Could you describe the project you did with your students?

Bert Stabler: As the last project of the year for my beginning art class this May, I focused on the significance of Michael Jackson as a cultural figure. We looked at iconic images of Jackson created by white artists (Warhol, Koons, McCarthy) and the work of recent black artists who deal explicitly with being African-American as an "Other" vis-a-vis the default WASP culture of the U.S. (Hammons, Weems, Piper, Simpson, Charles, Gallagher, Clark, Pope L).

We also included masks with European features created for masquerades by the Igbo people of Nigeria. We looked at some of the items of his property offered earlier in the year at auction, and we discussed a long list of questions I asked regarding student's perceptions of Jackson's importance in the larger picture of American popular culture and black history. Students drew gridded portraits based on images of Jackson from childhood to the present day, and created expressive masks using various art supplies, but primarily white Styrofoam and artificial hair.

How successful was it?

Bert Stabler: I thought it was quite successful for an end-of-the-year project, since students traditionally (in my experience) start mentally checking out as the weather gets warmer. In this case nearly everyone had an engaged, if lighthearted, approach to the subject. I would say students were divided about Jackson, not only from student to student, but also in the minds of individuals. There were ardent Jackson defenders, highly candid detractors, but most qualified both their positive and their negative assertions. There was widespread agreement that his relevance was enormous and unquestionable, primarily based on his influence on current R&B, and students were also in agreement that he was in bad shape at the moment, in terms of his career, his mental health, his appearance, and his public perception.

What was their take on his child abuse scandal and on his sexuality?

Bert Stabler: Few students seemed positive that he was guilty. Several seemed convinced of his innocence. The overall opinion was uncertainty, though there was a general agreement that, by inviting children to sleep at his house, that he was certainly leaving himself open to accusations, and, equally, that the guardians of those children were so culpable in their permissiveness as to have their motives appear suspicious.

The gay issue was interesting - a few students questioned whether he had fathered his children, but, for the most part, he was assumed to be straight. However, the possibility of his sexual deviance was never dismissed outright, but was frequently contextualized in terms of his traumatic childhood. His overall deviance in appearance and mannerisms was equated with deviant behavior by some, but not everyone-- intriguingly, one student did claim that Jackson was a "faggot," but not homosexual.

The following slideshow contains artwork made by the students in Mr. Stabler's class

In light of your project, do you see Jackson as a positive figure?

Bert Stabler: I asked my students this too, and, like them, I think he is neither entirely positive or negative. I feel that his existence illustrates, like very few other recent exemplars, the stakes of race and sexuality in our culture, in terms of technology, history, expression, and community, such that I called him (while he still lived) a living work of art. And I think reading him positively on balance is actually an important way to remember him, when the role models black young people have are so often either incomprehensible and unattainable, or straightforwardly evil.

To what extent can he be seen as a trans artist or a queer icon when he didn't explicitly adopt that stance? Does it matter that he never identified as LGBT?

Bert Stabler: To the extent that people are willing to accept that explanation of him. Plenty of mainstream LGBT people are infuriated that Jackson is associated with queerness. I don't know that he ever made a statement about homosexuality or sexuality at all, other than robotically grabbing his crotch on stage. He didn't explicitly adopt many big-picture stances to speak of, other than preaching the innocence of childhood, the importance of privacy, and the irrelevance of being black or white. It would be different if he claimed a gay identity, but it would have meant a great deal to his career (being male, unlike Missy Elliot, Lil' Kim, Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, etc.), and would have really required him to be much more open with sexual aspects of his public persona, and probably his private self-awareness as well. But not being out doesn't mean he's not gay, and not being gay doesn't mean he's not, following many contemporary definitions of the term, queer.

Can he be seen as a black performer?

Bert Stabler: My students almost all perceived him as black, although not everyone. He was absolutely about negating his racial and gender identities, on some cinematic level, and so, on that level, it doesn't matter what he said in words. His audacity was unique for being so explicitly negative. But of course it matters that he was black, because he was famous and recognized universally as, at least in default, black.

Does his history of abuse and the way he responded to it make him problematic as an icon for queer people, or black people, or anybody else?

Bert Stabler: If suffering makes someone ineligible for icon status, we're not going to have many icons left Being different, being famous, being a person, involve a degree of drama almost all the time, and that drama enhances the aura of most highly visible people.

It seemed to me that there's a sense in which everyone with a stake in him kind of benefits from his death; he's a lot easier to deal with that way. Do you agree with that?

Bert Stabler: That's almost always true. That is the regrettable thing, since tragic icons are all too numerous in the pantheons of both black and queer culture-- and even more so in their fictional representations.