animation, comics, exhibits, events, etc!

In Media Madness, Matt. Murray reviews, revisits and rambles about comics, cartoons and their interactions in and with related media.

Anyone with a conscious memory of the latter half of the 20th Century will probably have at least one wisp of thought related to Michael Joseph Jackson, the self-professed Prince, and then, self-crowned King of Pop. While his talent, and it was immense, lied mainly in the field of crafting and performing danceable R&B and Pop music, like most people born in the advent of motion pictures and television, he definitely had the desire to be a movie and TV star.

His music videos leave a lasting legacy of boundary pushing cinematic techniques and unique storytelling, that not only complemented his music but undoubtedly drove his album and video sales into the stratosphere. Is it any wonder, then, that the “Moonman” MTV presents for Lifetime Achievement in the Field of Music Video was once called the “Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award”?

Unfortunately, beyond his turn as the Scarecrow in The Wiz and his appearance as Captain EO in a Disney theme park “experience,” notoriety as an actor seemed to allude Michael and in his scattered multi-media experience his defining character turned out to be himself.  He was given a cameo in the second Men in Black film as “Agent M” an alien begging for a spot on the MIB team, and he left a handful of animated credits to his name voicing or inspiring characters that were in one way or another a version of himself.

Even before his sordid personal life was made public, Michael was indeed a “cartoon character.” In fact, he was a star of Saturday morning from 1971-1973 as a member of The Jackson 5ive.   Produced by Jackson’s then label Motown and distributed by Rankin-Bass, Jackson 5ive (later renamed The New Jackson 5ive Show) fictionalized the experiences of Michael and his brothers’ real life singing group which was mentored by Mowtown impresario Berry Gordy and “godmothered” by Gordy’s muse and prize cash cow of the 1960s and 70s, Diana Ross. The boys, under the watchful eye of Gordy (voiced by insane white man and voice-over god, Paul Frees) gallivanted around the globe and got into wacky adventures while singing their top-of-the-pops tunes a la Josie and the Pussy Cats.  Left out of the stories, was the abusive road management style of Jackson’s father Joe, a story which didn’t emerge in full until decades later and was itself the subject of numerous tabloid stories and television movies.  Though not the leader or the oldest of the boys, Michael was often the focus of the animated series (as he was in real life) and his love of pets (also taken from real life) was highlighted by his fictional animal sidekicks — two mice, Ray and Charles, and a snake named Rosie. Although the boys did not voice their own characters, concert footage of the Jacksons was often intercut with their animated antics.  Although it was only produced for two seasons, the  show was rerun on network television ten years after it’s initial run, when Jackson’s seminal 1983 solo album Thriller ruled the Billboard charts.

In 1988, Jackson returned to animation when he released a home video extravaganza called Moonwalker, which featured not only concert footage but a collection of music videos associated with Jackson’s album, Bad.  Besides the effects — and Joe Pesci — heavy video for “Smooth Criminal” (which had a generation of fans asking Annie if she was okay for some ungodly known reason), Jackson employed stop-motion animation on two of the music videos (“Speed Demon” and “Leave Me Alone”), which many refer to as short films unto themselves because of their artistic and narrative qualities.   “Leave Me Alone” took Michael and his simian sidekick Bubbles on a stop-motion rollercoaster ride through the numerous tabloid features about and the surreal psyche of Jackson, while “Speed Demon” employed the direction of “Claymation” maestro Will Vinton, who had Jackson becoming and then battling an animated Bugs Bunny-esque alter ego.

While three years later, Michael would bring the computer animation technique erroneously called morphing to high-profile use in his video for “Black or White,” his real return to toon form would come in 1991 as Leon Kopowski on The Simpsons episode “Stark Raving Dad.”  Credited as John Jay Smith, Jackson voiced a mental patient who impersonated Michael Jackson until the point that he believed he was Jackson, himself.  He also composed “Happy Birthday, Lisa” and performed it in duet with Nancy Cartwright — prompting the use of the Smith pseudonym to avoid contract disputes with his record label.  (A fan of the show, Jackson had previously composed the 1990 hit “Do The Bartman” which was never officially released in the United States and he never received proper credit for, again to avoid conflict with his label.)

After being “dethroned” by Nirvana and the “Grunge scene” of the early 1990s, the King of Pop struggled with both personal and professional demons and never again regained the positive notoriety that he had in the 1970s or 1980s.  Instead, he became more notorious for two highly publicized trials related to what was often called an “inappropriate” love of children.   Besides popping up in the aforementioned MIBII, most of his media appearances were related to his legal problems and his behavior which grew increasingly more bizarre over the years.  He became a somewhat of a recluse retreating to his themepark/home, the “legendary” Neverland Ranch, which he would eventually lose to financial mismanagement.  When he did emerge either to promote a greatest hits collection or to announce personal developments like his marriages or the births of his children (or to dangle those children out of hotel room windows), his physical appearance would be considerably changed, perhaps the result of a believed dismorphic disorder leading to a possible addiction to plastic surgery — an alleged psychosis, which may or may not have resulted in his nose “falling off” requiring him to cover the bottom half of his face with surgical masks and scarves.

These eccentricities,  led to Jackson being famously skewered in animated bits on Saturday Night Live‘s “TV Funhouse” and Robot Chicken on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim.  The former, depicted Jackson as a Yogi Bear type character with a penchant for “young, luscious boys” instead of “pic-a-nic baskets” while one of Chicken‘s clips implied that the “real” Michael Jackson was replaced by an alien after Thriller and  featured different action figure forms of the King of Pop squaring off against each other in a crotch grabbing dance contest.

Link to TV Funhouse clip.

Michael Joseph Jackson, born on August 29th, 1958, died on June 25th, 2009 of cardiac arrest.   At the time, he was living in a rented home in Los Angeles and preparing for a concert tour which was intended to restore his artistic integrity and put a dent in the sizable debt that a lifetime of overspending and legal fees had incurred.  He undoubtedly, will be sorely missed by his survivors and legions of international fans, and will be remembered for his work not only in music but thanks to that work’s association with and influence on the fields of film, television and of course, animation.

Matt. Murray earned his BFA in film, television and radio production from NYU. He has curated exhibits focusing on the art and commerce of Saturday Morning cartoons and the adaptation of illustrated media into live actions films and animation. Murray is the country’s leading (if not only) Smurfologist. His personal blog, It’s Time for Some Action, can be found at http://actnmatt.blogspot.com/

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