Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask

<p>Michael Jackson challenged the power structure of the American music industry and struck at the heart of blackface minstrelsy America’s first form of mass entertainment. The response was a derisive caricature that over time Jackson subverted through his art.</p><p>In this expanded all-new edition <i>Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask </i>argues for the tangible relationship between Jackson and blackface minstrelsy. It reveals the dialogue at minstrelsy’s core and in its broader sense tracks a centuries-long pattern of racial oppression and its resistance and how that has been played out in popular theatre. <i>Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask </i>explores Jackson’s early talent and fame and the birth and escalation of ‘Wacko Jacko’. In relation to all this the book examines Jackson’s dynamic art as it evolved from his live performances and short films to the very surface of his own body.</p><p>Scholarly and interdisciplinary this work is suitable for readers across a diverse spectrum of academic fields including African American studies popular music studies and cultural theory media and communication gender studies and performance and theatre studies. Academic but accessible this book will also be an engaging read for anyone interested in Michael Jackson and especially in his role as an icon of difference in America’s dynamics of race and his mass media image.</p>