Illustration by Kathleen Makielski, Surgical Anatomy of the Face
On the Transformation of a Pop Star into a Race Riot 1992
VIOLENT.
1. Marked by, acting with, or resulting from great force.
2. Having or showing great emotional force.
3. Marked by intensity; extreme.
4. Caused by unexpected force or injury rather than by natural causes.
5. Tending to distort or injure meaning,
RACE
1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.
2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution.
3. A genealogical line, a lineage.
Noun: A struggle with others for victory or supremacy. war, competition, warfare, contest, rivalry, strife, striving.
RIOT
1. A wild or turbulent disturbance created by a large number of people.
2. Law. A violent disturbance of the public peace by three or more persons assembled for a common purpose.
3. to act in a wild way.*
4. a brilliant display of color.*
BLACK
1. Color. Being of the color black, producing or reflecting comparatively little light and having no predominant hue.
2. Having little or no light.
3. Often black. a. Of, relating to, or belonging to a racial group having brown to black skin, especially one of African origin. b. Of, relating to, or belonging to an American ethnic group descended from African peoples having dark skin; African American; Afro-American.
4. Very dark in color.
5. Soiled, as from soot; dirty.
6.Evil; wicked.
7. Cheerless and depressing; gloomy.
8. Marked by anger or sullenness.
9. Often black. Attended with disaster; calamitous.
10. Deserving of, indicating, or incurring censure or dishonor.
11. Darkness, to black out, to lose consciousness.*
Adjective: Characterized by intense ill will or spite. evil, mean, vicious, wicked, nasty, poisonous, malevolent, malicious, venomous, malign, malignant, spiteful.
WHITE
1. Also White. Of, relating to, or belonging to a racial group having light skin coloration, especially one of European origin.
2. Not written or printed on; blank.
3. Unsullied; pure.
4. Habited in white.
5.a. Incandescent. b. Intensely heated; impassioned.
6. Ultraconservative or reactionary.
In considering these definitions the first thing that is striking is their obvious applications to the Rodney King affair and Mr. Jackson, incurring dishonor, and attended with disaster. Then one may notice the moral value attached to the colors, but there are a few other connections to explore here.
The fifth definition of the word, violent; tending to distort or injure meaning. Socially or politically considered, the meaning of blackness is revoked, or radically altered by Mr. Jackson through surgical procedures that could be construed as a type of violence against identity. When we take the word, race as a noun the dictionary tells us of a struggle for supremacy, or even war. Here the concept of a race riot becomes such a struggle. As for the moral value ascribed to the colors, such arguments that have highlighted this obvious example of euro centrism have been argued very eloquently over the years. What interests me now is the fourth definition of the word, riot, and the eleventh of the word, black. These two definitions compliment one another when bound by the act of cosmetic, aesthetic surgery. Darkness, to black out, to lose consciousness, becomes a prerequisite for a brilliant display of color to transpire.
As the affects of anesthesia begin to overwhelm him, Mr. Jackson slips into the layers of his flesh that he so wishes to transform, he loses identity, is no longer distinguishable from the voids within him. In this darkness he sheds his skin, looses boundary, and becomes the night. This night however, is not permeated by stars, rain or clouds, but by powerful electric lights, the glint of surgical instruments, and more likely than not, by white surgeons. It is a white night into which he descends. Here the riot takes place upon the black body. In a brilliant display of color, layers of fat, muscle, bone and cartilage are revealed, opened to the harsh light in which nothing escapes, where no shadow is cast. In the white light of the operating room there is no place for blackness to hide. The body of Michael is laid bare upon the table and opened. His blackness thus ruptured, the riot commences.
In the case of Rodney King this same phenomenon applies, as it does for any other less profiled, but no less extreme examples of racist violence. This is that blackness defined as the loss of consciousness, is necessary for a riot, the brilliant display of color to be acted out. What is interesting about Michael Jackson is that the process is willed for and paid for by him. He presides over his mutilation and is its architect. To what extent though is Michael in control? We are somehow tempted to place him in a role of victim or victor. He could be both.
One juror in the trial of the officers charged with using excessive force against Rodney King was reputed to have stated that King was in “total control” of the situation. In following this good citizen's logic, it appears that in such a savage beating, or within the context of oppressive, brutal force, it is the object of violence that ultimately holds the strings to the marionette that beats him. Yet is that puppet master a masochist, or is the lesson that the good boy is the one who doesn't play with toys he doesn't know how to use?
I see that it is a larger body, in a way an institutional one that is the puppet master. A racist cultural body that toys with real bodies in a theater of terror and entertainment played out in prime time for maximum advertising profit. This media spectacle also takes place on the person of Michael Jackson. He is the body of the state's desire, a war within a war, an undeveloped picture, a film negative.
DANGEROUS
This was the title of Jackson's most recent album prior to the L.A. incident. In the videos to the songs, Jackson is seen dancing the sharp, clean moves that characterize his style, but his face often contorted in simulated rage and passion. He, the gloved one, the post modern Peter Pan from a sprawling estate called Neverland (where all is negation), comes back to the public, his well publicized flirtations with fantasy having lost him popularity. In a media blitz coinciding with the album's release, Michael invents himself as dangerous, no longer the fairy from Neverland, and certainly not to be messed with. In a marked difference from earlier videos there is an absence of fantastic imagery. Contemporary problems are montages behind him, a wind machine blows his straightened hair, and he tells us that it does not matter if we are black or white; he is now the physical transcendence of such things. He ascends from the material and it's hardships into the metaphysical. Or he could be restating the politically correct cliché that, "we're all the same inside"?
“The lynchers tied him to the back of their Ford car and dragged him through the city streets. All of his skin had scraped off. F. noticed that the black man had turned white, and she wondered if that's what they had in mind when they preached in church that we're all the same inside”.
It has been proposed that in our time that the black body itself is seen as dangerous. This view was maintained by one attorney for the defense of the officers held in the King beating. The justification he gave the jury was that the officers acted on the belief that King was dangerous. This threat, he went on to argue, was proved by the antics of King, who danced like a bear, roared at the police, and laughed. Indeed it could not have been laughter and dancing that constituted a threat to several well-armed police, but police perception of blackness acting, as blackness should not. This was answered with blackness, the loss of consciousness. In these moments had the spirits of Michael and Rodney merged, fleeing into the Los Angeles night, one by anesthesia and scalpel, the other by baton, mace, stun gun, and boot, miraculously fusing and finding their reflections in the violence perpetrated upon each other's bodies?
Now the historical connections begin attaching themselves to this moment in the fusing of these two media personalities like so many viruses to a cell. Coming to mind is the practice of eugenics on the black populace in the U.S. from the 1890's to the 1960's, experiments on marginalized peoples living under the Nazi regime, even the coliseum antics of the Roman Empire can seem small compared to the metamorphosis of King and Jackson in the arena of satellite television. Here these two black men are the wet dream of a history of institutional hatred, the cops and surgeons are the new pioneers of eugenics.
In his medical textbook, Surgical Anatomy of the Face, Wayne Larrabee has stated that while standards of beauty have been set for Caucasians based on both popular perception and centuries of art that depicts The Caucasian, no such standards have been set for other races. The rules of proportion for the face of this standard loosely follow those of the portraits of Rembrandt. A majority of work done in the field of cosmetic surgery on non-white peoples has involved epidermal and bone alterations that utilize these standards, creating a sort of faux Caucasian.
The surgeons Humphries and Powell became pioneers in setting these standards when they established the concept of the aesthetic triangle, an area of the face where proportions and features are distributed to a more commonly pleasing whole. It is interesting that it was only three officers brought to trial in the King incident, though several took part in one way or another. One could see these three as the main surgeons, the others as nurses, assistants, interns, etc. The three formed a triangle over the non-white King, working on his face, applying force where necessary with the objective of transforming that face, manifesting or enforcing the established standards of beauty. Officers Powell, Koons and Martinez joined the pioneers Humphries and Powell in that they became Rodney King's aesthetic triangle.
Another interesting correlation between surgery and law enforcement is in the harmony line described by the surgeon Holdaway. This is an imaginary line on the face that divides the face into properly placed halves. The police are often described as the thin, blue line that divides civil society from anarchy, thus separating the face of the populace into its proper, dualistic segments. Another term used to designate an officer is a peace keeper. In the context of cosmetic surgery, the thin, blue line, or police become a harmony line that defines citizens and culture into a cohesive whole that maintains Caucasian standards of beauty.
We can easily imagine the metamorphosis where a pop star becomes a riot, and where police become surgeons in a world yearning for white. Whitewash, whiteout, the white light of oblivion or salvation...the need to solve any of our problems with racism disappears with the black man, one way or another, they shall overcome, unless the abhorred Other in turn takes up the scalpel and mallet to transform a white face, that of oppression and status quo in a surgery similar to burning Los Angeles.
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