Bref, voila ce que ca donne:
(l'article de Chin, que je cite frequemment, est super interressant, vous pourrez le trouver ici)
On November 14th,
1991, an estimated 500 million people watched the full version of the new
Michael Jackson video clip Black or White
(Phalen, 1991). After that however, because of many complaints mostly from
parents, the last part of the clip had to be removed for its alleged violent
and sexual content (Chin, 2011, p.58). What many considered a gratuitous controversial
dance was in fact a very strong political statement to which happened what
happens to most of the heavy protests like this: it was removed by “the higher
authorities”. In 2011, Elizabeth Chin published an article related to the
underlying political stance of the last part of the Black or White clip. According to her, what is today known as the Panther Dance is the protest of a Black
artist trying to free his celebratory dance from the rigid patterns of white
dominated performance scene (Chin, 2001, p.59). I will add to this theory that
the political, economic and social protest and its modes of signification are
embodied in a dance that clearly assesses its African roots through the
aesthetic of the cool.
Michael Jackson emerged on the
music scene at a very young age at a time period when separatist and
integrationist ideas were being discussed and balanced among the Black
community. His debut among the Motown industry shaped his career towards what
most people consider as a mainstream art targeting wide audiences. However
Jackson’s political engagement was very present in several of his art pieces
but one needs to look closely at them to decode his messages. In the early
1990s, Michael Jackson was already one of the most famous entertainers who had
ever lived and in 1991 he released his eighth solo album. At this period of
time, the social and economic context of a large part of the African American
community was that of a urbanized, often lower class community that still had
to struggle with institutionalized racism and discriminations. A few months
before the release of Black or White, Rodney King was beaten by policemen in
L.A. what lead to riots. The war on drugs initiated by Reagan in the 1980s also
caused poverty and a high incarceration rate among urban African Americans.
These
issues are addressed by Jackson in the four last minutes of his Black or White clip, known as the Panther Dance. The choice of the animal
is obviously politically loaded but the visual codes don’t stop there. The
whole setting of the clip symbolizes the African American condition. The dark
alley in which the dance takes place stands for the ghettoization of urban
African Americans (Chin, 2011, p.70). Michael smashes a liquor bottle as to
destroy the endemic plague that the lack of opportunities in a discriminatory
society brought. The black panther in the very beginning of the sequence also
grows at a statute of Washington, a controversial figure among Black people for
his racism and slaves ownership. However there is a discrepancy between the modes of signification as Jackson’s
political message was not understood by his audience (Chin, 2011, p.67). What
the public saw as mere vandalism was a way of the artist to express his anger
towards institutional racism and the poor conditions of the “beloved
community”. Anger is embodied by Jackson as a symbol of the riots, as the only
mode of expression left for him and his community to express themselves as they
are being disfranchised. One proof of the critics’ miscomprehension of the
political statement made by Jackson is the imposition of racist graffiti on the
windows that Jackson smashes to make his violent more intelligible.
“Intelligible” implying a rebellion against overt racism, since the protest
against more subtle structural racism was not understood (Chin, 2011, p.70).
In
her article, E. Chin presents this sequence as a dream ballet that is a non-musical part “in which the characters
work out some of their psychological conflicts (…) or explore unconscious
desire” (Chin, 2011, p.60). She presents the panther dance as the cry of a
Black artist to –besides bringing a strong political message- escape the
dominant frame that was imposed on him by the entertainment industry. She sums
up the message as follows: “I am an angry Black man; I am an artist, not an
entertainer” (Chin, 2011, p.68). Therefore what is by nature a dance of
performance –a video clip promoting an album release- nonetheless contains a
dance of celebration characteristic in that Michael actually rebels against the
codes of performance.
The
second aspect that is notable in Jackson’s video is the Africanist aesthetic of the cool that
characterizes his dance. Here again the African heritage was misunderstood by
most of the audience conditioned by the dominant mainstream mode of reading of
art pieces. Hence the controversy around the violence and sexual content of the
panther dance. The latter is
expressed mostly by a great emphasis on the pelvis movements enhanced by
Jackson’s get down quality (Osumare,
1993, p.2) and his strong bending of the knees (Osumare, 1993, p.2). The panther dance is embedded in Halifu
Osumare’s definition of the aesthetic of
the cool: Jackson excels in the isolation of body parts and often combines
the bending of the knees with pelvic movements that respond to a different beat
than his feet when his torso remains almost still thus using polyrhythm
(Gottschild, 1996, p.14) and sometimes suspending the beat (Osumare, 1993,
p.13) to emphasize following invigorated body movements (Osumare, 1993, p.13),
demonstrating ephebism (Gottschild,
1996, p.15-16). The panther dance is represents
well one of Robert Hinton’s Six Characteristics
of African Dance: the imitation of animals (Hinton, 1988). This piece is a
non-musical part of the video where Michael responds only to the beats he
creates himself with his hands, feet, and beat boxing. As Jacqui Malone notes
in Steppin on the Blues: “the most
widely used musical instrument among African peoples is the human voice” (Malone,
1996, p.17). His facial gestures (Osumare, 1993, p.13) are also central in the
expression of his emotions and his dance –though very likely to have been
rehearsed- appears as an improvisational (Osumare, 1993, p.12) dance of
celebration, similar to Elizabeth Chin’s vision of a dream ballet. The range of his emotions is wide, from pain to anger
to sexual desire as he embraces the conflicts of his feelings (Gottschild,
1996, p.13) . He produces high affect
juxtaposition (Gottschild, 1996, p.14-15) as he doesn’t provide any transition
between these emotions. Jackson’s panther
dance thus embraces numerous scholars’ definition of the aesthetic of the
cool in various aspects from the movements themselves to their energy and
signification.
From
Jackson’s mode of signification, his looking smart (Osumare, 1993, p.4) dance
expresses his political resistance (Gordon, 1983, p.21) against the conditions of
African Americans in urban areas and in the performance industry what helps
reaffirm his identity (Gordon, 1983, p.21). But as Elizabeth Chin wrote: “The negative
critical response to the panther dance is a symptom of how unprepared white
critics were to confront the dreamscape of a Black entertainer who sought to
assert his identity as a Black artist.” (Chin, 2011, p.61).
References
Chin, E. (2011). Michael Jackson’s Panther Dance:
double-consciousness and the uncanny business of performing while black. Journal of Popular Music Studies, 23 (1), 58-74.
Gottschild, B. D. (1996). Digging
the Africanist presence in the American Performance. University of
California: Greenwood Press.
Hazzard-Gordon,
K. (1983).Afro-American core culture social dance. Dance Research Journal, 15 (2), 21-25.
Hinton, R.
(1988). Black Dance in American Society.
Osumare, H. (1993). Aesthetic of the cool revisited: the
ancestral dance link in the African diaspora. UCLA Journal of Dance Ethnology, 17. 1-16.
Phalen, T. (1991, November 16). Jackson alters his new video.
The Seattle Times. Retrieved
from http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19911116&slug=1317521
Sony Music Entertainment (2012). Michael Jackson official
Website. Retrieved from http://www.michaeljackson.com/us
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