Michael Jackson spotted in Bahrain in robe and veil:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Bahrain-Michael-Jackson.html?_r=1
Wow, it makes so much sense when you stop to think about it. But it’s still kind of shocking.
That’s poor Michael Jackson’s cross to bear – he’s our avatar of a new kind of human being. The Mediated Man.
And at some point, what the Mediated Man wants more than anything, after a lifetime of exposure and media burn, is privacy.
And at this moment, the modern world converges with the ancient.
I was having sex with my girlfriend this morning, and it was so wonderful and so private and so hidden from the world of…Out There; The Public; The World; History; News: Time. And the thought occured to me that veils are a natural response to the feminine – because the feminine is so intensely private.
This is an odd thought for a Westerner, I realized that as I was laying there in our afterglow. We have this knee jerk idea that things should be exposed, revealed, transparent. But the world of the feminine, at least in its depths, is infinitely intimate and private. It is infinitely nurturing and empathic and limitless – but it needs darkness. And in this sense, a veil on a woman makes infinite sense.
Look at all the poor female souls out there right now with their plastic surgery and their zillion dollar wardrobes, trying to fit some impossible image of femininity – that actually is the opposite of feminine, which is aggressive, and bears no resemblence to what being a woman is truly about. Well, it is about the seductiveness, but it masks the true sensuality that women offer to their loved ones in private. Privacy is key. One must be invited into this world. It is not for every Tom, Dick and Harry wandering the streets. Perhaps we need a better understanding of privacy in this country – especially now, as our privacy disappears inside the Surveillance State.
But I digress.
Michael Jackson has decided that he feels comfortable wearing a veil. This child of the media wants his privacy. Perhaps he identifies with femininity because of his experience in the spotlight, in the glare of that competitive, mean, hard, masculine world.
Obviously he’s made some bad choices – a plastic face is not going to wear well, no matter how good your doctors are. But he was a little kid when he was formed in the hot light of celebrity. He was vulnerable. He made childish, immature, peculiarly American decisions. But he’s still here, melting face and all. And he wants to feel safe and protected and free, just like we all do. Only everywhere he goes, everything he does, he feels intruded upon. How natural for him to embrace a culture that understands a person’s need for privacy and comfort. Sure, Michael Jackson is bizarre and funny and easy to ridicule. But we all have our feminine sides, male and female alike. And this media world we live in is harsh harsh harsh on our fragile human psychologies. Men carry around some very soft objects, too – if you don’t think men want protection for their private parts, you haven’t studied history very well.
And so, perhaps, as the 21st century starts, we are about to see a generation of American women embrace the veil. A natural response to Western values gone mad; an oasis in a mediated world, a refuge from the Open Market.
The veil comes to America – and Michael Jackson leads the way.
How weird.
How perfect.