Hello, blackness

There is a scene from the clever Gulf War film “Three Kings” that resonates today as much as it did when the film was released in 1999. One could argue that the entire film is possibly even more relevant today, considering America’s current situation regarding Iraq. That scene, though, not only connects to today’s military involvement with Iraq but also underscores the present and ongoing Michael Jackson insanity as well.

Mark Wahlberg, playing a captured American solider, is being interrogated by an Iraqi, who asks, “My main man, tell me something, OK? What is the problem with Michael Jackson?” Is that the $64-trillion-deficit question or what?”

The problem(s) with Michael Jackson? Doctoral students could write 50 PhD dissertations and still not be able to answer this question adequately. There is, of course, not enough time or newspaper space to properly answer that question here either, but the question itself remains a timeless one. Michael Jackson has many “problems,” not the least of which right now involves charges of child molestation.

The Iraqi solider in his accented English goes on to answer his own question when he says, “It is so obvious, a black man made his skin white and his hair straight, you know why? Your sick [expletive] country makes the black man hate himself ... “

There has been a lot of discussion over the years about Jackson’s changing physical appearance. In this regard, there is a school of thought that says racism in this society has been such that many black people are systematically taught to hate themselves while harboring a deep desire to be white. This theory could reasonably be applied to Jackson who, despite claims of a skin disease, is not very convincing in his arguments about the subject.

Jackson’s racial ambivalence has never been shown in a more stark and apparently hypocritical light than recently, though, when it was revealed that he now has some curious relationship with the Nation of Islam. The man, who not too long ago proudly sang “it don’t matter if you’re black or white” is supposedly now in league with an organization in which it certainly does, and always has, mattered. As Chris Rock said, “first the Fat Boys break up and now this?!”

If you remember the video for the song “Black or White” from Jackson’s 1991 album, “Dangerous,” you will recall that at the end of the video, Jackson’s face morphed into several other people’s faces, all of which represented the same kind of stylish diversity that was prominently featured in the many Benetton clothing ads of that time. Each newly morphed face was a different race and/or gender from the previous one. In the early ‘90s, people got very excited about this video trick, and with this, Michael held his undisputed reign as the King of Pop.

Donning the mantle

Well, it appears that Jackson has once again morphed, this time in real life. Jackson, the racially ambivalent wonder, has now become the supreme black man, with street cred to boot. His recent embrace of the Nation is the modern-day equivalent of Clarence Thomas crying foul over what he saw as a “high-tech lynching” in his confirmation hearings with the Senate back in the day, around the same time Jackson was singing “Black or White.”

Thomas and Jackson are not alone, of course. O.J. Simpson, a man who also had a distant relationship to his own community at one point, got black all of a sudden when he was charged in the now infamous murder case from the mid-’90s. Even Kobe Bryant, he who had shunned the ubiquitous hip-hop aesthetic favored by so many of his NBA peers, appeared at an event last summer with a “blingin’ ” platinum neckpiece, and then showed up at the Lakers’ training camp in October, fresh off a summer that included a sexual assault charge, with multiple tattoos covering one of his arms.

There seems to be an obvious connection between being in trouble with the law and wanting to return to one’s roots, as it were, however far the individual in question many have strayed from those roots in the first place. This sort of thing happens so much now that it has become a trend, which prompts the question: Who’s next?

Is Condi Rice destined to appear in the next Beyonce video, shaking her abundantly bellicose groove thing to a hip-hop beat if her boss does not get invited back for a second four-year gig come November? Or might we one day see Ward Connerly joining forces with Al Sharpton in a remake of the Sidney Poitier-Bill Cosby classic “Uptown Saturday Night”? As ridiculous as that sounds, the idea of Michael Jackson being in league with the Nation of Islam would have seemed even more outrageous back in Jackson’s heyday on top of the pop world.

The words weird, increasingly weird and weirder don’t even begin to account for the carnivalesque aura that has long surrounded Jackson everywhere he goes. He was a walking Barnum & Bailey circus act in “highwater” pants, sequined socks and zippered red leather jackets. But he was allowed to indulge all his weirdness, even celebrated for it, because he was Michael, the star of stars, a pop icon for the ages.

In addition to all this, he was also a black man -- at least that’s the way he was born. This is relevant because one could argue that no black person had ever achieved the level of success or the universal acceptance that Jackson did. Coming along in the early ‘70s -- only a hop, skip and jump from the Civil Rights-defined ‘60s -- Jackson moved up the ladder to success like a NASCAR driver on speed, and by the late ‘70s, with the release of his best work, the Quincy Jones-produced “Off the Wall,” he was destined for unsurpassed greatness. With the dawn of MTV and the music video age, Michael took the crown and refused to relinquish it, going on to sell more than 26 million copies of “Thriller” in the U.S. alone, while redefining the music industry and pop sainthood in the process.

Jackson seemed to have accomplished something that was otherwise considered impossible in America: He seemed to have transcended race. He was neither black nor white; he was simply Michael, a race, class and gender unto himself. Not only was he in his own world, he was this world and all its inhabitants.

Racially ambiguous

In a society where one’s race is often a burden and seldom a benefit, Jackson seemed to erase all of that, creating and following his own racial rules in the process. This was especially true in terms of his physical appearance. With each passing year, his skin seemed to whiten before our eyes. Jackson appears to have enlisted Pinocchio’s plastic surgeon for his cosmetic enhancements. His hair, once a fly but still kinky Afro, became straight as the line a drunken driver is forced to walk when pulled over by the cops.

Then he somehow reversed the genetic cycle and produced babies who, from the little we have seen, look about as white as John Ashcroft watching reruns of Lawrence Welk. Not only was Michael a great entertainer, he was a walking human genetic experiment.

No wonder it was once rumored that he wanted to buy the bones of the fabled Elephant Man; it now seems they were related. Either that, or Jackson was the Elephant Man in a previous life.

One of the lasting remnants of the Simpson trial is the now commonly used phrase “the race card.” I cannot abide this phrase because it assumes that race is like a card game, and in this construction, the race card is akin to the trump card, a privileged card that, when played, stops all the action. Yet anyone who is defined by race in this nation knows all too well that race is not a game. One’s racial identity is not something that can be turned on and off at will. Race and its troubled history in this nation is real, and the experience of it is visible across the bodies of all those who exist outside the white mainstream.

Jackson has gone from raceless to race man, seemingly overnight. What he has done now in his alleged affiliation with the Nation is far beyond playing the race card, though; he has pulled out a deck of race cards, kidnapped the dealer and taken over the casino.

Is one’s racial identity for sale in this nation of cultural entrepreneurs? Can someone like Jackson go back and forth denying and embracing his identity, changing from black to who knows what to black again, as though he were just changing his clothes?

In a contemporary environment where the explosive popularity of hip-hop and its particular brand of blackness has made Uncle Tomming no longer necessary, Jackson’s racial ambivalence is simply out of style now. Yet, like a church taking a wayward sinner back into the fold, it seems that the many African Americans who seem to stand in strong support of Jackson have offered little resistance to his opportunistic move back to the black side, no matter how hypocritical his actions have been.

Jackson, ever the performer -- even with his freedom at stake -- could not resist the urge, so at his recent arraignment hearing he jumped on top of an SUV and stood in full view for all those adoring and equally clueless fans of his who are drawn to his every antic like moths to a flame.

Don’t be surprised if Michael turns up on next on “the Shaw,” Crenshaw Boulevard that is, in a black suit and bow tie, though still wearing his trademark “highwaters” with his straight locks gone, replaced by a closely cropped “Quo Vadis” haircut, selling bean pies and the Nation of Islam’s newspaper, the Final Call.

Imagine the sound of his ever-so-distinct voice, as he walks up to an unsuspecting driver’s car window and inquires, “Bean pie, my brotha?”

Todd Boyd is professor of Critical Studies in the USC School of Cinema-Television. His latest book is “Young Black Rich and Famous: The Rise of the NBA, The Hip Hop Invasion and The Transformation of American Culture.”