“You Can't Win, Child, but You Can't Get Out of the Game”: Michael Jackson's Transition from Child Star to Superstar

Abstract

This paper examines the early performance style of Michael Jackson and argues that his work as a child prodigy is crucial to understanding his adult career. As a young boy, Jackson was presented to mainstream audiences in ways that connected him to clichéd images of child stars of 1930s Hollywood and also drew on stereotypes of black masculinity deriving from blackface minstrelsy. His transition through puberty created anxiety, as the attributes considered appealing for a little boy would strike audiences differently coming from an adult. Analysis of Jackson's navigation of adolescence touches on questions of artistic integrity, masculinity, and the function of child performers.

Acknowledgments

My thinking throughout this project has benefited enormously from the insights and ideas of others. In addition to the judicious comments of my editors Susan Fast and Stan Hawkins, I gratefully acknowledge many stimulating exchanges with Jennifer Bain, Steven Baur, David Brackett, Brandon Brophy, Jeff Hennessy, Annie Randall, David Schroeder, and Gregory Servant, and music scholars at Carleton University and the University of Oslo. As well, the students in my Popular Music Analysis seminar in 2009 stoically bore the brunt of my fascination with “Who's Loving You;” I can only hope I managed to cultivate in them an appreciation for the art of the 6/8 ballad.

Notes

 [1] Rock ideology has been thoughtfully analyzed and critiqued in numerous works, and my summary of its salient points is necessarily brief and partial. See, among others Auslander; Brackett; Fast; Frith; Reynolds and Press; Walser; Wicke.

 [2] The falsification of Michael's age by two years echoes the publicity machine of Shirley Temple, whose birth date was also adjusted to make her seem even more precocious. The details of the Jackson 5's “discovery” are discussed in Jackson (47–48), Knight (184), and (Call Her 225, Michael 55).

 [3] For his own account of these years, see Jackson (35–39).

 [4] Stagolee is, of course, a figure based on a real person and actual events in St. Louis in 1895. An excellent analysis of the Stagolee myths is found in Brown.

 [5] My thinking here is much shaped by—in addition to scholarship on blackface minstrelsy—Patricia Hill Collins's work on controlling stereotypes of black women.

 [6] In her autobiography, Temple describes the arduous process by which her trademark fifty-six blonde curls were achieved: “Every weekday, my hair had to be pinned up, and on Sundays, Mother washed it in my bathroom basin. Not a simple procedure. The soap was carved off a corner of a white bar of laundry Castile, melted in a pan on the stove, and applied warm and mushy. The scrubbing ended with an odorous vinegar rinse, which stung my eyes.” Peroxide was also used as the growing child's hair darkened (Temple 69).

 [7] Of the child stars named here, note that Mark Lester was Jackson's exact contemporary and lifelong friend, while Tatum O'Neal (five years younger) was reputedly his first girlfriend.

 [8] See Susan Fast's essay, this issue, which takes up Jackson's musical/performative queerness, an issue that has been much explored with respect to Prince, but hardly noticed in Jackson's work. For more thorough investigation of Prince's work and persona, see Hawkins and Niblock.

 [9] For more nuanced analysis of blaxploitation than I can provide, see Lawrence; Leab; Sieving.

[10] I find this choice intriguing, given the frequency with which adult actors play the roles of children in film and television. Mary Pickford, for example, played child roles well into her thirties, Judy Garland was 17 when she starred in the Wizard of Oz, and teen-oriented television shows from Beverly Hills 90201 to Glee routinely cast actors in their twenties and thirties. I suspect that the decision not to take this well-established route had to do with Ross's famously adult public persona, carefully cultivated by Motown beginning when she was a teenager.

[11] Taraborrelli's biography was published in a French translation in June of 2010.

[12] In a 1978 interview, he told his biographer that “I'm addicted to the stage. When I can't get on a stage for a long time, I have fits and get crazy. I start crying, and I act weird and freaked out” (Taraborrelli, Michael 180).

[13] What is more, in the film This Is It (which was unfinished at the time of his death), the voice tracks of Jackson speaking sound more conventionally masculine than the voice he typically chose for public speaking. Had he known that these preliminary voice tracks would be used in the final version of the film, might he have opted for his usual public voice?