The Child in The Mirror: A Nietzschean Reading of the Myth of Michael Jackson

The character of my fondness for Michael Jackson and Friedrich Nietzsche is very similar. Despite both of these men being extremely influential and leaving behind highly celebrated bodies of work, they are also both often considered tragic cases on the historical stage. They were driven to obsessive heights, if not madness, by their devotion to their craft and their vision for the world. Yet I have never looked upon either of them with anything short of deep respect. Even in their tragedy, these men are beautiful to me. I hope to… reveal two visionaries reaching out to one another from across historical eras and spheres of influence. In the act of aligning these two boldly trailblazing artists, I hope to lend an admirable and rich philosophy to a pop star, and to lend the romance and marvel of pop to the life’s work of a philosopher.

Consider, as further examples, a few of Jackson’s most famous fashion decisions. He took a golf glove and bedazzled it with rhinestones. He paired a military jacket with skintight jeans. These iconic visual elements are symbols of his playful integration of varying stereotypes of gender identity, wherein stereotypically feminine flamboyance (bejeweled beauty, graceful elegance) collides with stereotypically male institutional accessories (military, athletics, places of competition and/or aggression).

In fact, in a Nietzschean context, we might get a little more playful with the lyrics to “Bad”, and suggest that when Jackson asks ,”Who’s bad?”, we can take it as a rhetorical question as opposed to a call-and-response mechanism. “Who’s bad?”, Jackson or Nietzsche alike might ask. Well, no one, really, unless they accept or internalize the external force that labels them as such. What’s bad? Well, nothing, universally or objectively, aside perhaps from that which renders us life-denying or weak.

 

THE CHILD

If we accept that Jackson was existentially able to carve out some room to roam, so to speak — the next question to address is: what use did he make of that creative space? The answer is expressed perfectly in the third and final stage described in Zarathustra’s metamorphoses. This stage is symbolized by the child, the playful creator. For Nietzsche, play is hardly a trivial matter; it is a radical philosophical act. When old frameworks are cast aside, new ones must be crafted with imaginative vivacity. Likewise, Zarathustra teaches, “Why must the preying lion still become a child? The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning… He who had been lost to the world now conquers his own world”.9

Here the conception of self-improvement is a move towards new innocence, towards life lived as an artistic act. The individual creator builds his world up anew according to his own whimsy. Yet Zarathustra’s characterization of the child is not quite the same as, for example, the Transcendentalists’ idolization of the pure, uncorrupted youth. Zarathustra’s child is, importantly, reborn after a series of challenges. This child “conquers his world” only after a stage of burden and a stage of subversion. More specifically, too, is the implicit idea here that the child emerges out of pain or trauma. The act of “forgetting” is admirable in Nietzsche, because forgetting past legislation means being free to legislate for oneself anew, without guilt. Yet the need to forget seems to suggest a trauma that must be overcome. Zarathustra’s child is a bit of an alien. The playful child conquers his world, but only after being “lost” to the world at large.

It is here where the symbolic text of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra collides in an extremely literal way with Jackson’s biographical details. So much of Jackson’s mythology in the popular eye is centered around the idea of him as Peter Pan, the little boy who refused to grow up — the child star who, having had his childhood taken from him, attempted to recreate it in adulthood. Yet using Zarathustra as a guide, we can go further, and approach the subject of Jackson’s inner child in a way that grants him much greater moral and philosophical agency. Within the Zarathustran paradigm, Jackson’s arrival at a childlike state can be seen as a noble example of overcoming trauma and redefining one’s understanding of the world accordingly. Rather than being written off as delusional behavior, Jackson’s general fixation on children and childhood can be seen as an enlightened conclusion — one reached by someone who has had the spiritual fortitude to transform his past slavery into a life-affirming vision for the future.

Indeed, in “The Three Metamorphoses”, Zarathustra describes the child as uttering “a sacred ‘yes'” to life, seen as a welcome progression from the previous “no” of the lion.9 Jackson’s “holy ‘yes'” — his visionary work — came in the form of his humanitarian efforts. Most notably, his Heal the World Foundation, established in 1992, provided millions of dollars to impoverished and ill children worldwide. His fame gave him a prominent platform upon which to express his sociopolitical concerns. Accordingly, the most straightforward articulation of his own philosophy, his inner life as a thinker, is available to us in this arena. Considering his celebrity, my philosophical “reading” of Jackson’s life is naturally bound up in rumor, speculation, and imaginative association. Yet in his passionate defense of suffering children everywhere, we are able to seize on more rich and specific evidence of his thought. His Grammy acceptance speech in 1993 bears a notably strong resemblance to Zarathustra’s own appraisal of the virtue of children. After discussing his own childhood abuse, Jackson went on to say, “The magic, the wonder, the mystery and the innocence of a child’s heart are the seeds of creativity that will heal the world. What we need to learn from children isn’t childish. Being with them connects us to the deeper wisdom of life, which is ever present and only asks to be lived: the noble way to solutions that lie waiting to be recognized within our own hearts”.10

We can take two major points from this. The first is that the source of creative energy is in a childlike sense of newness in one’s approach to the world. The second is that true wisdom means recognizing the strength within. What Jackson is suggesting here is that any substantial change occurs from a place of self-possession, from a realization of one’s own potential as a creator and meaning-maker. It’s quite a Nietzschean idea.

The same idea is echoed again in one of Jackson’s most beloved songs, “The Man In the Mirror.” The famous chorus goes: “I’m starting with the man in the mirror/ I’m asking him to change his ways/ No message could’ve been any clearer/ If you want to make the world a better place/ Take a look at yourself and then make a change”.11 Though we can’t properly attribute the words to Jackson himself — the song was written for Jackson by a singer named Siedah Garrett — the message bodes well with the rest of Jackson’s art and public work.


Sources

9 Kaufmann, Walter, ed. The Portable Nietzsche. New York: Viking Penguin, 1954, 139.
10 Jackson, Jackson. Grammy Legend Award acceptance speech. 35th Annual Grammy Awards. CBS. 24 Feb 1993.
11 Garrett, Siedah. “Man in the Mirror”. Perf. Michael Jackson. Bad. Epic, 1987.

 

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Written by
Vee Hua 華婷婷

Vee Hua 華婷婷 (they/them) is a writer, filmmaker, and organizer with semi-nomadic tendencies. Much of their work unifies their metaphysical interests with their belief that art can positively transform the self and society. They are the Editor-in-Chief of REDEFINE, Interim Managing Editor of South Seattle Emerald, and Co-Chair of the Seattle Arts Commission. They also previously served as the Executive Director of the interdisciplinary community hub, Northwest Film Forum, where they played a key role in making the space more welcoming and accessible for diverse audiences.

Vee has two narrative short films. Searching Skies (2017) touches on Syrian refugee resettlement in the United States; with it, they helped co-organize The Seventh Art Stand, a national film and civil rights discussion series against Islamophobia. Reckless Spirits (2022) is a metaphysical, multi-lingual POC buddy comedy for a bleak new era, in anticipation of a feature-length project.

Vee is passionate about cultural space, the environment, and finding ways to covertly and overtly disrupt oppressive structures. They also regularly share observational human stories through their storytelling newsletter, RAMBLIN’ WITH VEE!, and are pursuing a Master’s in Tribal Resource and Environmental Stewardship under the Native American Studies Department at the University of Minnesota.

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Julia Berkowitz
Julia Berkowitz
11 years ago

Wonderful and thought provoking article. Thank you!

Sandra Faikus O'Brien
Sandra Faikus O'Brien
11 years ago

wow! Fascinating! I really appreciate the ideas presented by this article.

morinen
morinen
11 years ago

Great article! You saw and highlighted the core, most important things in Jackson. Fascinating parallels. Thank you!

Tabinformed
Tabinformed
11 years ago

Very insightful article shedding light on the motivations of two great artists.

Madi G
Madi G
11 years ago

Thank you. A really thought provoking article that connects the dots for me for MJ’s life, philosophy and art. I believe that his creativity was unparallelled in pop music and culture. He challlenged us and himself in ways that only now are being realized, studied and analyzed. Thanks again for adding to this discussion and apprecation of his life and work.

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