The following review comes from MJSTAR Member “Cripshaw2”, a balanced review on what is the new artwork for Michael Jackson’s MICHAEL:
“I’m not a fan of this kind of kitsch painting. I think it’s ghastly, ordinarily, but, I don’t know, it seems to sum up Michael’s pulp fiction life. The cheap-looking gaudy outfits, his obsession with tacky objet d’art, the altered, at times almost ghoulish, appearance. His Hollywood life. When you go to the fair ground, you’ll often see a ride called ‘Thriller’ painted in this way with Michael’s zombie-face staring out, cheap pop music obliterating the screams of the thrill-seekers who are drunk on inexpensive alcho-pops. Elvis went the same way. They become lowest common denominator fodder, like those images and statues of Jesus you can get. Jesus, all blond-haired and blue-eyed. Fake. Layer upon layer of pulp fiction, pop kitsch. Michael has entered this realm. The moment he went massive with Thriller it was always going to happen. The Dangerous cover is ultra kitsch, too, even if most of the music on it is not. Michael was alive and active at the same time as the slacker generation. In a cynical time, Michael was away with the fairies, he dared to dream (but his dreams came at a price – he got into bed with Pepsi and Sony). The world was magic, he said, and everyone sniggered. Kurt Cobain summed up the true horror of being alive now, his album Nevermind replaced Dangerous at the top of the US album charts. That’s when the writing was on the wall for Michael. The Dangerous cover was just baroque-inspired nonsense to the slacker generation. The baby chasing the dollar bill on the cover of Nevermind hit home.
The new cover deals with all this baggage. The theatre, the spectacle. It’s why Jeff Koons chose to make a statue of Michael Jackson and Bubbles in such a gaudy, kitsch, fashion. Michael probably thought it was beautiful – it’s not meant to be. It’s meant as a critique on the conservative values and tastes of industrial, poorly educated America. A consumer’s paradise. Daydream nation. The cover is fascinating because it admits to all this, no doubt unknowingly, as did Dangerous. It reminds us that Michael was nothing more than a side show, a distraction, razzle-dazzle. ‘Blue eye’ is sophisticated. It’s more seductive. More like Prince or Bowie really. Michael was always more of a populist, an entertainer – Pulp fiction to their serious sci-fi, and yet Michael still managed to say more. This cover continues the tradition. It’s as easy as ABC and yet you could spend years pondering the question: What on earth was Michael Jackson? This cover won’t harm him.”
Source: Cripshaw
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