Bloom County: Michael Jackson
Bloom County was an extraordinary comic strip during its storied, hilarious, multi-year run. If I were to list the most important influences on my sense of humour and language, right after Walt Kelly’s Pogo would come Bloom County, which had a similarly sprawling anthropomorphic cast, political bent, and a strong sense of word play — centering particularly on the way words simply sounded. Despite two revivals in the Sunday funnies, some animated specials, a couple painted gift books, a line of greeting cards, and an iced tea flavor, Bloom County has not successfully established itself as a fixed, indelible part of day-to-day pop culture. The fact that it continues to be referenced and resurrected in one minor way or another is testament to its cult belovedness, but that it’s not a referential throughline, not a cultural touchstone is frankly beyond my reckoning.
A woman approximately my age just confessed on a public social networking board (gasp!) that she’d never heard about the whole Michael Jackson Pepsi commercial where his hair caught on fire. My first reaction was to be startled, until I realized that my knowledge of it came not from the event itself, not from the incident, but from the cultural commentary that followed. Specifically, I remembered the way in which it was satirized in Bloom County. A brief internet search produced similar memories on various people’s blogs, but no reproductions or scans of the strips themselves.
While we still wait for the IDW collection of the entire Bloom County library, we can at least partake of Andrews McMeel’s online offerings. Since this archive isn’t searchable except by date and user-created keywords — and then only by members — I don’t claim to present a comprehensive collection of every one of Berkeley Breathed’s Michael Jackson references, here’s what I’ve been able to piece together (Remember other Jackson/Bloom crossovers? Mention them in the comments). For those of you not inclined to wait for IDW, most of the following can be found in the classic 1985 assemblage, Penguin Dreams and Stranger Things:
+ March 18, 1984: Steve Dallas sings “Billy Jean” to an imaginary audience. (one strip)
+ March 22, 1984: In a satire of the Pepsi commercial accident, Steve Dallas burns off his chest hair while making a rock video. (three main strips, but a segment of about a 20-part ongoing story)
+ May 2, 1984: Oliver’s mother gives him a Michael Jackson makeover. (two strips)
+ June 25, 1984: Oliver’s mother wallpapers his entire room with Michael Jackson’s face. (three strips)
+ August 17, 1984: Opus visits Neverland, and he and Michael reenact The Prince and the Pauper (15 strips)
+ September 27, 1986: Interestingly, this is reprinted in the Billy and the Boingers collection with the punchline, “..Don’t you think it’s high time Michael Jackson got interested in girls?” A sliiiight alteration there. (one strip)
Michael Bay Shout Out
Well, after three weekends with the top box office results, Transformers 2: Racist Boogaloo has finally been knocked out of the number one spot by Brüno. I’d like to say, “by Brüno, of all things…” but I still recall the mysterious favourable fervor that surrounded the first film. I figured the gay angle would cancel out middle America’s post-Jackass love of Sacha Baron Cohen’s antics, but he’s still riding the crest of that bizarre gestalt of reality programming, schadenfreude, and our tendency to laugh when we become uncomfortable (q.v. The Office and Fawlty Towers) for lack of any better response. Or he’s got a post-Borat curiosity factor buoying him up temporarily. I mean, there’s no way he’ll still be there next week when (500) Days of Summer the newest Harry Potter comes out.
(A brief note on box office records: some nerds are understandably upset at Transformers 2: Transformener! creeping close to The Dark Knight‘s nigh-toppling of the classic Titanic record. I don’t put much stock in box-office records — despite having once written to a newspaper to set them straight about Spider-Man‘s domestic gross — but it was still gratifying to read that someone had finally done an inflation adjustment for the top-selling films, to find out exactly how much blocks are really being busted by all these spidey-come-latelies. And while Titanic is still in the top ten (Star Wars is at number two, but I can’t tell if that includes the 1997 special edition re-release), Spider-Man, as the Guardian puts it, is “nowhere to be seen.” Makes one feel like someone suddenly turned the gravity back on, and realigned magnetic North.)
I don’t particularly care what succeeds instead of Transformers, so long as something does. People talk about Michael Bay as a spirited visionary, someone with a good sense of populism and energy. I begin to grow tired of this particular paean. It seems to me that this is a kind of shorthand for “charismatic, improvisational egotist.” The same sort of tribute was paid to Peter Berg’s Hancock, and that was a dreadful mess. Good moments, but incoherent overall. Other films that don’t stand up to any sort of logic test, but which people adore for a few catch-your-breath, coolness moments: Bad Boys, Bad Boys II, Armageddon (referred to as “Armageddoon” in my household because of the fortuitous happenstance of a mislabeled free-HBO-weekend VHS dupe; fortuitous because it more successfully creates the sound of the utter doofishness of its contents), and The Rock. You may notice a laser-like focus in this list. Yes, I do feel that Bay’s films are most accurately characterized by a certain stylish lack of narrative intelligence, and his other films — The Island, Pearl Harbor — don’t even have the cool moments to make us forget their mawkishness. In general, there is an exuberance in each of them that is relentlessly macho and completely slapdash, which ultimately means his films have stood or fallen on the inadvertent charisma or professionalism of his key actors.
Since all films are the happy accidents of their creative committees, I am perhaps unfair to lash out at Mr. Bay. But I am weary of machismo as spectacle, and his specific hair-band video aesthetic. So it was pleasing to find that in addition to confusing “You know… for kids!” with his own unconscious racism, that the man is simply inarticulate. The ever-marvelous Vulture pays people to read drek like Ain’tItCoolNews and TMZ so that I don’t ever, ever, ever have to, and they gleefully cribbed a collection of typographical and grammatical inanities from Bay’s irate correspondence with Paramount marketing. These help enormously in beginning to understand my reaction to his body of work, as it clearly demonstrates a passion-over-coherence dynamic that I reject personally and professionally.
Fittingly, Bay rejects me as well. In responding to the accusations regarding his potentially unintentional sambots, Mr. Bay said, “Listen, you’re going to have your naysayers on anything. It’s like, is everything going to be melba toast?” The Vulture assumed he meant “vanilla“, while Andrew Wheeler more correctly assumed he meant “milquetoast“. Me, I look forward to a day when everything is a little more melba toast, thank you very much.
N.B., the above image is from an NHPR story about a psych experiment about whether New Yorkers would help a happy, defenseless robot. Is there anything more vanilla? Sheesh.
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