Michael Jackson:
An American Work in Progress
Presented by Margo Jefferson
Winter 2007

Ruined masterpiece, maimed genius, pure product of America gone crazy? Michael Jackson is all of these. And he is one of the most important performers of the late 20th century too. He embodies every aspect of our popular cultures with its vast global reach; the contraries of race and gender; the mongrel life of pop, rock and soul; the rise of vernacular dance and mass video art; our American obsession with celebrity, self-transformation, perpetual youth, and sexuality, played off and pitted against an impossible vision of innocence.

Margo Jefferson was a staff critic for The New York Times from 1993 to 2006. She began as a book reviewer, moved to theatre and eventually became a Critic-at-large. She received a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 and her essays Grand Street and The Nation received awards from The Coordinating Council in Literary Magazines and The American Library Association. She has also written and performed two theatre pieces. On Michael Jackson was published by Pantheon in 2006. She teaches at Columbia University and Eugene Lang College at The New School.

Related Events:
March 1, 2007 4:30-5:30pm Public Lecture (Wexner Film & Video Theatre)