books. Mine is actually fatter than most of them, but each album, each book in that series is about one album, and so mine is about Dangerous.

Shawn: 9:33

And you carved the album up into it's essentially five sections, but the last song is really the coda. But this book is packed with so much information and really made me think about things in a different way. The first was you refer to this as a departure and a transition for Michael in a number of ways and I felt that at the time that Dangerous dropped I was 15 years old and I definitely felt like this was very much a departure, but I couldn't really put my finger on it, primarily because I was 15 years old, right. So I was just kind of feeling it and that album is the one that I think made me a super fan.

Shawn: 10:14

It to me it still felt in the lexicon of Michael Jackson but felt very different, and I don't think that I realized this at the time. But in going back and listening to it recently it does feel at times performative in a way that has his earlier stuff and I guess I'm really just talking about off the wall thriller and bad didn't. And that sounds like a weird thing to say about Michael Jackson because he was always about the performance, right. But what I mean here is that it didn't. I don't know that it always felt as sincere, in the same way that I think his earlier stuff did, or that he was trying harder.

Dr. Fast: 10:51

I think it's really interesting that you feel that way about dangerous, that it's performative. First of all, I think it's amazing that this is the Michael Jackson album that had a huge impact on you. It's often considered to be part of his decline. Some people think off the wall was the high point for Michael's work, but certainly the trifecta off the wall, thriller and bad are considered to be his glory days in terms of music making. And dangerous is. I don't find it particularly performative. I really feel that Michael is sharing something very deep about his own politics, his desires, his spiritual beliefs in this album, maybe just to explore this idea of the performative.

Dr. Fast: 11:57

Michael was very good at manipulating musical genres and he could sing. He knew Broadway musicals, he knew the Great American Songbook, he knew how to sing a rock song and how to write a rock song and he deeply understood R&B and soul music, and so he engages with all those genres in dangerous and he moves back and forth among them throughout the record. I wonder if that's partly what you're feeling when you listen to it. It's like, oh, how can he be doing a rock song now and can we believe him as a rock singer? And now he's doing Gone Too Soon, you know, which is kind of comes out of a Great American Songbook kind of feeling, and do we believe him when he's singing that kind of song?

Dr. Fast: 12:55

I think genre is. Genre has always been really fascinating to me to think about in artistic works. It's a structuring device, but it's also deeply genres are deeply embedded in culture. You know many artists. Most artists get known for working in a particular genre and they stay with that because through that they are legible to their audiences. Michael didn't do that. He could easily go all over the place. So I'm not sure, just kind of brainstorming about this, but I wonder if his ability to move quite fluidly among genres is one of the things that make some of dangerous feel performative to you or to others.

Shawn: 13:48

You know, I think I can flesh it out a little bit better. And actually I think maybe the where these two worlds collide, or where this world collides, is when I was reading Dangerous, your Book, I began to see a depth to Michael that I didn't grow up having a grasp on. He was very much a pop icon. He was very to me, he was very sexy, he was very untouchable, to the point that I'm ashamed to say this, that I don't think I ever looked at Michael Jackson and thought this is a black man. I didn't look at him and think this is a white man. I think in my mind he just transcended all of that.

Shawn: 14:25

Yeah, and so I started to think about Michael. You know, like you provided a lot of history to Michael that I didn't know pun intended there that I didn't know and I think I wouldn't have necessarily believed, and this is why Shame on me for this. But I think in the deep recesses of how I characterized Michael was that he had come up, that he was born into essential poverty, but that by the time he was 10, essentially, he was untouchable, right, mm-hmm? I think Dangerous to Me was raw and edgy in a way that I thought Michael was too gilded for.

Dr. Fast: 15:01

Mm-hmm, yeah, I agree and I think. Well, the first sentence of my Dangerous Book is Dangerous is Michael Jackson's Coming of Age album Mm-hmm. My argument in the book is that it's when he at long last presented himself to the world as a unabashedly erotic, sexual, politically minded, really deep-thinking human being. And I think the reason that the album got panned was that, despite many people writing for years that they wanted Michael Jackson to grow up, when he finally presented himself as an adult, as a grown-up, on this album, I think it scared the hell out of people. It wasn't something that they wanted from him, I think, precisely because he had come up from the time he was a little boy through probably bad, I would say, as someone who had worked very hard to, I think, do exactly what he did for you, s, to transcend black or white or cultural things. He wanted to be the biggest artist in the world and he didn't want to be hemmed in by cultural politics, by any kind of musical limitation or any limitation that might have been placed upon him because he was black. And then, with Dangerous, he's in some ways, I think, saying no, I'm actually a black artist who is culturally situated. I want to talk politics, even though in black and white he's saying we need to transcend those categories. I think the long version of his music video for that song tells a different story the Panther dance at the end of black and white, which a lot of versions that are floating around, don't have that as part of it.

Dr. Fast: 17:21

The other thing that's interesting with Dangerous that I think is really important is that up until this point he had had older men guiding his career and making a lot of decisions for him. So obviously first it was his father and simultaneous with that it was Barry Gordy at Motown, and then it was Quincy Jones, who was of a different generation than Michael Jackson, an older musician, so making decisions. But Quincy Jones produced Off the Wall and Thriller and Bad. And then with Dangerous, michael kind of broke out from all of that. I mean he had already broken out from Motown and his father. But choosing not to work with Quincy Jones was a pretty big decision. So instead, working with Terry Riley and you know really hip and current R&B artists, that was huge and it really changed his sound dramatically.

Shawn: 18:32

So you've called Dangerous a concept album and I think we've touched on this a little bit on the fringes in the conversation thus far. But this really suggests that we can't look at the album as individual songs, that we really should take this in or ingest this as a project, a whole project in each of the songs then as an individual contributor to that. So brass tacks, what's the concept?

Dr. Fast: 18:55

It's not telling a set story from beginning to end, but I think conceptually I see the album as moving from the first couple of songs on the record which really deal with the state of the world there's a lot of kind of talking about things in the world that are upsetting or that are wrong, that are problematic and he moves from setting that stage in the first couple of songs, I would say, to then a group of songs that talk about desire, corporeal desire, erotic desire, sexual desire, all of those things, and then he moves from thinking about corporeal desire to spirituality and spiritual desire in the next group of songs.

Dr. Fast: 19:53

So it's not a hard and fast story, I'm not saying that, but I think it's an interesting kind of trajectory that he sets up from thinking about the devastating problems in the world to sexual pleasure and desire, maybe as a way to counter that, those problems in the world or escape them maybe, but then moving on to think about larger ideas around spirituality, sometimes in a Christian sense, but not necessarily only in a Christian sense, and I think Heal the World is kind of in there in the middle as a utopian kind of vision that he has.

Shawn: 20:43

We're going to get to this later, so I don't want to let the cat out of the bag too much. But you do not choose Heal the World as one of your favorite Michael Jackson songs.

Dr. Fast: 20:52

Yeah, that's right. Oh, I could, though, s.

Shawn: 20:57

OK, ok, I was wondering if there was something there, if it was just too polished or something.

Dr. Fast: 21:01

Yeah, we don't have to talk about the favorite song list at this point, but, as I said to you, when I put it together it's an impossible task.

Shawn: 21:11

Yeah, it was a herculean Thank you for doing that. So there's something else that you write about that I don't know that I would have verbalized had I not read this from you, but it makes absolute sense. So in 1991, when Dangerous was released, I was 15. And I was really coming into a more mature sense of musical literacy, as it related to me, you know, kind of refining my tastes, figuring out what music meant to me beyond just the, the vibe or the sound. So Michael releases Dangerous I think it was like November of 1991.

Shawn: 21:48

But in that year there were a whole host of game changing albums or albums that changed the, introduced a new sound that would kind of come to define the early 90s. That's like Nirvana's, never Mind Pearl Jam's 10. You two, zaktung, baby, smashing Pumpkin's, gish I think Soundgarden's first album was in 1991 as well, and I was straddling both of these worlds, very excited about the Michael Jackson album, loved Dangerous, but really leaning into this, this grunge sound that seemed to be carving out a pretty significant niche in the music market and would take over for a while. And I think this is a false equivalency or a false dynamic, which is one has to compete with the other. But I do remember listening to the albums and feeling like they were just very different.

Shawn: 22:36

And part of this is, you know, if you take Dangerous out of the mix as a new sound and just apply Michael, michael was like the old guard and then these, these other bands, were the new guard. And I know that you've talked about on this episode but also in your writing, that Dangerous is being criticized for being a departure that wasn't really true to himself and didn't didn't hold up to his earlier work. And you also address essentially my question but I'm hoping we can have a little conversation about it which is I also wonder if some of this was that music was just changing in a way that Michael just didn't really fit into that box anymore. It was kind of pushing him out of the dominant music scene and in that sense I'm not sure that Bad would have held up in 1991.

Dr. Fast: 23:16

Well, I think you're right about that. Bad was Bad as an album of its time, all that kind of synthesizer stuff it sounds so 80s. Michael was a consummate musician and he certainly knew what was going on. But 1991 in popular music was just an astonishing year, wasn't it? Just those albums that you mentioned, they're all pretty dark. You know U2's Achtung Baby that was the year that that band took a massive turn as well from their Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum Sound.

Dr. Fast: 23:58

Well, nirvana never mind. Just a game-changing kind of album. And I think we really need to put Dangerous in with. You know, lots of people have talked about that 1991 year as just an astonishing year for popular music albums and I think Dangerous belongs in that group of albums. It was such a shift in sound for Michael. He was just exploring stuff. Just the whole sound of the album is just so radically distinct from what he had done before and, as I said already, the people he was working with to try and create that new sound also had a huge departure for him and I don't know why we wouldn't put that album in with, nevermind An Achtung Baby and the others that you mentioned as being part of the 1991 kind of explosion of new music and a new sound and albums that really changed the course of music. But it's Michael Jackson, so we don't.

Shawn: 25:13

Well, yeah, I think part of this truly is. I think Michael had an image that was very hard to break out of and that image was harmless. I think Dangerous didn't feel harmless at the same time as Nirvana and U2 and Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins are releasing music. That is, that feels tough. Michael's releasing something. That is also tough, but I think when you place those two next to each other, it's kind of like Pearl Jam could beat the shit out of Michael, right?

Dr. Fast: 25:44

Yeah, I think the other thing is, you know, lots of things have to be taken into consideration here. So Michael was a child star. Those other guys weren't, you know, and he was also. So I want to really consider the word I use here. I was just going to say he was already known for being so weird in so many ways. I wrote an obituary that was also published in an academic journal, but I think it circulated more widely, where I was trying to grapple with Michael's difference, his differences and how he was just and I'm coming back to this word that I've already used with respect to his music he was not legible as a human being in the public eye.

Dr. Fast: 26:35

There was just no way to categorize him. Was he a child? Was he a grown man? He was a grown man who acted like a child. Was he trying not to be black? Was he? He looked quite androgynous. We didn't know anything about his love life. Nobody believed he was capable of having one, you know. Then eventually he had children. This was a lot later, but he seemed to be both mother and father to these children.

Dr. Fast: 27:07

Every social code was broken with him. It was illegible, it was incomprehensible to people. So that's one piece. I think he had all this plastic surgery that nobody could figure out. So that's one piece that I think makes it difficult, for we just have never really known how to read him or understand what he was trying to do, whereas you know, pearl Jam it's pretty easy Disaffected white teenagers, men who are making angry music. I mean that's a huge symbol for simplification, obviously, and I love Pearl Jam, but you know, for somebody who's just coming in and consuming Pearl Jam's tan, it's not confusing in the way Michael Jackson was confusing in every possible way, including with Jam, musically confusing.

Shawn: 28:10

So this is such a rough characterization that Michael Jackson's career is really free, dangerous and then post-dangerous. And not just career, but the sound of his music, the way he presented himself, et cetera. But going back, I don't want to go too far into this rabbit hole but I feel like there were a lot of eras in Michael's life. It's a little too simple to say free and post-dangerous. I think Thriller was a departure. I think, in its own way, off the Wall was a departure. Sure, absolutely. And then you know he had those two or three solo albums before Off the Wall which never get any attention, which also reminds me, by the way, did you know Alana Smoreset had two albums before Jage Little Pill.

Dr. Fast: 28:53

Yes, I did. She was a dance pop. Yes.

Shawn: 28:58

Yeah, I only found that out in prep for this interview. Oh, and you can't find them, like on Spotify and stuff, she doesn't list them.

Dr. Fast: 29:07

Yeah, well, it's interesting to bring up Alana's, because there's somebody who made a radical turn with Jage Little Pill, but you know she didn't have the pre-Jage Little Pill career at the time.

Shawn: 29:22

Like exposure. Yeah, yeah, right.

Dr. Fast: 29:23

She didn't have that kind of exposure. So Jage Little Pill seemed to come out of the ether with her Right. If you didn't know that she had put out those previous albums and was kind of doing sort of Madonna-like thing. So yeah, it's interesting. But obviously Michael had so much. I mean he was just in the spotlight from forever.

Shawn: 29:49

I want to talk a little bit about the distinction between these periods, pre and post-dangerous, Just like quickly. How would you characterize them?

Dr. Fast: 29:56

Well, yeah, I like your idea that there's more than pre and post-dangerous. That's certainly an oversimplification. I think every one of Michael's solo albums I think the early, early ones, pre off the wall are a thing unto themselves and they do deserve some more attention than they've ever gotten. But he was writing less of that music himself. I think off the wall was the first record where he was really writing and Quincy Jones came into the mix at that point. I think one of the reasons we think pre-dangerous and after-dangerous is because of Quincy Jones. I mean, quincy Jones really shaped off the wall, thriller and bad. He was a huge guiding influence on those records and then he's not there with dangerous and after-dangerous and that's a really radical shift.

Shawn: 31:04

OK. So if I had to choose, though pre or post-dangerous, I think I'm partial to post or dangerous forward.

Dr. Fast: 31:10

Yeah, dangerous forward, yeah me too.

Shawn: 31:13

And of those I want to try something out on you because I think this album also doesn't get a lot of play and it's more of an EP. It's not listed as a full album, but I think that Blood on the Dance Floor is one of, if not his best album.

Dr. Fast: 31:26

Yeah, it's a radical idea, S.

Shawn: 31:30

I would say Okay, you're just messing with me, right?

Dr. Fast: 31:32

Yeah, yeah. No, I wouldn't say it's not my favorite album, but I understand if you like late era Michael Jackson stuff that is really heavily funky with amazing grooves, just amazing fun grooves. Blood on the dance floor that groove is just amazing and ghosts, and is it?

Shawn: 32:05

scary. You know what? Okay, I have a theory. So that is my favorite song off that album Is it scary? So, anyone listening, go listen to that song if you don't know what it is, and keep this in mind. This is my theory. Is it scary? Is the same man who was living thriller, but 15 years later.

Dr. Fast: 32:25

Yeah, well, I'm assuming you know the short film ghosts.

Shawn: 32:31

No.

Dr. Fast: 32:32

Oh, okay. Well, what makes is it scary? Even better than just listening to the album version of it is watching ghosts and the choreography for that song, which is absolutely amazing. So ghosts is a.

Dr. Fast: 32:51

It's a pretty important film. It's more than just a music video length. It's a film. I can't remember how long it is 20 minutes long, something like that but it tells the story of a weird, eccentric man who lives in a big old, scary mansion in a small town and Michael Jackson plays that character and he is shunned by the town because he's different from everybody else and he's confronted by the mayor of the town. Michael Jackson also plays the mayor of the town, the white mayor of the town, and he's heavily made up with all kinds of prosthetic face masks and everything. And it's really an examination of people's small mindedness and can certainly be taken as I'm sure, how Michael felt he was being treated in his real life. But he uses the music from Blood on the Dance Floor Is it scary? And ghosts in that short film and the choreography to Is it Scary is absolutely amazing.

Shawn: 34:10

Is it reminiscent of Thriller?

Dr. Fast: 34:12

Yes.

Shawn: 34:13

Okay, okay, so I didn't hit on something unique here.

Dr. Fast: 34:17

Oh, no, no, I don't think so. That scene fascinated him for sure.

Shawn: 34:24

Okay, we're running short and it's my fault, so I'm going to jump us ahead, because I don't think we can talk about Michael Jackson without talking about some of the complicated part of his legacy, and I don't mean talking about it as much as recognizing it. So for a long time I actually stopped listening to Michael Jackson, and to this day I still feel a little of like. Should I be listening to Michael Jackson? The credible allegations of molestation, and I guess I want to get your take on it. How do you feel about it or how do you approach it?

Dr. Fast: 34:57

Yeah, I am similarly conflicted, I have to say, after my book was published, the Dangerous Book, I haven't gone back and written anything about Michael Jackson after that. I think there was kind of maybe not quite a decade after his death where people were really going back to his music and trying to think about his artistic output in a different kind of way. And then there was the Leaving Neverland documentary, so all of those allegations of child sexual molestation resurfaced, the questions resurfaced, all of that, just horrible, horrible stuff. And the first allegations were made in 1993. And then there was a trial in 2005 and he was acquitted, but it's always kind of been there. I mean, the first allegations came out when he was on the Dangerous Tour, so it's always been incredibly fraught.

Dr. Fast: 36:06

There are certainly ways in which he was targeted that just make the allegations difficult. Yeah, it's just very difficult. But I guess the question is what do we do with that? He's not the first artist to have horrible things that happen in his life complicate how we understand the artistic output and whether or not we should be listening to that music or consuming the videos that he made. I mean, we can go way back, right, picasso wasn't a very nice man, ricard Wagner if we want to stay in the musical realm was a horrific anti-Semite.

Dr. Fast: 36:51

So it's a question that resurfaces over and over and over again with artistic production and I think it depends on the person and the person's background as to whether or not you can set things about an artist's biography aside or not. I don't think there's some universal oh, you should set those terrible things that person did aside and just get on with listening to the music. I think we have to figure those things out for ourselves. But there is a way to separate artistic production and the way it circulates in the world from the person who made it. That was a big revelation of postmodernism right that whatever the artist's intent or the artist's background or whatever, once an artist puts work into the world it's there for us to use, to consume, to engage with in whatever way we want to do that. So I guess that's one thing to think about with respect to Michael Jackson's output.

Shawn: 38:06

Okay, two final questions. When you look back on Michael Jackson and consider his life, his career, the things we've talked about on the hold, you consider him to be a man of triumph or a man of tragedy?

Dr. Fast: 38:18

Oh boy, that's so hard I know I struggle with it too.

Dr. Fast: 38:24

When you look at the work. It's just such a profoundly beautiful and path breaking body of work. There's just really still nothing like it. I always watch the halftime Super Bowl show. Sometimes to my dismay I don't watch football, but it's a cultural event, right, the halftime show? Well, michael was the one who started those musical halftime shows. It was during the dangerous tour. He was the first one to do that spectacular musical halftime show and it's been going on ever since. But just because this year Usher was the person who was the musical halftime act, after I watched the show and Usher has been deeply influenced by Michael Jackson and it just made me go back because I was watching all of the usher's dancing, that group dancing that Michael was so pivotal in creating in popular music I thought I'm just going to go back and watch that. 1995 MTV Music Awards performance of Dangerous which is just one nominal.

Shawn: 39:38

It is yeah.

Dr. Fast: 39:39

I'm sorry it just blows Usher right out of the water, but on the whole there was just so much tragedy in his life and so much of it unresolved. I think he's a tragic figure.

Shawn: 39:55

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, on that note. I typically ask people as a final question something they've been reading, watching, listening to or doing lately, but for the first time ever, I'm going to change that question.

Dr. Fast: 40:06

Okay.

Shawn: 40:07

For you. I want to know what your favorite Michael Jackson song is and why.

Dr. Fast: 40:11

Oh, that's just so hard.

Shawn: 40:15

You have to pick one.

Dr. Fast: 40:16

I have to. Okay, I have to, I have to. I'm going to make it something off Dangerous, I guess. Okay, it's my compromise, I'm going to make it Jam.

Shawn: 40:29

Really.

Dr. Fast: 40:29

Off Dangerous. I know there's no way not to have a completely eccentric choice here when you're just taking something out of Michael you know, unless I guess you could say, oh, it's Thriller or Billie Jean. You know, I guess those would be classic answers, right, those would be answers that are kind of well, you can't question that. But Jam for me, just sets up a whole new musical palette, a whole new musical life for Michael Jackson, and it's one of my favorite songs.

Shawn: 41:05

Oh, that's fascinating. I would never have guessed that. Ha ha, ha ha. All right, there you have it. Dr Fass, this has been really fun. I really enjoyed picking your brain. I'm so glad that you've researched this stuff and you've written about it. I think it just adds to the Michael Jackson universe. So thank you for taking the time to have the conversation with me.

Dr. Fast: 41:25

It's been an absolute pleasure, s, thanks so much for having me.

Shawn: 41:35

I want to close by talking about something that didn't come up in my interview with Dr Fass, but it is something we did chat about after, and that's the importance of understanding Michael and his evolution in the totality of his life and career, not just within the erroneously applied book ends beginning with thriller and ending with dangerous. When we do that, I think it's easy to fall into the trap of isolating and imprisoning Michael in an unrepresentative moment in time and then drawing unfair and incomplete conclusions. This is what I did. I was a gay white kid in the Midwest, enamored of the man but focused solely on the voice, the melody, the fashion, the dancing in that specific time period thriller to dangerous and in that sense, as I mentioned earlier in this episode, michael Jackson was a force that transcended genre in race and gender, and there's vice and virtue in that. He was something beyond definition, which to me meant there was nothing to over intellectualize. He was just sexy, androgynous, beautiful, genius, perfection. But without the context of how he came up, we're missing some critical components of his identity and development. He's often reduced to raceless when in fact he was incredibly embedded in black music and evolution and politics. He's also reduced to a caricature of a human.

Shawn: 42:52

When accounting for who he was in the 70s, it's clear that he was on this trajectory authentically. As much as he designed his image and his music to a specific end, he was always doing so guided by an honest commitment to his own self-expression and identity. The end product was not a version of him, it was him. If you haven't already, I would suggest going back to Michael's first adult solo album, off the Wall. Listen to it and watch the videos, and then find some of the Jackson's live performances in the late 70s, early 80s, when Michael Jackson was still performing with the group. You can see and hear Michael foreshadowing the image, the style, the music, the moves that would become quintessential Michael Jackson later in his career.

Shawn: 43:34

It's exciting and exhilarating to watch, if for no other reason than to witness the joy, the curiosity, the playfulness, the innocence in the performances that seems to get lost in the later stuff, when Michael is reduced to Wacko Jaco, when he's more encumbered and kind of buckling under the weight of it all, and maybe in end it's a reminder that we're all so much more than the truncated versions of our experiences and our expressions that get told, often by people that only ancillarily know us, if at all. Sometimes we enhance the good at the expense of the bad. Sometimes it's vice versa, but the reality is we all deserve the grace of being seen for our entire and true selves, and Michael was no different. All right, check back soon for another episode of Deep Dive Chat. Soon, folks.