First of all let me apologize to the gentle reader who was misled by my title. This is not going to be an enlightening piece of literature, where the black swan is a metaphorical representation of some philosophical idea I am trying to convey to you. The black swan does have a symbolic meaning to me that I might divulge at a later time, but it has little to do with this post. This post is about one thing and one thing only: money!
Start any credible writing course or read any decent book about writing as a profession and you are more than likely to be reminded of the immortal words of Dr Samuel Johnson, author of the first English dictionary, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money". Most courses that are serious about getting you paid for your written work will encourage you to write letters for newspapers that pay, enter competitions for cash prizes - you will note that the vast majority of small writing competitions award cash prizes for a good reason - and indeed chase anything that means a monetary return. There is little place for pride in the early life of a writer trying to turn profeessional. In fact, the story of the struggling writer who prostitutes himself in anyway to make his talent pay is a virtual modern proverb these days. Check out the very funny Ed Reardon's Week for a great caricature of the overeducated writer desperate for work or, indeed, the Ricky Gervais's series, Extras for examples of an artist tortured by the continued loss of his credibility. And yet ask many non-writers their opinion on writing for a living and they will think it is a simple case of writing a book and sending it off the lucky publisher keen to get their hands on your gold. You then receive nice fat advance payments for every subsequent book, as you laze back in your expensive surroundings just waiting for the inspiration to grab you before writing your next bestseller. J.K. Rowling is cited as the supreme example of this and it is perhaps why many a struggling writer see daggers at this phenomenally successful writer. The truth for most, however, is a very different story.
When I was at school I remember a special room being set up where students, in their free time, could investigate career opportunities. You would enter your career of choice and then be given a list of the qualifications that best suited this job and the places in further and higher education that offered them. Then it would tell you what the general job prospects were. I remember going into the room with the same writing myth in my head I have previously described. The qualifications came up, English and History. I was overjoyed. My two favourite subjects! Then job prospects followed: very poor.
As the years have past I have got work in print. I even sold my first two not very good short stories quite easily, but this did far from open the floodgates of opportunity for me. I wrote for martial arts publications, using the vehicle of my twin passion to get some leverage up the professional ladder of opportunity. Unfortunately the ladder was sort of propped against the wrong wall, as the industry rarely pays hard cash for any work. It is a business based on the fact that a highly competitive world of clubs and retail businesses are falling over themselves to get publicized, meaning that some people virtually pay to get their work in print! I do know at least one person who got paid to write for a magazine, but from his account it was a severely unbalanced Faustian deal. Luckily I was published with Martial Arts Illustrated who although didn't pay me hard cash gave me free advertising space. So, I worked out a way to promote seminars off the back of articles I wrote on good martial artists.
Eventually I did succeed in getting a book into print and significantly it wasn't a martial arts book. However, no serious businessman would have been impressed with the niche market returns I received versus time and effort put into researching and writing this book. Mind you, this is the general nature of the writing business. The general path most professional writers take is qualify as a journalist and then to start writing their books in their spare time. This is not the route for all of us, much less those of us who weren't qualified to become journalists when we left school, however, the principle is a very sound one. Get paid for perfecting your craft in order to support the projects you love. Of course, journalism is an art unto itself and many journalists only write books as sideline and incidental projects. Their real love is their actual job. If you are a writer like me, however, you want to write books for a living. You want to write about your intererests and passions and receive a serious income for it. I am on my way and I have found some useful new tools at my and your disposal.
Writing has always been an accessible art to most people. That's why you get the J.K. taunts. Most people could write a book. Most people can also make money from it and some recognition. This blog is proof of the latter point. The internet has proven to be an incredible tool for today's generation of writers. It certainly has some big dangers varying from being dragged into listless or empty self indulgent writing, where your work is never going to generate any indirect let alone direct monetary returns, to the new problems with copyrighting http://web.me.com/penandspindle/heathervallance/The_Goblin_Market/Entries/2009/7 /31_Why_My_Copyright.html However, if you can steer your good ship, Discipline with strong awareness light on well across the internet then there is plenty that can be used to your advantage.
According to Don Tapscott's Grown Up Digital the era of the critic may be at an end. Few consumers trust the words of the distanced academic "expert" over someone they can relate to. The internet provides a collaborative community, a global one at that, which forms groups and trades information. Savvy internet companies realize this. They understand that Tapscott's Net Generation like to read reviews from people like themselves before they decide to buy a product. They also understand that this community will reward and recommend good reviews. Many sites, such as Amazon, have done this. I am actually a member of Amazon Vine, a special group that receives any early releases they list whenever I want free of charge in order to review them. This is hardly payment for my services, but it was quite nice to receive that recognition for a bunch of reviews I wrote years ago as an exercise to see how my work reviewing non-martial arts items might be received by the general public.
However, what prompted me to write what has become a rather lengthy ramble is a price comparison website called Dooyoo. This is where I appear as the BlackSwan featured in my title, writing reviews and actually getting paid to do it. How do I find the time? Those who know me will understand that time is not a plentiful commodity at hand. I try to restrict myself to writing stuff that is directly related to my own work - be it teaching martial arts/self defence or promoting my book. However, like most writers I am also constantly feeding off inspiration. This mainly comes in the form of books and entertainment. I love to discuss these things and there are plenty of people who enjoy reading my opinions and recommendations. Therefore, I thought why not use the time I would normally use to reply to an email to make some money?
Dooyoo was recommended to me through the famed "money saving expert" Martin Lewis. Here's the page I read: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/protect/make-money-surveys#review I am not interested in wasting my time on paid surveys. That's not what I like doing. The point is I like writing about works that either inspired me and also ones that didn't. If you are a reading this you are more than likely to be a person who enjoys writing and enjoys sharing their views on different media. This a great exercise to get your views out there and to see if they people find them useful. Better that than to write a big explanation on Facebook, Myspace, a forum or the like whether or not you thought the latest episode of Big Brother was any good.
When I first registered with the site I was expecting - rather pompously - to see a huge slew of badly written reviews and plagerized work. Although there is a lot of dross on the site, which is only to be expected, I was astounded to see a large number of good writers, many like me who have their own professional website and blogs. The community was very much the embodiment of what Tapscott described in his book with members policing and rewarding one another. If you do decide to join up, here are a few pointers I have learnt early on:
1. Obviously don't plagerize. Any new review is immediately registered and the community are onto it like white on rice. You will get a rating - Very Useful, Useful, Somewhat Useful or Not Useful - pretty quickly. There are a lot of serious users on this site, and a good number probably relying on it for a decent secondary income. However, there is nothing wrong with recycling an old review you may have written on your blog or another website that encourages customer feedback. My advice would be to preface the review with a small disclaimer that the review has been previously posted elsewhere - if it is on your blog then that's more advertising!
2. Make sure your reviews are for products only listed by Dooyoo. Remember it serves as a price comparison website, so many of the products are from other retailers. There is a function that allows you to only see products in the Dooyoo catalogue. You won't get points for reviews written for any other products. It might add to your profile, but the money is way too small and time is far too precious to bother with that sort of thing. Also, if I know many of you like I know myself you will get snared into producing more and more work without any instant rewards.
3. There are two types of review, an express review and a premium review. The premium review is the one that pays the money 50p per review. These immediately get advertized once you have written them. You have to get £50 before you can request a cheque. Express reviews are any reviews under 150 words. They don't get advertized and I guess are a way for to save an incomplete reviwe online, a review you can later add to in order to make the 150 word count. You can edit any of your online reviews at any time. You get points for good ratings on your reviews by other members, points that help get you to your money mark, therefore you are given an incentive to produce both quality and quantity.
4. Join me. Let's get our Circle of Friends going. That way we can build up plenty of points and our work better recognized, which means more money! Also don't forget to give me ratings when on get on there. Follow the BlackSwan! http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/member/BlackSwan/
Don't forget to check out Jamie Clubb's main blog www.jamieclubb.blogspot.com
My generation’s cynicism did not come overnight. First there was Mike Tyson’s conviction for rape. Then there would be the deaths of Brandon Lee and Kurt Cobain. These were our heroes and, of course, their deaths would be surrounded by mystery and supposed conspiracy as such untimely deaths to famous people are destined to be.
The weirdness of “Wacko Jacko” was taken to an irredeemably sinister level. It wasn’t long after Jackson had apparently set the record straight in his first “open” interview with Oprah Winfrey that the first child molestation charges were made. The interview had seemed like a pleasant epilogue to my following of Michael Jackson’s works. Okay, his songs seemed a little childish and superficial at the time when I was getting into apparent “music with meaning”, but at least I could smile and say they guy was just a misunderstood eccentric like many pioneers in history. I remember discussing the interview with my fellow school sixth formers and the consensus was that Jackson was a very sympathetic figure, a victim of the media and his own tough upbringing in showbusiness. Then Jordy Chandler child molestation accusations arrived! And it was like the God of Cynicism that presided over the ‘90s was saying “Not so fast Mr Jackson! You are not going to get away that easily!”
To make matters worse, Michael Jackson agreed on an out of court settlement to let the matter drop. In the eyes of many this was an admission of guilt. This is an understandable public reaction from many people who have never really experienced the full pressure of the media on their backs or the thought of a painful trial to handle. An out of court settlement might seem like “hush money” to some, but to those who have faced both the media and the legal system might have a little empathy for an individual who just saw an easy and quick way out. I know plenty of examples of people who have inadvisably settled for cautions, fines and out of court settlements for crimes – non-sexual I hasten to add – they haven’t committed in order to curtail legal proceedings. I have also seen people settle for virtually anything, guilty or not, to quieten down media interest. It is very easy to sit back in your armchair and be judgmental over situations you barely have third or fourth knowledge or experience of.
Of course, the Jordy Chandler case wouldn’t be the last time such accusations were to be made and the settlement arguably opened the door for future accusations, if we are to believe many Jackson’s supporters. The following decade Jackson would be charged by the state of California on “seven counts of child molestation and two counts of administering an intoxicating agent, in order to commit that felony”.
I may have moved on from the music of Michael Jackson at the time of the first accusations, but I always wanted to believe he was innocent. I acknowledge my influences and teachers with the respect they deserve and I was never embarrassed with being a Michael Jackson fan. And yet I didn’t know the guy or really anyone who was close to him. Why should I care whether he committed the crimes or not? The music and performance can be divorced from the man. Can’t it?
In-between the first and second set of allegations we watched and listened as celebrity paedophiles were shot down one by one. Gary Glitter was convicted more than once for increasingly worse crimes against minors and the campaign against him in the tabloid press continues to this day. I can happily say that I was never a Gary Glitter fan. He worked within my culture, the circus, for a very brief period alongside Gerry Cottle, who mentions him in his autobiography, “Confessions of a Showman”, but that is the only tenuous connection I can draw. Glitter’s music seemed arrogant and nonsensical to me during the time I discovered pop music, and by the time I retrospectively got into punk, glam rock was the anathema of my interests. However, to see him irredeemably fall was a shock to many.
Like Michael Jackson, Glitter, despite his three drink driving convictions in the 1980s, was a character that had become a family favourite. Then there was Jonathan King, once again I was no fan, but as with Glitter he just seemed to be a safe part of the institution. Now, according to the conclusions drawn from his guilty conviction by much of the tabloid press, he was revealed to be a prowling paedophile, enticing young boys into his limousine with promises of fortune in the music industry. Others, like The Who’s Pete Townsend, received a caution and a subsequent statutory five year inclusion on the Violent and Sex Offender Register. Townsend had been no saint during his guitar smashing days with The Who, but he had settled into a comfortable part of the establishment as he hit middle age and was an active campaigner for children’s charities. His conviction came about after he accessed a website that promoted child pornography. No evidence was found to secure a proper conviction and Townsend’s reasonable yet naïve defence was that he was researching material for a now abandoned book against child pornography. He had written an anti-child pornography article prior to the allegations.
Townsend’s career hasn’t really been tarnished. King is still a very strong self-promoter who has continued to produce a huge amount of work and keeps a positive face, but still gets little sympathy from the mainstream press. Glitter’s career seemed pretty much in tatters once he was found guilty for downloading child pornography. This original conviction was not nearly as severe as King’s, but he had some vital extra ingredients which were always going to work against him. Firstly despite the great diversity of King’s career, he was not quite as recognizable a figure as Glitter was and though comical to look at, he was not as eccentric. Secondly, Glitter was a has-been in the public eye and therefore completely safe to demolish. Mike Tyson had been found guilty of rape, but he had an army of defenders and fight fans that supported him throughout his prison term, upon his release and through his fights right up until his disastrous final bouts. This was all in spite of Tyson’s long criminal record and the fact he was accused and successfully sued on at least one occasion for sexual misconduct. Glitter did not have that kind of support or perhaps the British press were less tolerant. They hounded him wherever he went it seemed and eventually he was caught and convicted for several sexual crimes against underage girls in Vietnam. Glitter claimed to being entrapped and set up by the press, which is believable, but nevertheless hardly mitigated his crimes.
With these incidents all in mind (and the promise of more to come) it all seemed inevitable that Michael Jackson was going to be the biggest one of all to fall. This was it, the darker side of the American dream. After the album “HiStory”, Jackson’s career seemed to nose dive in the eyes of the general public. However, as pointed out by his younger sister, Janet, his final album, “Invincible”, was actually a financial success. It topped the billboard chart upon its release in the US and in 12 other countries. Nevertheless, the media mood of 2001 was not all welcoming for Michael Jackson. Aside from his previous allegations, he seemed to only appear in the press as part of some sort of weirdness or un-rock and roll-type controversy or other. The plastic surgery/skin disease problems also didn’t help his physical appearance and just further helped to propagate his general oddness. The sad thing about age is that you can all too easily become a parody of your former self.
It seemed like history was about to repeat itself. Martin Bashir’s documentary/interview served as a far less compassionate and more provocative sequel to Oprah Winfrey’s one that occurred 10 years previously. Winfrey had come across like a concerned parent who carefully asked questions like why do you grab your crotch on stage? Bashir, who had made his media breakthrough with his revealing interview with Princess Diana, seemed to be trying to get a rise out of Jackson. He certainly revealed the singer to be an eccentric – we already knew this – but he seemed to be trying to find this weirdness in everything he did. For example, I remember feeling sympathetic for Jackson when he demonstrated his love for climbing trees. Bashir just came across as a rather pompous stick-in-the-mud when he told Jackson that it wasn’t normal for a man in his 40s to climb trees, as if it were some sort of immature perversity.
Of course, the money shot for Bashir came with the issue of the children that stayed at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. Most people had been okay with the general eccentricity he had displayed so far, but it became distinctly uncomfortable when the singer started admitting to allowing children to share his bed. Interestingly it was Jackson’s “man-child” innocence and lost childhood angle that protected him in the eyes of some. Others, however, were less believing. In one breath Jackson seemed to be harking back to a more innocent time when he said that there was no greater expression of platonic love than when you shared your bed with someone. In a time when the media has taught us sexualize everything, it is worth taking a step back and considering an age when non-sexual partners did share beds. However, this did not seem to exactly gel with Jackson then clearly asserting that he did not allow (or no longer allowed) children to share his bed.
Like Sister Aloysius in the play “Doubt: A Parable”, many felt that those who didn’t see him as a paedophile were trying to believe in whatever made them feel comfortable again. There may be a deal of truth in this. However, like the good sister these same cynics probably saw other corroborating evidence of Jackson’s guilt in his numerous eccentricities. It doesn’t stand up as a rational argument – more a “poisoning the well” or even a “slippery slope” logical fallacy – but in the minds of many, confirmed weirdness plus allegations of outright wrongness equals guilty. This, after all, is the nature of a witch-hunt.
Not having the facts and not being a close follower of everything that had been happening in the life of Michael Jackson, I didn’t side with the cynics or the all-forgiving acolytes. I just hoped that justice would be done and I hoped that no sexual offences had actually occurred. I didn’t want Michael Jackson to be a paedophile, but if evidence proved this fact without doubt, then this was something I would have to accept without mitigation. Aphrodite Jones’s book “The Michael Jackson Conspiracy” puts forward the idea that those who accused Jackson had agendas of their own. He argues using detailed descriptions of the court proceedings including apparent endless contradictions of prosecuting witness testimony and eye-rolling responses to the revelation of alleged “lies” put forward by the ’93 accusers. The title of the book is enough to make my own eyes roll, but it seems like a fairly strong case in principle. Showbusiness is certainly full of parasites, and celebrities are easy targets once you are inside the proverbial “circle of trust”, but equally there are plenty who abuse their own positions of influence.
Jackson’s huge debts and the immature way he threw money around on the Martin Bashir documentary seemed to back up this image of a child-like personality with little “street savvy” who could easily be taken advantage of. His various religious conversions first to being a Jehovah’s Witness, along with his mother, and then to Islam seemed to speak of a type of inner uncertainty. Apparently his bodyguards were from the Nation of Islam, a far more extreme and diverse version of mainstream Sunni or Shia Islam, but his funeral was Christian. And yet his professional career speaks of an independent man who broke away from his family and gradually took control of all his own projects. I would argue he was far more than “Qunicy Jones’s best instrument” as one British comic glibly quipped.
Death of an Icon
Like David Carradine who died the same year in fairly self-explanatory if rather sordid circumstances, Michael Jackson’s sudden unexpected death at 50 just before he intended to launch his final tour was pounced on almost immediately by the conspiracy theorists. These vary from the concerns of the family about suspicious circumstances connecting his doctor to outrageous Elvis-type claims about him faking his death. I am not going to go into the details, but just say that this was all tragically predictable. There are still documentaries and books to this day on “mystery” surrounding the deaths of James Dean, Bruce Lee, Marylin Monroe, Princess Diana, Elvis Presley and just about anyone who was very famous and didn’t live into old age.
It wasn’t long before Jackson’s estate state negotiating deals on documentaries that covered the singer’s final days. I predict plenty of nonsense thrown in with “exclusive footage and interviews” that will help muddy waters into the public’s perception of the inquest into his death. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the first one that seems to have surfaces, simply titled “Michael Jackson's Last Days: What Really Happened”. The documentary was presented by Michael Jackson fan and journalist, Jacques Peretti.
The documentary’s best interviewee was the advice of a true expert who provided the most plausible scenario for Jackson’s death given the evidence that has been provided. Dr Drew Pinsky is an expert in addictive medicines and has a lot of experience in dealing with celebrity drug addicts. Pinsky believes that Jackson, who had self-medicated with powerful painkillers since the horrendous injuries he sustained in a Pepsi commercial in 1984, killed himself accidentally. The only suspicious drug found in Jackson’s system was Diprivan, which Jackson might have used “off-label” as a “downer” to treat his insomnia. Pinsky gave Sid Vicious’s death as a case study comparison, although he dismissed the unsubstantiated claims that Jackson was also using illegal drugs like heroin. There would be no point, as this drug was not as effective as the prescribed ones Jackson was using. Pinsky’s interviews are interesting in that they give an insider look at the use of drugs by performers. For full details please listen to Pinsky’s interviews taken from the TV programme “Michael Jackson’s Last Days: What Really Happened”.
A Final Reflection
The whole media storm surrounding the death of Michael Jackson has created two opposing camps of thought. We saw a similar division occur during the sex allegations. There are those who are turning him into some sort of saint and those who bemoan the way the hype over him is taking over all the news.
Unfortunately despite Jackson’s incredibly impressive army of diehard fans, their legion have been temporarily joined by hypocrites who probably couldn’t recall a Michael Jackson beyond Thriller before his death. Suddenly it is cool to like Michael Jackson again, but somehow it leaves a very sour aftertaste.
However, it seems just as attractive to join the second camp. It has become just as fashionable to talk about the disproportionate amount of interest generated by Jackson’s death as it is to be one of the born-again fans. The obvious comparison is the huge stream of sentimentality that engulfed the UK when Princess Diana died. This whole incident was rather embarrassing in hindsight for many and many don’t want to see a repeat performance.
My feelings are this performance hasn’t been repeated – at least not in the UK. Sentimentality, as opposed to genuine sympathy and empathy, can be a dangerous thing. It herds and manipulates people through one of their most vulnerable emotions. I couldn’t agree more that the whole response to the death of Michael Jackson, a truly great and legendary performer, singer and innovator of our time, has bordered on hysterical and resulted into some rather sickly and sometimes disturbing scenes of commemoration. However, they haven’t truly crossed the line as I feel happened with Princess Diana.
It is only natural for a star, such as Michael Jackson, who was celebrated and supported for so long, to elicit the type of media and public response that his death has generated. Throughout history we have seen this happen again and again with icons. I agree that it does seem very unfair that his death continued to mug the headlines and news reports whilst the regular tragic deaths of soldiers in Afghanistan scurried past as secondary news items, but did we truly expect anything more? It is easy to say that Michael Jackson was just another human being, which of course he was, but it is very naïve to think that his death would not be met with the response we have seen. Like any icon, he made history and a lot of people invested a lot in him. When an icon dies – as irrational and melodramatic as it seems – many people feel like something of them has died too.
When President Kennedy died, many felt like it was the death of a dream. All his faults, both personal and political, were forgotten in favour of this feeling of youthful and fresh change that was set to lead America into a new age. Michael Jackson’s philanthropy was certainly considerable, but I don’t ever think this is what constituted his position as an icon. Jackson also represented youth; more so he represented childhood. The unsubtle and youthful songs he produced were typical of children’s fantasies, particularly those first teenage years.
On the other side of the coin I think it is good that there was a lot criticism surrounding the hype over Michael Jackson’s death. The same couldn’t be said about Princess Diana’s death. Not long before her death the satire came thick on the “People’s Princess” across the media. This included criticism surrounding Diana’s publicity-seeking filmed attendance of open heart surgery. No sooner had she died then no-one dared speak in any way that was critical of her. For more on this and the subject of sentimentality, which I will no doubt return to in future articles, please read BBC journalist and aggressive interviewer David Humphrys’ book, “Devil’s Advocate”.
Jackson lived his life in the spotlight. He loved it and loathed it. That much appears to be the pattern if we look at his work. He was no tortured musician who just wanted to create art and shunned publicity. Michael Jackson embraced his iconic status and tried to elevate it to god-like proportions. The evidence can be seen in his work from the self-indulgent Moonwalker onwards. Think of the giant dictator like statues and the militaristic image that went alongside them when he promoted the HiStory album. Think of the Jesus like stance he struck on stage surrounded by children as performed Earth Song – a scene that English singer, Jarvis Cocker, felt was so repugnant that he protested by jumping on stage and performing an impromptu routine of his own.
The theme of that particular song also demonstrates the “pop” nature of the kingly status his close friend Elizabeth Taylor bestowed on him. Earth Song was a rather literal affair regarding the environment and the terrible things man has done to cause these problems. It wasn’t that far removed from “Heal the World”, which also seemed blissfully simple in its solutions to societal problems. I will always remember the latter as the song played at funeral for the child murder victim, James Bulger, and the public response to this appalling tragedy.
I don’t like to have regrets in life, but I would have loved to have attended a Michael Jackson concert. He certainly changed things with his music videos and his actual music is regularly sampled and covered, but it was on stage where the “truth” of the Michael Jackson icon was truly realized. Like Elvis, The Beetles, Mick Jagger, Tom Jones and Jim Morrison, Michael Jackson knew how to work an audience and they adored him for it. I remember watching the opening the 1992 concert in Bucharest, when I was officially a lapsed fan. Despite my distancing from all that was pop at the time, I couldn’t help but be snared from the beginning until the end of the concert. All the set pieces were extraordinary and Jackson’s performances were as good as ever, but the show’s opening said it all.
The audience were whooped up in anticipation as they awaited the singer’s arrival, listening to that most dramatic of classical anthems, Carmina Burana’s “O Fortuna”. It happened in a flash as Jackson leaped out of nowhere and then stood perfectly like a statue for what seemed like an eternity, propelling the audience into an ever-increasing state of euphoria. My mother, a born and bred circus woman, always talks about the “Wow Factor” in acts. This the defining moment in a performance that sends a stream of uncontrollable and chaotic energy through an audience. Many performers work for years perfecting and protecting this single element that will ensure they get repeat bookings on the best shows and in the best venues. Jackson’s wow factor is perhaps almost incomparable in at least the second half of 20th century. That time between his arrival and until he hit the first notes of the song, Jam, said everything about the years of hard work put into his career and the huge body of fans he had built around him. The audience knew they were going to get the show of their lives and that certainty is beautifully reflected in those few minutes of nothingness.
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Don't forget to check out Jamie Clubb's main blog www.jamieclubb.blogspot.com
I cannot see any obvious connection between the circus culture I grew up around and my childhood/young teenage stint as a Michael Jackson fan. However, “The King of Pop” – as he was dubbed by actress and friend, Elizabeth Taylor - was always going to be liked by most circus people. Michael Jackson ticks the “good performer” criteria boxes with circus folk. He could dance, he could legitimately sing, he could play musical instruments and, above all else, he could put on a show! Furthermore, Jackson was a regular visitor to circuses and, according to one source, even toyed with the idea of buying Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. Jackson was also born into showbusiness and worked in the industry in front of audiences in his childhood. Circus people could empathize with the hard work of continual practice he endured as a child.
They could also relate to the controversy and apparent persecution he suffered at the hands of the media. Nevertheless, my interest in Michael Jackson’s work happened completely outside my circus life. It occurred when I was at school when I had a bit of hiatus away from the culture I born into.
Michael Jackson versus Richard III
In 1988 I was given an unusual history homework assignment. We were studying Richard III, one of England’s most controversial monarchs, and the assignment required us to write two short essays giving opposing views on the Yorkist king. However, we had an especially cool history teacher at that time and being keen to rouse our young pre-pubescent minds he gave us an alternative option for our essay subject. Instead of writing two essays on Richard III we could write two opposing views on Michael Jackson. Unsurprisingly, as children are want to do, most of the class flew in the face of what our teacher thought was a popular option and wrote about the former Duke of Gloucester rather than the current King of Pop. I have always loved history and in years to come I would enjoy studying Richard III both as an actual historical figure and as the fictitious Machiavellian villain in Shakespeare’s tragedy. However, at the time I couldn’t resist writing about my then favourite pop star.
Looking back, the purpose of that assignment was not far from the task many journalists were given when Michael Jackson was confirmed dead on 25th June 2009. Michael Jackson now strikes a massive division between many people and sometimes in individuals. An unlikely controversial artist, Jackson’s work never came near the material of history’s best known music rebels. However, Michael Jackson’s controversy was not “rock star” controversy. It was outright weirdness that culminated in the type of media negativity that only a star with his type of following could really withstand.
But this was all to come for me. A year prior to the assignment Mr Jackson had officially become my first pop icon, my first living icon! I didn’t consciously dress like him, I have never been a dancer, singer and certainly was no musician, but I happily got swept up into his following with vigour.
“I'd fuck Mike up. You know, Mike... Mike don't weigh but a buck-oh-five, you know. I bust that ass on Mike”, so said Eddie Murphy in his live 1987 show, Raw, when he compared upsetting the singer with annoying the then famous “hard-man” actor, Mr T. Michael Jackson may have been far more commercially successful than Mr T and even Eddie Murphy combined, but he was, as has been said on many occasion, “Music’s unlikeliest bad boy”. And yet “Bad” was an amazingly successful album, single, music video and world Pepsi sponsored tour. It was the album that snared me and my contemporaries at school, even when the parodies about Michael Jackson and his many eccentricities were making regular news. Relatively ignorant of Jackson’s lengthy time as the child lead singer of a clean-cut boy band, The Jackson 5, we were totally sold on the idea of a slightly built, boyish looking male dancer who sang in a high tenor declaring he was “Bad”.
The 18 minute music video for Bad, directed by Martin Scorsese, found its way into my school shortly before I bought the Bad album. Our private viewing of the film was cut short half way through by a teacher, but I was totally hooked. After buying the album I imagined the film was the beginning of a full-on feature, each of the tracks being in sequence as part of a musical that finished with “Smooth Criminal”. A year later this would be partially realised for me with the feature film, “Moonwalker”.
Time for a child, even in your early teens, seems to move very slowly. I remember somewhere between the Bad album and the theatrical release of Moonwalker being told by an older friend of mine that Michael Jackson was “old music” now. Although I was initially impressed by the popularity of the star, it had never been in my nature to really care much about what others thought and I never was particularly perturbed by the concept of something being unfashionable. By this stage I had saved up enough to buy the “Thriller” album and my birthday presents had included Jackson’s autobiography, “Moonwalk”, and the partisan documentary video, “Michael Jackson: The Legend Continues”. Mum and Dad also both bought me the Thriller video around the same time. The video contained the full 15 minute short film and its much lengthier “Making of” documentary.
‘Cause this is Horror!
There was always a type of forgiven naivety about the work of Michael Jackson just as many would forgive his apparent naivety in life. I wonder whether I was the only movie geek sad enough to point out that the Rod Temperton penned Thriller was, in fact, a song about horror films and not thriller films. Likewise, “Leave Me Alone” may have had a music video that focused on the media hype, rumours and speculation that surrounded the megastar, but according to Jackson’s autobiography it was really a song about a relationship between the singer and a girlfriend, and how they struggled against outside interference. The theme would be repeated in the provocatively titled “In the Closet” on his next album.
None of Jackson’s albums could really have been called concept works. The movie Moonwalker didn’t really resemble a movie and yet I recall many non-Michael Jackson fans agreeing that it was highly enjoyable. I, of course, loved it to bits. I got the calendar, the book of the film and when it came out on video I rushed to get my copy. The film is divided up into several loosely connected and sometimes unconnected acts, half of which are really just music videos. Their only consistent theme appears to be the celebration of Michael Jackson. It was well produced with brilliant special effects and Jackson’s performances were outstanding, particularly the film’s centrepiece, “Smooth Criminal”, but it would be difficult for the dispassionate viewer not to see the film as perhaps cinema’s greatest marriage of blatant product advertising and self-indulgent fantasy, surpassing even the movies of The Beetles, Cliff Richard, Cradle of Filth and even Elvis in this respect. If you ever want an example of how great style and ego can carry a product with virtually no substance then Moonwalker is your boy. Having said that, seeing the success of musicals that were based purely on and around the recordings of classic pop music, such as Moulin Rouge and Mama Mia, perhaps Moonwalker was ahead of its time!
Michael Jackson’s videos are rightfully considered to be some of the best, if not the best in the world. He pioneered, he invented, he pushed boundaries and he left a legacy of visual work that continues to entertain. There was some experimental work in the video “Don’t Stop ‘til You Get Enough”, which came off his coming-of-age album with Quincy Jones, “Off the Wall” and the collaboration with his brothers on “Can You Feel it?”, but it was with Thriller that he really changed the music television world... quite literally. Of course, Thriller is now famous for being the bestselling album of all time, but that wasn’t its only historical achievement. Those who had worked with Jackson on the video for the single, “Billie Jean”, released just prior to Thriller would have an idea of the ambitions the singer was striving for in his film-work, but few could have predicted just how extraordinary Thriller the music video would be. John Landis, the legendary comedy horror director who made American Werewolf in London, was hired to make Thriller and the bar for music’s future had just been raised to the stars. MTV has a lot to thank Michael Jackson for.
The video for Smooth Criminal is perhaps one of my two favourite moments for the star. It involves so many interesting features. There is the mass dance choreography that had become a trademark of Michael Jackson, the anti-gravity lean special effect that inspired the onstage device he invented and patented, and an incredible atmosphere throughout the video. Being a fan of the early gangster movies even then, I seem to see movements reminiscent of the mannerisms of actors like James Cagney, particularly the parts where Jackson and his fellow dancers hunch their shoulders and prowl across the screen. Perhaps it is my imagination, but this mannerism appears to be carried over into the way Jackson pronounced extra lyrics added to Smooth Criminal for Moonwalker; they seem to have a New York wise guy accent to them.
These new lyrics were supposedly included to make more sense of the story i.e. Jackson’s character is looking for more clues in Club 30s, the haunted venue where the music video takes place. They do nothing of the sort. The song’s general lyrics appear to be a discussion on the scene of a crime where a girl called Annie has been attacked in her own apartment. This has no connection with Moonwalker’s child-friendly mini-film sequence whatsoever of which Smooth Criminal is the centrepiece. There isn’t even a character called Annie in the film. I recall the book of the movie quoting the repetitive chorus that mentions Annie showing Jackson’s character dancing with one of the Club 30s’ gangster molls, as if to make its own sense of the song in the context of the story. It would appear that no one really knew what it was all about.
The Smooth Criminal costume is also Jackson at his most eccentric. He wears an armband, as if to mourn someone, and tapes his fingertips. I recall watching the making of the film, where a member of the crew queried Jackson about these peculiar additions. Who had died? Had he hurt his fingers? Apparently they were character enhancements – well of course they were! However, I am sure there are plenty who have since speculated and come up with all sorts of bizarre conclusions.
Comic-Book Hero?
At the beginning of the Michael Jackson autobiography, Moonwalk, the singer opens with his admiration of the great storytellers. This skill never was one of Michael Jackson’s strong points. Visually and emotionally he could come up with fantastic aesthetic treats. He knew how to work a crowd better than anyone in the music business and he could translate this excellently to film plus he could certainly write some interesting songs, but as far as creating an original piece of narrative is concerned, it is pretty clear that this was not his forte. Of course, this hasn’t stopped many from trying to make sense out of his work. This includes Jackson himself as demonstrated by the odd direction Smooth Criminal was sent in the Moonwalker film.
I recall buying a Michael Jackson magazine that featured a serialized comic strip based on Michael Jackson’s songs. Having just surfed the ‘net to verify these appearances I find that although Jackson was very much a keen comic-book fan, his general appearances in comics were surprisingly limited. “Mad Magazine” pops up with their obvious play on the song, Bad. This is something the British adult satirical puppet show, “Spitting Image”, did around the same time. However, before either of these the British satirical magazine for children, “Oink”, pipped them both to the post, but no one seems to have picked up on that yet.
The fact that Jackson almost bought Marvel Comics is mentioned on several comic fan websites and there are a few other vague mentions, including the disastrous 3-D comic book adaptation of Moonwalker, which helped bankrupt Blackthorne Publishing. Prior to this there was the comic strip adaptation of the Michael Jackson Disney theme park 3-D film, Captain EO. However, the Michael Jackson song influenced comic strips seem to be lost in the ether for now. It’s a shame. I recall, even then, to be impressed by the imagination of the writer(s). There was an adaptation of Billie Jean, where the concept of an obsessed and delusional female fan turns to darker places with Jackson’s character, perhaps prophetically, being accused rape. The story ended on a cliff-hanger with the police arresting the Michael character. I seem to recall there also being an adaptation of “Heartbreak Hotel” aka “This Place Hotel”, a song penned by Jackson when he was still officially working with his brothers.
Lapsed Fan
By the time the “Dangerous” album came out I had well and truly moved on from Michael Jackson. I watched the full length world premier of his video of Black or White and for a time I recall my sixth form year looking forward to their daily dosage of “Jam” shown routinely by the TV station that had made its name off the King of Pop’s music promos: MTV.
However, as I said before, time just seems so much slower when you are a kid. I had gone from Michael Jackson to Prince, something I never thought I would do when I was at the height of my Michael Jackson hero-worship. Incidentally Prince, a contender for Jackson’s crown in so many different ways, including outright weirdness, was also a comic-book fan. It seemed like an eternity had elapsed between the release of Bad in 1987 and Dangerous in 1991. Times had changed for me. My taste in music had experienced a massive transformation when I was 15.
First it was Alice Cooper, another one of music’s showman, who in the 1980s had dipped his toe into mainstream pop and commercialism in order to survive the onslaught of hair metal, bubble metal and other lite-rock trends that had made the medium “safe” in the same way that Cliff Richard had done with Elvis and The Monkees did with The Beetles. Alice Cooper has never been worried about “selling out”. In the early part of the 21st century the keen golfer and concerned parent is equally at home producing an aggressive hard rock album with dark themes and political sensibility as he is in appearing on an ad for the corporate world. The same cannot really be said for UK and US godfathers of punk Jonny Rotten who has advertised butter and Iggy Pop who advertised insurance. I was first introduced to Alice Cooper on an episode I recorded of the Muppet Show. And despite his nonchalant and regular forays into the mainstream there is little doubt he deserves his well-earned place in the history of rock and roll. His influence was massive in the late ’60s through to the ‘70s with the horrific theatrics he brought to his stage shows and the teenage angst he brought to the lyrics of his music. I was reintroduced to Alice Cooper on the release of his early ‘90s album, Hey Stoopid. It was an album at the end of an era with squealing ‘80s guitars and machismo, but it struck a chord with me. His back catalogue introduced me to the true beauty of Alice Cooper’s work and I was a rock man from then on. Anything that provoked was now good in my books.
There is a stage most teenagers go through when the old becomes cool again. I guess it is a pretence to being intellectual that you honour music of yesteryear as if you were admiring classic literature. It is often paralleled with a type of “second childhood” chic or irony, where teenagers like showing that it is cool to like characters like Winnie the Pooh.
I was very aware of all this when I was teenager. The trouble was I didn’t despise old music at all. When I was into Michael Jackson I was soon listening to all his Motown stuff from the ‘70s. Alice Cooper led me right back to the grittier stuff that had made him famous. So when I re-discovered ‘70s punk rock it was like an epiphany for me and I really shifted away from the mainstream. The dance music I had taken to be the soundtrack muzak of the times was thoroughly rejected. I had never been overly keen on the whole manufactured bands of the 1980s and I recall having a particular disdain for Bros, now I loathed them with all with a passion. Punk was the ultimate flipside to popular music for me and I have loved it to this day. Having sought out many of the most influential bands of this brief period in rock history, I longed for a version to appear for my generation. Then my brand-trained eyes saw it in the barely encircled “A” being sported on the tops of American cheerleaders! That symbol meant one thing to me: anarchy. And anarchy was, of course, the philosophy of the punks. I had discovered Nirvana.
I wasn’t into the grunge scene on the whole. In fact, I have never really desired to be a part of any scene. The artists I had discovered post-Michael Jackson seemed to be fierce individualists and it was this quality that I admired in them. Before my drastic change in direction I recall proudly telling my music teacher, when asked, that Michael Jackson was my favourite musician. Then I heard the same name uttered by individually at least half the other students there. Suddenly it all didn’t seem so special. I am not one for change for change’s sake and I only buck a system that requires bucking, but there is something about homogeny that turns me off at a very deep level. These other artists I discovered dared to be different and although they might start whole new movements, they rarely liked this part of their legacy. Many seem to forget that although Nirvana had become very successful, they were being outsold by their vastly inferior rivals, Pearl Jam, before the death of Kurt Cobain. Afterwards was a different matter, but it is arguable that grunge had died by then anyway.
Put it quite simply Michael Jackson was very much part of the establishment in my mind. He was, by comparison to his contemporaries, very safe. Thriller was no dark provocative track like you would find among the works of Christian Death, Sisters of Mercy, Incubus Succubus or other music that specialized in Gothic themes. It was more a tribute to the fun of watching horror movies and scaring each other.
There are some surprisingly adult themes among his songs, but they often passed the approval of your average parent, even in the early 1980s. Outside the sex allegations that would plague him from 1993 onwards, Jackson’s controversy only stemmed from being eccentric. His work barely flirted with actual controversy. He wore a codpiece in a time long after Blackie Lawless’s overtly sexual and pseudo-violent use of this clothing accessory and Jackson grabbed his crotch three decades after the days of “Elvis the Pelvis”. The odd single use of a swearword were barely noticed in songs like Dirty Diana and Scream, and despite the odd attempt by the press to make something of it, the general public were not shocked. For example, “In the Closet” is typically Michael Jackson in that it was determinedly about a heterosexual relationship. “Earth Song” might have been about self and collective recrimination for crimes against the planet, but it smacked of a type of trendy hypocritical eco-peachiness that was already become quite stale at the time.
The closest Jackson would ever come to a protest song was with “They Don’t Care About Us”, which really did cause a lot of controversy. The issue about this song was the inclusion of the words “Jew me, sue me” and “Kick me, kyke me”, which aroused concern by the Jewish community. It wasn’t difficult for anyone with a modicum of intelligence to figure out that the song was about discrimination, opposing hate crimes, rather than an anthem promoting anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, this didn’t stop the criticism, which was enough to make Jackson issue numerous public apologies and to eventually alter the lyrics. It wasn’t the first time the singer felt he had to issue an explanation of sorts. After becoming a Jehovah’s Witness, Jackson felt he needed to give a disclaimer at the start of the music video for Thriller that explained the film was in no way intended to endorse the occult. No, Michael Jackson was never going to be a truly rock ‘n roll controversialist!
My mother certainly recalled my Michael Jackson years, when I played his albums in our car, with a great deal more fondness than any of my subsequently more alternative and subsequently louder tastes in music. I guess I considered Jackson as part of my childhood when I made the transition. His music did not speak to Generation X, the generation I had come in at the tail end of, the generation of sceptics and cynics. We had become accustomed to watching great stars and icons die before they reached middle age or torn down by a press that had worked so hard to build them up. However, the latter was about to happen to Jackson in a big way.
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There are many historic figures who have served as symbols for certain ideas, ideals and endeavours. The whole concept of hero-worship is based on their very existence. However, it transcends even this. These people have become figures we associate ever more abstract notions until the real figure and what they represent don’t always correlate. These are what we call human icons.
Icons and iconography, particularly the human kind, have always fascinated me. What makes a teenager put up a picture of a movie star who has been dead for over four decades? Why do Einstein and Oscar Wilde have a special place in the hearts of 21st century university students? What makes the club-footed, incestuous, overspending Lord Byron so cool? These questions will be handled with a very personal touch in my icon series of articles.
The icons series are not intended to be biographies, but reflections on the impact and influence of icons that have caught my attention. There is no set structure or criteria or even set lengths, but common reoccurring themes and examples may include:
What Drew Me?
How was I personally drawn to a certain figure and what does it say about the cultures I was brought up around and the people had influenced and would influence me.
What Does the Icon Represent?
With obvious comparisons with ancient gods, what defines an icon is what they are seen to stand for. James Dean: the eternal rebel of youth, Adolph Hitler: the megalomaniac of racism, Oliver Cromwell: puritanical reformer, Charles Darwin: the father of evolution and so on.
Saints and Sinners
It is very hard to take an objective view on morals, but taking into account the common practices and beliefs of the time what has makes Che Guevara a symbol for heroic revolution and Vlad the Impaler a symbol for evil, tyranny and bloodlust?
Does the Star Still Shine as Brightly?
Forgotten fame is a favourite topic of mine, so don’t be surprised if you see me talking about icons that are no longer as popular as they once were. I will try to avoid “Forgotten Fame” people as such, as they are not really icons, but there are plenty of examples of icons that are surprisingly not as well known as you would think. The majority of my children’s martial arts class, for example, don’t know who Bruce Lee was. The reverse, such as Van Gogh, is also interesting.
The Person or the Time?
The great question often pondered and debated by many historians is whether the time created the person or the person created the time. In other words, if Winston Churchill had not been born would we have had to create him?
Fact or Fiction
Perhaps one of my favourite themes. Although this is not intended to be a proper historical, much less scientific approach to the subjects, I am a rational sceptic, so facts and fallacies have always interested me. I love myths and legends, so don’t be surprised if the odd fictional icon crops up too. What also interests me is the separating of the fact for the fiction? Did Nostradamus and Rasputin have magic powers for example?
I hope you enjoy the series, which someday may end up in book form. All sensible feedback is gratefully received.
Don't forget to check out Jamie Clubb's main blog www.jamieclubb.blogspot.com
I write this at a time when many are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the moon landings. Like many moments in the 1960s the moon landings were one of those events where, apparently, you would always remember where you were when Neil Armstrong allegedly fluffed his lines “One small step for man [crackle, crackle, interference], one giant leap for mankind [more interference]”. Of course, the line was supposed to be “One small step for a man...”, and like many events in history there is some debate as to whether or not the first man on the moon actually did blow this famous speech or whether the “a” was clouded by interference. If only this were the only dispute about this truly impressive landmark in world history. Sadly a by-product of postmodern times is a totally illogical desire to believe in a totally ridiculous alternative to accepted factual evidence, and doubting the fact that Apollo 11 landed on the moon has been a persistent conspiracy theory since 1969.
Interestingly enough the first time I really began to doubt popular conspiracy theories (as opposed to actual conspiracies) was at a dinner party, the place many refer to when urban legends and such like pop up. My antagonist was a typical upper-middle class individual who clearly enjoyed enthralling his audiences with this particular topic. I am guessing it was a new topic for him, as a documentary putting the “moon landing hoax” idea forward was airing around that time. We were all chatting about something that was not directly connected to the lunar exploration, but he somehow saw his opportunity and nonchalantly dropped his conversational boarding bridge with the line “...and they try to fool us that the Americans landed on the moon”. I had heard the conspiracy theory before, but never really paid it much attention – I often I wonder whether this really is the healthiest thing to do. My response wasn’t overtly sceptical, just a light-hearted statement to confirm what was being said, “You believe the moon landings were faked?” Perhaps I unconsciously hinted at the fringe nature of his opinion, as if to imply “oh you are one of those blokes”.
His response certainly sounded like that of a besieged and persecuted minority, desperately defending his status in society. He was immediately and disproportionately aggressive, the kind of defensive anger one expects from an adulterer caught in the act. He immediately spouted off a list of points about the moon landings I believed or hadn’t even considered prefixed with the venom tinged words “You mean to say that you believe that...”
I tried not to further the argument. I adopted the same passive stance I had done with my friend who believed that the New World Order employed JFK’s driver to shoot him, with the relation who thinks oil companies have secretly assassinated numerous private mechanics who figured out how to run hydrogen car engines or other acquaintance who thinks the world will end in 2012. I was completely non-confrontational. I didn’t agree with him, I just said “That’s very interesting” and tried to change the subject as soon as I was sure he was happy to leave his soapbox and hobby horse, while I pondered both absurdity of his claims and the psychology that led him to them.
Their must be something in my personality that attracts these types. When I was kid it was religious zealots trying to convert me to their church, as I grew up it has been conspiracy theorists. Interestingly the latter exhibit exactly the same form of obsessive fanatical belief, confirmation bias, selective reasoning and aggressive desire to influence others as the former. It is this forceful nature that initially repelled me from them early on and also prompted me to automatically go to the default conversational tactic “Do not argue with ignorance or a drunk”. And yet this weird postmodern idea of jumping to the most ridiculous conclusions and holding onto them no matter how much empirical evidence proves these conclusions to be wrong has ebbed its way into our popular literature. Beyond pulp non-fiction, as Damian Thompson explains in his “Counterknowledge”, pseudohistory is pushing its way under the bookshop sections normally marked for serious historical studies. Worse still, a type of perverse and illogical “moderate” idea has arrived, which lends weight to thoroughly debunked theories under the guise of giving balance.
Here is an example of this type of light-hearted “moderation”. “That’s Bollocks” looked like and was promoted as a fun pocket book separated fact from fiction in the world of urban legends and conspiracy theories. It is not. The book is written by Albert Jack who, like many of us, has a keen interest and affection for urban legends. However, this affection seems to deter him from seriously investigating the legends he reproduces in his book. In his introduction he tells his readers that most of the conspiracy theories and urban legends in the book are probably false. That would be fine, if it were just a list of urban legends and maybe an obvious tongue-in-cheek remark to relay the convincing manner they were originally told. However, this is not the way the book is promoted. There is little in the way of consistency, with some legends being reproduced verbatim, others having a sceptical opinion cast over and others, the real offenders, actually implying serious consideration. Worse still, conspiracy theories tend to fall under this category. And it is here we find the apparent “Moon Landing Hoax”.
Albert Jack says:
“I also have my doubts when I look at the famous flag photo of the Lunar Module, astronaut and apparently fluttering US flag. For a start we know there is no atmosphere on the moon, so where does the wind come from?”
Psst... Albert, the flag isn’t fluttering. Footage alongside that particular photo show the flag is being manually moved.
“Also, the light, shadows and lack of visible stars are suspicious, and we can see the moon’s surface clearly and it certainly doesn’t look like cheese to me”.
Humour noted, Bertie, but just to put the record straight here is “Bad Astronomy” author, Phil Plait’s answer:
“I'll say this here now, and return to it many times: the Moon is not the Earth. Conditions there are weird, and our common sense is likely to fail us.
The Moon's surface is airless. On Earth, our thick atmosphere scatters sunlight, spreading it out over the whole sky. That's why the sky is bright during the day. Without sunlight, the air is dark at night, allowing us to see stars.
On the Moon, the lack of air means that the sky is dark. Even when the Sun is high off the horizon during full day, the sky near it will be black. If you were standing on the Moon, you would indeed see stars, even during the day.
So why aren't they in the Apollo pictures? Pretend for a moment you are an astronaut on the surface of the Moon. You want to take a picture of your fellow space traveler. The Sun is low off the horizon, since all the lunar landings were done at local morning. How do you set your camera? The lunar landscape is brightly lit by the Sun, of course, and your friend is wearing a white spacesuit also brilliantly lit by the Sun. To take a picture of a bright object with a bright background, you need to set the exposure time to be fast, and close down the aperture setting too; that's like the pupil in your eye constricting to let less light in when you walk outside on a sunny day.
So the picture you take is set for bright objects. Stars are faint objects! In the fast exposure, they simply do not have time to register on the film. It has nothing to do with the sky being black or the lack of air, it's just a matter of exposure time. If you were to go outside here on Earth on the darkest night imaginable and take a picture with the exact same camera settings the astronauts used, you won't see any stars!”
I won’t go any further into the ins and outs of the evidence that better supports the mainstream fact that the moon landings did happen. Much more qualified individuals have done a better job than me on this one http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html Buy Phil Plait’s book “Bad Astronomy” for a fun read and a comprehensive rebuttal on the whole “Moon Land Hoax” conspiracy theory.
Aside from my intuitive response to fanaticism there were a few other pretty big points that made me assume the position of doubt when the moon landing hoax conspiracy theory was first launched at me. I have the advantage of having worked within various cultures and subcultures of people, living all my life in the media industry and having a background in the life of the travelling circus, a business that has often been linked with deception as a means for entertainment. Think Phineas T. Barnum! My experiences in martial arts have also exposed me to a variety of charlatans and mystical acolytes. This has provided me with some pretty intuitive senses for what is commonly referred to as “bullshit”.
On the circus there is little room to confuse the show you put on with the hard realities of, well, “real life”, it isn’t long before you start smelling the proverbial hot caffeine drink. Unlike perhaps many other areas of showbusiness, the circus man and woman has little time to become absorbed in their onstage persona when they are out of the circus ring. Magic and fantasy is the furthest thing from their mind when they are trying to put up a Big Top on a muddy field in the freezing rain. It is little surprising that the modern scientific sceptical movement counts many magicians in their ranks. Being experts in deception, the magician is trained to understand how most real deceptions work, or don’t as the case may be. A conspiracy is quite simply as strong as its flakiest member and the more people involved – and every fashionable conspiracy theory requires the involvement of numerous people – the less likely it will remain secret for very long. This is something history has taught us time again. The history of the Roman Empire, for example, is full of conspiracies. Their success and failure was often very dependent on the number of people involved and the degree of complexity required. For anyone who wants to see case studies of conspiracies in a time before the Freedom of Information Act and worldwide multimedia, then a study of ancient Rome is definitely in order.
Having worked on many film sets I know how hard it is keep people from discussing the shoot. Many who follow the “Moon Landing Hoax” idea haven’t really set foot on a proper film set, which explain why it is easy for them to believe the story that the whole thing was filmed in the Nevada desert. The Nevada desert idea probably appealed to the originators of the story because many a criminal has gotten away with quite literally murder out in the vast no-man’s land. However, what they fail to realise is that by setting a shoot up so far away from civilisation would make it even more difficult to do than if the whole thing had shot it in a regular studio. This would mean the film set would require far more people than a regular shoot. And no matter how much money, power and influence you have, it would be nigh on impossible to keep all the camera crew, runners, prop-builders, drivers, riggers, special effects people, stunts, caterers, make-up, costumers, actors, all their suppliers, their couriers and all the families and friends of the aforementioned from blabbing until the day each of them died.
Today, the film review website, “Ain’t It Cool” regularly demonstrates just how easy it is to find out about any film in pre-production. Way before the days of the internet George Lucas tried every trick in the book, as did many others directors, to keep his projects under wraps. “Return of the Jedi” was even famously filmed under the codename “Blue Harvest”. It didn’t stop the man playing Darth Vader, David Prowse, from blabbing about the death of his character before the film’s release. This is with confidentiality contracts in place and plenty of financial sponsorship.
As for the threat of being killed, I can’t help but think of the extensive amount of information we now have available on the history of organized crime. Much of this came from old time, old country “loyal” Cosa Nostra soldiers like Joe Valachi who had sworn the oath of Omerta (the mafia code of silence). We have only to look under the whole sub-section of “True Crime” autobiographies in your local mainstream newsagent to see a whole host of “tough” guys spilling the beans on their criminal pasts. Even OJ Simpson couldn’t resist having a go at “If I Did It”. The human capacity for keeping secrets is, quite literally, the stuff of legends!
I was not even thought of when the moon landings occurred. The baby boomers were beginning to come of age and the whole event, a grand spectacle that evened the USA’s score with the Russians in the space race was watched on the device that defined the boomer generation: the television set. However, some from my culture, the circus world, told me that they felt the moon landings were a bit of an anti-climax. Most were not going to buy into the conspiracy theory, but mainly because many of them simply didn’t care. I have been told stories of an entire show trying to cram into a wagon to watch the only TV set any of them owned, only to see some very grainy looking photos, to hear distorted voices and then to listen to what seemed like an endless stream of padding as dull experts discussed the whole lunar mission.
My mother never really was a fan of the TV set and she left the wagon with a shrug of her shoulders. The life of the circus had been threatened by emergence of such in-house entertainment, which is why my family left to tour South Africa for three years in the mid-60s. The circus life was one of hands-on excitement coupled with hard work to perform and to move whole shows from town to town. The circus person enjoyed the spirit of community. The moon landings to them were just abstract blurred images on a machine that was robbing them of their livelihood. I understand the point and maybe it touches on the psychology we find in those who doubt the moon landings.
The lead up to moon landings can be traced back through centuries of wonder. From the first time man looked up to the stars he has wondered, speculated, woven myths and believed stories about them. This wonder would be taken to revolutionary scientific levels in different ages by the likes of Copernicus, Galileo and Stephen Hawkins. The physics that actually got us to the moon can be traced back to Sir Isaac Newton, a man who will be remembered more for his science than his religious ideas, but probably wrote more on the latter than the former. Then there were always the fantasists that sparked the imagination of the audiences. People like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Arthur C. Clarke may irritate many in the scientific community because of their speculation, but I often feel this is a case of a scientist forgetting his childhood. Fantastical wonder at possibilities draws the future scientist in, just as many a legend can draw a future historian. I often check myself for scoffing at pulp non-fiction, as this is the stuff that got me reading criminal history in the first place http://jamieclubb.blogspot.com/2008/02/myths-faction-and-pulp-nonfiction.html
Today, I teach realistic self defence and promote martial arts scepticism, but I regularly remind myself that the reason why I got into martial arts in the first place was down to two fictional ninjas in the GI Joe comic-strip.
Unfortunately there are many people that fall between the cracks, who never truly get to make that jump – and therefore make the proper distinction – from “this is a great story” to “and these are the real facts”. Instead they are more content working on a confirmation bias to prove that the moon is made of cheese, the earth is flat and so on rather than to discover the reality. As it turned out the moon landings little resembled HG Wells’ “First Men on the Moon” fancies. I guess it didn’t help that the landings occurred in a decade that followed the science fiction craze. After all those movies, books and TV shows the moon expedition produced no aliens, no monsters, not much actually.
However, the moon landings were a tremendous achievement. They were the actualization of a dream and a proud mark of human achievement. We can sympathize with those who just don’t see the point in all the fuss and, in the interests of furthering education, we can give those who may be swayed by the conspiracy theories a few simple places for good research, but I wouldn’t spend much time with those who genuinely believe in the unbelievable – or want to believe, as I think the case often is. You may find it odd that often those who do buy into the hoax conspiracy also buy into ufology, alien abductions and so on. Very strange, that they cannot grip the hard science that is available for our own space travel and yet they are more than willing to make a giant blindfolded leap into the implausibility of another race making it over a ridiculous number of miles through the known and unknown universe!
By paying compliment to the fantasist without falling into the realm of conspiracy, I think wonderment is not a bad place to temporarily sit. My dear friend Nell Stroud’s father, the television director Rick Stroud has written a book that addresses this superbly. “The Book of the Moon” is a wonderful book that looks at both the mythology of the moon and the hard facts about it. It provides inspiration for personal endeavours and almost literal meaning to such motivational clichés as “shoot for the moon, even if you miss you will be up there with the stars”.
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