Introduction to the Second edition, Mainz 1999
He is the best-known mortals under the sun. He is also the most maligned
. Nor any of his contemporaries has brought so to speak
like Michael Jackson. He is not in power, he is
only a man of show business. How was it so important? What
makes him a phenomenon ?
Michael Jackson is the epitome of the entertainment industry since
he became the "greatest star of all time." What constitutes the essence of the ever-
ses industry - must go to Michael Jackson is being represented in chemical mixing
pure form, to whom else? His name is proverbial
literally. He stands for everything the pessimist the - indicates
imminent demise of the West - again. He is not only
the hero of the one, he is the anti-hero of the others.
For the entertainment industry itself is the epitome of the Me-
media age. Previously she was a cultural fringe, could ignore
you. Meanwhile, it is for our civilian
lisa tion as typical as the car yesterday. overlook is
in any event not longer. And since it was only a "greatest
star of all time" type at all! The idol of one and one-greu
el the others, he represents his time doubly so aptly as
no artist before him. But it is also the first time that a time
their most aptly found in an artist and not in
a ruler.
was then this art but also grumble Speier and scoffers.
Popular music marks not already about the decline
of culture because it is an art for the masses. Rather it is an attempt
service of "mediatic" Society, if art for life
the masses today has as much meaning as their daily bread.
And that the mass effect of the entertainment arts always been at the expense
their aesthetic levels, is a legend. After all
had been their most successful stars - Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Michael Jackson
- their greatest artists. Of course that had
until retiring from the stage, before even the educated and release the
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were allowed to consecrate classics. Michael Jackson's career takes
contrast, for three decades and it does not look like he wanted to stop
. This time she really goes into the last corner
of the globe, the duration and extent, he is both the largest
te, there ever was. And is not the star system, the characteristic feature of our
media company? Let's in good, be it in
worse - Michael Jackson embodies the genius of an era.
why he was legendary.
But what makes one star? "Everything just an illusion," say the
educated. In the media society, it would still only on the Ver-
to pack and not to the content. But why then it creates
of one but not the other? Selbstreferen the myth of the "-
tential" omnipotence of the media has no other than just Michael
Jackson broken. Could they pull the stars from the sleeves - they
brought him during the World scandal of the years 93/94 to track
. They wanted it to be, but they did not succeed. He
was stronger than anything "True" should probably be already his own.
no earlier than is so much said and written.
And yet this book is the first - not only in German - which
explores the phenomenon Michael Jackson as a whole. It is natural
Lich life report: the story of the little Michael from
Gary, Indiana, the age of five for the first time on stage, rose
to since then to spend his whole life there. A philosopher-my
te once if you want to understand the normal, one must look for
a justified exception. The story we tell here
is an adventure novel, a true, and precisely because he
is wholly out of line, he tells us more about it, "like the
living person, "a thousand normal biographies.
In particular, he teaches us, however, what is an artist. "From the effective
pure pleasure of life I know nothing. For me, the Ge-
nut of life and love is only a matter of the imagination-
force, not the experience. So I had to connect the heart to the brain -
and my life will only be an artificial. Only as
artist I can live in it is my whole man-up
addressed. "These sentences could be the motto of the life story of
Michael Jackson preceded, although he is expected to protest against
. They come not from him but from Richard
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Wagner, this artist, as to the significance for his time
more in common has, as our schoolmaster dreamed las-sen
.
will ensure that this novel also by a little story
and aesthetics of popular music. And even to a tract of
"essence of art"! For in the triumph of show business is as-
the visible, which is now drawing to a close in the industrial-Zeital
was veiled ter: art is illusion. But the bill is itself part
of the real and not its opposite. The ancient Greeks knew
this: The word cosmetics originates from cosmos!
However, Art is the opposite of work. Only loses
contrast more and more into focus, because the work fades. It can
not more, as before, clearly distinguish which activity useful
and what is only beautiful, but unnecessary, where the necessary stop-
and starts the luxury. Previously, the art was beyond the Indu-stry and
behaved like to work the salt to the soup. Today
art itself is industrial, the artist is a big industrialist, not
only salt, but the soup itself.
is so because from the biography of Michael Jackson finally
a retrospective on the outgoing millennium, but also a foreword
to come.
Jochen Ebmeier Munich, 27 6. 1999