Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Pattern Recognition

On a first glance, doesn't this



bear a ressemblence to this



Just a little bit?
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7 comments:

Yogo said...

I think he was trying to do the Black Power fist, but it doesn't look right coming from him.

5/12/05, 10:36 PM
Be said...

What I find interesting about it is the parallels between Mishima and Jackson in upbringing, senses of self, images to be built, fascination with the beauty of young boys. Mishima got into this whole neo fascist thing and eventually commit suicide after trying to overthrow the Japanese government after WWII. I don't think that Jackson's going to do anything like that, but the walled compound, the thing with the boys, the sometimes fascist or militaristic-looking clothing he wears (the armband thing is kind of odd) makes me wonder what is going on.

5/12/05, 10:53 PM
Yogo said...

Well, you are not wondering alone. My own take on MJ is that all the costumes and craziness is to distract us from the fact that he is a real predator. Hiding in plain view.

5/13/05, 10:46 AM
Be said...

That may well be the case. I don't want to say that we're misinterpreting an odd, creative mind's aesthetic in case he is a predator.

There are a couple views on Mishima - one that his aesthetic(like Riefenstahl's) glorifying the body is being misinterpreted, the other is that, though he was married and had kids, he liked boys as well.

How much in either case is it that my internal warning system is going off on something dangerous, how much is it my lack of tolerance for difference?

5/13/05, 11:04 AM
Yogo said...

It's a distraction.

I saw a show on cable, HBO I believe, about pimps. The interviewer asked the guy why did he wear such crazy clothes. The pimp said the crazy colorful clothing attracted a certain woman. A regular woman heading to work isn't likely to look twice at a fool in a pink suit, but a young girl or immature young woman might.

MJ turned his home into an amusement park to attract children. All kinds of kids go there, but the selected few get invited to the bedroom. Usually the ones from broken homes who are already confused about life and love. He's very calculating.

5/13/05, 2:15 PM
Simon Kenton said...

Nappy40, you're right. A sexual predator puts potential prey through what's called the interview. This can be very brief - as with the perp waiting in the parking garage. He can decide based on stance, walk, size, fitness, alertness and armament, in a second or so. Child molesters generally put potential victims and their families through a longer process, as here, in order to home in on the correct mixture of greed and dysfunction.

The situation interests me for the light it throws on art/artist. I hold it as theoretically true that the work exists separate from the artist, and theoretically the compartmenhts are unbreachable. But Messrs. Jackson and Johnson have made it clear that in fact I don't act on this belief. Speaking not just as a daddy but as a general reader/listener, I can't bear Jackson's art, or his self, and the two have a kind of miscible pollution for me. Conversely, there's something so trustable, so noble, about Dr. Johnson's writing and self. Perhaps that's a not-often-acknowledged-enough aim of biography - to break down those compartment walls.

5/13/05, 7:32 PM
Be said...

Nappy: It makes sense from a marketing perspective to be flashy as a pimp - just like it does to be a drug dealer in the ghetto. People see the bling and get excited.

A lot of (if not the majority - I can't say, don't have the numbers in front of me) predators tend to camouflage themselves, though, too. Case in point - I worked for child welfare (not for profit state-contracted) for years - a very big-name place, and you'd not believe the internal investigations I had to deal with on caretakers who were kid-touchers. Idem for public schools. Myself, I had two Humbert Humberts in my life, and neither of them would be considered flashy or attractive, even. One courted my mom to get to the kids, the other was a music teacher in my middle school.
For the one, I wasn't able to escape - plausible deniability and all that. For the other - well, my friends who knew what was going on with my mom's boyfriend, came to help me out - lots of double reeds came out of that program, and that horrible man (who'd sued for his job back after he was dismissed for accusations similar to what I'd dealt with with him) got sugar in his gastank.

5/14/05, 6:29 PM

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