Member Since: 6/2/2011
Posts: 28,055
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I am endlessly fascinated by how messy the HIStory campaign was, I wish I had been aware of pop culture back then:
Quote:
From its packaging to its songs, "HIStory" is a psychobiographer's playground. Everything is on a gargantuan scale. On May 22, MTV began showing a "trailer," presumably for the videos and hype to come. The trailer shows Jackson leading what looks like the Red Army down a broad boulevard, while workers ready the tombstone-white statue that appears on the CD cover: Jackson, with his fists clenched, in one of his paramilitary uniforms with a "police" insignia on one arm.
Then come noise and darkness. Black helicopters out of a far-right nightmare swoop over the city, shooting out lampposts. Children scream. The shrouded statue is raised, dwarfing the monumental buildings around it. A child shouts, "We love you, Michael!" as a commando team removes the shrouds. A helicopter flies out between the statue's legs. (Hello, Dr. Freud?)
The CD booklet insists that Jackson is popular, beloved, important, good. It includes endorsements from Stephen Spielberg and from Elizabeth Taylor, and it lists every award that he has ever won. He's photographed with Presidents from Carter to Clinton and, of course, surrounded by adoring children.
The booklet also includes a baby picture of Jackson with his genitalia revealed -- celebrity child ****? -- and an illustration he drew to go with a new ballad, "Childhood." The drawing is of a boy huddled in a corner with a microphone, looking scared. A child's letter to President Clinton asks him to end war and pollution and to "stop reporters from bothering Michael Jackson," clearly a matter of equal importance.
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hihi" but it's a better song than any of Taylor's sell-out trash. 