Michael Jackson i inni metysi Pop a ewolucja

Today the end, not the beginning defines a human being. George Levine writes that in the new vision of the world which emerges from Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species nothing can be understood without understanding its history. Darwin asks about the beginning, not the end. In this perspective Michael Jackson seems to be the most important figure, since he, with his life and countless „operations”, embodies this impossible goal, becoming, as Łukasz Musiał called it, “a monstrous work in progress” and “a ghastly biological project”. Jackson means: diet supplements, surgical interventions and cosmetic procedures (botox, depilation), and fitness which help to hide natural body and create new, „holistic” (in its artificiality) project of a human being. It’s also a transcultural, transsexual and transpolitical project. Because of that maybe one of the most important myths of the present day is the myth of Pygmalion but à rebours: it is not the reality’s triumph over the art – the enlivening of Galatea by Pygmalion – but the time of Pygmalion’s transformation into a statue. It is the triumph of art over reality. The triumph of universal hybrids created in the process of hybridization (Jean Baudrillard), and Michael Jackson was one of the precursors of that process.