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| | Anthony Dattilo Final Draft
"Abject Thriller"
'Cause this is thriller, thriller night
And no one's gonna save you from the beast about to strike
You know it's thriller, thriller night
You're fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller tonight.
Michael Jackson, Thriller
Within the chorus of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" a certain ambiguity quickly asserts itself. Who is fighting for their life inside a killer tonight? Who is the beast about to strike? It is precisely because of this ambiguity that it would be difficult to find a more apt subject than Michael Jackson's video "Thriller", in order to explore notions of abjection. Little did one realize in 1982, that Jackson's own career and iconic status would acquire much of the dark transformational tone that his ground-breaking video established. Jackson himself is a constant point of speculation, raising questions about boundaries and signifiers, with regards to race, gender, success and -- most important to this text-- the blurred distinctions between performer and icon, art and artist. In order to explore abjection in the "Thriller" video and to a lesser extent in Jackson's career, it is essential to first delve into some conceptions of abjection.
From the vile to the decomposed, the unspoken intention to the fear of a possibility, one
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confronts abjection. Abjection sits uncomfortably in all company, shifting its weight, only partially alluding to its source, without any commitment or stasis. Or, in the words of Julia Kristeva,
The abject is violence of mourning for an "object" that has always already been lost. The abject shatters the walls of repression and its judgments. It takes the ego back to its source on the abominable limits from which, in order to be, the ego has broken away - it assigns it a source in the non-ego, drive, and death.
The experience of abjection goes beyond the rational or pragmatic fear and enters the realm of the phobic. Abjection is the removal of boundary between the subject and the object it ascertains, the self and other, the wound experienced and the wound remembered.
Any text that attempts to qualify abjection is quickly confronted with a series of problems. Abjection itself is a transient signifier, alluding to what it is not and threatening its possibility. It is this elusive transgression that gives abjection its power and quality. Julia Kristeva goes even further, characterizing it as a vestigial assertion of the pre-symbolic. Abjection is the closest one comes to the experience of "the real" in Jacque Lacan's terms. Kristeva, referring to that early state prior to identity differentiation notes, " The non-distinctiveness of inside and outside would thus be unnamable, a border passable in both directions by pleasure and pain." While each of these considerations is pertinent, one might find it useful with regards to this text to primarily consider abjection
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as an insistent foil to the image presented to us within Lacan's notion of the mirror stage; prior to the induction to language, one apprehends a cohesive image in the mirror with which to identify, while the body itself is experienced as a series of conflicting drives and impulses. It is essential to this text to have a clear description of Lacan's model, which is deftly described by Kaja Silverman as
. . . a mis-recognition; the subject apprehends itself by means of a fictional construct whose defining characteristics - focus, coordination-it does not share. The body objectified, viewed from an external locus becomes abject. … the mirror stage is one of those crises of alienation around which the Lacanian subject is organized, since to know oneself through an external image is to be defined through self alienation.
It is through this perspectival notion of interiority and exteriority that Jackson's video has particular resonance, mainly because Jackson seems to relish switching roles within the piece and perforating this boundary in a public manner.
The song "Thriller" itself, along with Jackson's now famous zombie dance have received both critical acclaim and pervasive media presence, due in part to Jackson's troubled personal life being a continuous point of public scrutiny. Jackson's video begins with a self-aware representation of a fifties couple, replete with letterman jackets and a convertible running out of gas on a lonely stretch of road. As the couple walks along, Jackson announces that he is in love with the girl but that he must share something with
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her because he is different. If she is to be with him she must accept him as he truly is. As the full moon peeks through the clouds, Jackson goes through a metamorphosis, becomes a werewolf and proceeds to terrorize and brutalize his date. The scene then cuts to Jackson and the same girl, now in contemporary dress, sitting in a movie theater watching the previously pictured scene unfold. Flustered, the young woman insists on leaving in the middle of the film and Jackson accompanies her home. The previous scene in the theater might be interpreted in two different manners: the young woman was terrified by seeing such a close likeness of herself being brutally murdered (and/or raped) by her current date on the big screen, or the entire scene was simply an extension of Jackson's fantasy, which he was heartily enjoying. This particular point is pertinent to this exploration because it infers Jackson's willingness to identify with that which is transformational, unpredictable and uncontrollable.
Jackson, now in his signature red leather jacket is the recognizable pop star. Out on the street, he begins to taunt his date for being scared within the confines of the theater. On the way back a similar transformation takes place, except this time it is not instigated by the external power of the moon. Now Jackson switches character quickly, becomes a zombie, and proceeds to terrify his date a second time. It is difficult to determine what degree of camp is intended by Jackson, considering the narration by Vincent Price and the fact that the zombies are more interested in syncopated dance than inflicting any real damage at this point. Yet one cannot help but to pose the question: Why does Jackson choose to represent himself as a monster and a corpse who is unable to contain his true
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impulses towards murder and cannibalism? Is this all a simple representation of ghoulish sophomoric bravado intended on quelling public discussion of Jackson's gender preference? Is his implied comfort with zombie status in a poor urban area at night intended to garner street credibility? Such coarse assumptions bare little scrutiny; a campy dance number with chiffon wrapped mummies might not be the best strategy if one is intent on asserting a cogent signifier of machismo. In addition, Jackson's on screen crotch-grabbing and pelvic thrusting have an affectation that seem like a forced hyperbolic display of heterosexuality, which paradoxically makes his movements suspect. Other examples of a male hyper sexuality being perceived as a form of gender ambiguity can be found throughout the same period. John Travolta's portrayal in “Saturday Night Fever”, of a disaffected youth consumed by dancing, conveyed a similar meaning. While both Jackson and Travolta were considered extraordinary and groundbreaking in their depictions, they soon came to bear the brunt of many jokes. Ironically, Jackson's campy jest might be just the element that is needed to avoid responsibility for the previous assertions or any allusion to a more grizzly subtext that can be read into Jackson's meaning. Sigmund Freud saw the Joke as functioning directly in this manner; " . . . internal resistance is overcome and inhibition is lifted with the aid of a joke. This enables the intention to be satisfied. . .." , in a way that avoids culpability. One may also assert that the figure Jackson presents is simply a satirical indictment of the way the media had fictionalized his life, but one must remember that these representations came long before Jackson's fall from grace; his plastic surgery was minimal and the questions he would raise with regard to race and gender were still predominantly on the horizon. Jackson's entire upbringing was essentially a public affair (and a function of his representation) from the age of five, so it is important here to explore how media representations might have some role in the formation of his identity, because much of Jackson's career can be seen as an overt response to his public portrayal.
If one accepts that Lacan's notion that the mirror stage is the precursor to the construction of the ideal ego, and that perfected form has some bearing on the impetus to narcissism, then what part do those we attempt to emulate play in this model? In a culture that is obsessed with celebrity, it is this very transposed narcissistic affiliation that is at work. Furthermore, it is important to consider that the chronology of introduction to an ideal self can be reversed to some degree, if only incrementally; it is not necessarily true that one is introduced to the mirror and then to cultural representations. If one accepts that children in American households spend close to 3 hours per day watching television it raises some fundamental questions about which cohesive image is perceived first or as more mocking. When one's own body is rendered other, abject or alienated in this virtual manner, the process is even more complete than that described in the mirror stage. One can at least witness a child affecting his own image by moving his arms and legs, while corresponding media figures do not respond at all. But the question that begs to be
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answered is: What if they did? In the case of Michael Jackson this question is not rhetorical. It may very well be that the primary reason Jackson sought to fracture his identity within the "Thriller" video was as a means to revealing his real experience of abjection. If one considers Freud's original model for narcissistic neuroses, ". . . in which the subject's libido is attached to his own ego instead of an object" one must consider the predicament of being presented with one's own image and identity as an externalized fictional object to be beheld, bought or sold. If one imagines that one's experience is essentially displaced by cultural representations of oneself, as in Jackson's case, then one of the only recourses left is to destroy that image. Spectacle might be construed as theatrical and short lived by definition. If Jackson actually consciously manufactured this subversion without unhinging his career, all within the guise of a campy dance number, it only would further concretize his moniker as "The King of Pop", but this does not seem likely. Such facile manipulation of public persona infers a manipulation of the extended contextual media environment Jackson exists within. Such an extraordinary management of perception might preclude one's need for subversion or a proclivity for surrounding oneself with children and chimpanzees instead of rational, critical adults. If this assertion seems unfair, it would at least explain Jackson's beguilement as to why the public is so critical and judgmental of his lifestyle. It does not however vindicate those who vilify Jackson for refusing to remain a static predictable signifier of race, gender and age. One may consider Jackson's insistent refusal to grow up; his, purported sleeping in an oxygen tent, extensive collection of amusement rides and toys, and the fact that his estate is named “ Neverland” , all point to a consciously arrested development intended to stop
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the body's demise. This preoccupation with age may in fact offer a binary opposition to his sustained fascination with abjection, which became quite public as he repeatedly attempted to attain the skeletal remains of Joseph Carey Merick “ The Elephant Man”.
Abjection itself permits but does not exactly encourage a sustained affiliation; to do so is to continually embrace death too literally, paradoxically undermining its most salient attribute of finality. Yet what one finds inside the Thriller video's plot is a repeated yet fleeting encounter with death and its representation. The death drive and mastery have a binary relationship according to Freud, where death is seen as an evacuation of tension or a natural insistence of the organism in which it, " . . . shall follow its own path to death, and to ward of any possible ways of returning to inorganic existence. . .." One may find a more cohesive and slightly differing description of this dynamic in Kaja Silverman's, Male Subjectivity at the Margins, where the ego seeks a constant level of mastery by engaging its own destruction in a mitigated manner,
. . .the repetition through which psychic mastery is established exists in such an intimate relation with the repetition through which it is jeopardized that Freud shows himself unable to distinguish clearly between them.
Notably, a fundamental question is raised within this assertion with regards to the difference between media representation and firsthand interaction with the abject; Is the representation of abjection a viable access to its experience or is it an effective means of dampening its effects? If one were to make a habit of visiting morgues, slaughter houses
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and medical waste facilities, one's sanity might be questioned, yet it seems perfectly within the confines of civil society to view programs and films that deal directly with these subjects in graphic form.
If one considers the real threats the abject presents us with, then why is its representation so pervasive? Bodily fluid, corpses and decay seem to permeate television and film, yet few of us are tolerant of personally seeing the bloodshed incurred in the production of our food. From Levitic law to Victorian moral dogma, there was a prescribed means of sanitization of the way one interacted with life's detritus and eventual demise. Consider the following excerpt from Leviticus, " . . . whosoever toucheth any creeping thing, whereby he may be made unclean, or of a man of whom he may take uncleanness, whatsoever uncleanness he hath; The soul which hath touched such shall be unclean . . . unless he wash his flesh with water." This brief excerpt from a much larger text is explicit in its terms and procedures, carefully enumerating the ablutions one must endure to insure salvation. One might assert that contemporary social codes are still quite strict with regard to the "unclean", considering the pervasive advertising dedicated to the eradication of filth, germs, and sanitization of bodily fluids. So, why within Pop-Culture are we so predisposed to representations of death, defilement and gore? It is the contention of this text that representation of abjection is a paradoxical attempt to control its effects while experiencing its diminished and therefore nullified quality. In other words, the repetitive viewing (or crafting) of the representation of gore, decay and dismemberment can be seen as an attempt at its mastery. Abjection by its very nature
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defies mastery because it breaks down the separation between subject and object, signifier and signification. The sign can no longer hold its traditional signification because the subject comes to a point of empathy and transcendence, displacing that which was signified. Abjection beheld as media representation is quickly transformed into an objectified scene, despite time based media's ability to coax its viewer into an encompassing diegesis or any number of perspectival positions. Conversely, what one sees in Jackson's video is precisely this type of attempted mastery; Jackson continually and effortlessly switching roles between ghoul and protector, corpse and savior. The problem lies within this predicament of mastery itself because it too remains within the realm of representation, which mandates that the final manner one comes to view the mastery is voyeuristic. One can explore this dynamic a third and final time within the video.
The young woman runs from the zombies, Jackson included in their ranks, and finds an abandoned home in which to hide. Quickly zombies begin to break through the walls and floor with a ferociousness and intention lacking in the previous scene. Just as the young woman is abandoning hope, curled on the couch in a fetal position, the nightmare evaporates leaving only a tidy suburban living room and Jackson as a consoling boyfriend. If a viewer was still bent on seeing this production as a series of psychopathic episodes suffered by the young woman, Jackson drives the point home a final time by looking back over his shoulder at the viewer with glowing demonic eyes. It is more than simply this author's characterization of Jackson's portrayal as demonic, apparently
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Jackson also found it necessary to denounce the occult with a disclaimer in the opening credits of the video, " Due to my strong personal convictions I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult." What is in question here may have to do with Jackson's choice of words; is he questioning the occult's existence or disavowing his endorsement of people's participation in it? One would think that simply representing traditional characters of the horror genre, such as a wolf-man or a mummy would not require such an overt testimonial. Jackson' s preliminary disclaimer almost functions as a warning label.
One possible explanation might be that since Jackson portrays himself as having unlimited power over the dead it may infer malevolence. Another explanation might be the very manner in which Jackson interacts with abjection itself and how ultimately we are made complicit through our viewer-ship.
While it is difficult to determine meaning from the choices Jackson didn't make, it is conspicuous that the self-possessed vampire is omitted from Jackson's pantheon of kitsch monsters. Jackson's initial shape shifting into the wolf-man character is highly graphic, portraying subtle shifts in facial construction, skin texture and hair growth, that were all transfixing and state of the art in 1982. An added point of speculation lies in Jackson's reported skin condition: Vitiligo, by which the skin eventually turns white in patches most commonly found around the mouth and eyes . While many individuals suffering from the disease utilize makeup in order to cover the discoloration, Jackson's makeup seems to lighten the areas that have yet to be affected. This act alone implies, if not confers, his association with the disease and otherness, in part, by visually portraying
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something alien to his own life. While it's impossible to know exactly why Jackson has chosen to do this, his identification with transformation and the transient remains consistent. One may consider that both the wolf-man and the zombie are out of their own control; in fact, it is this lack of control of movement and action that typifies their condition. It is noteworthy that Jackson chose to represent the horror of his transformation through illustrating hair and nail growth, tooth elongation, and the shedding or morphing of skin, all of which are constant reminders of transience and the constant sloughing off of the body and its limits. These corporeal transgressions imply a certain co-mingling that is more ancient than contemporary in its view. The body is not seen as whole, monadic or self contained but porous and in flux. If one construes Jackson's media life as an extended body, its perforation seems quite reasonable. It is almost as if Jackson is portraying a festering condition that erupts from within, making that which is interior condition (literally and figuratively) an exterior manifestation. It is in this very manner that the viewer participates by proxy, while suspending disbelief and again directly by experiencing abjection through fascination, in the truest sense of the word: an inability to free one's gaze. It is within this context that the requirements of religion (notably the Christian religion) are both transgressed and upheld, first by, " . . . threatening the divinity, acting independently of it and analogous to the autonomous power of a spirit of evil. [or conversely, by] . . . the fact that it is subordinate to the will of God." The latter of the two positions allows for the collapse of the separation between subject and object to qualify as a means of self mortification, confirming one's abject position as unworthy of God's grace. What complicates this binary further lies in the difference between religion and the religious experience. Ultimately the two are quite different yet depend on each other as referent. While religion and its moral laws frequently function as social stricture and a means of dictating difference, religious experience is anathema to borders and difference, because it is transcendental. The experience of abjection borders on religious experience in a number of ways. In both, there is a moment of transcendence where the viewer is veritably included in the event by means of the subject/object collapse. Secondly, both inhibit, or even prevent, the cognitive description of the event as it occurs. Thirdly, each hint at a nebulous system of meaning that lies outside the grasp or construction of the subject . Finally both are marked by an altered sense of time that is both dilated and fleeting. What is remarkable is that Jackson's video engages many of these distinctions by default. The filmic medium almost always places the viewer in a privileged voyeuristic position that implies complicit meaning construction. Usually the audience is not regarded as part of this meaning construction in such an overt manner but Jackson's video ends with him turning to the viewer as if to imply knowledge of his true intention and that we are complicit with him. In addition, both music and film defy a separation from the event presented and are equally hard to evaluate cognitively while they are still being experienced. In actuality, one must briefly remove one's self from the experience in order to judge it. Ironically, the tragedy of Michael Jackson's meteoric career does not allow him the same ability or luxury; he cannot remove himself from the product he produces in order to weigh its effect or tenor.
If one considers Jackson's career as an extension of the mirror stage - as previously described - one may consider Jackson's insistent infantilization not as a willful or predatory act but possibly as symptomatic condition. Ultimately, Jackson and this text's conception of abjection have much in common: while abjection itself cannot ultimately be mitigated through its representation without destroying its character, Jackson has been unable to portray his public persecution without destroying his own image. This is what Kristeva dubs the "deject", always straying, always defining, " He is on a journey, during the night, the end of which keeps receding. . . .The abject from which he does not cease separating is for him, in short, a land of oblivion that is constantly remembered." Michael Jackson's Thriller album still maintains the record for the most albums ever sold. While its popularity may have been primarily because of its many hits, ground-breaking companion music video and marketing strategies, its longevity may owe something to Jackson's loss through public portrayal: abjection.
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| | | Posted 4/28/2005 5:31 PM - 1 View - 3 eProps - 3 comments
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