Destruction and Creation of Michael Jackson

Ellis Cashmore is the author of Elizabeth Taylor: A Private Life for Public Consumption (2017) and Beyond Black: Celebrity and Race in Obama’s America (2012), both published by Bloomsbury. A third edition of his Celebrity Culture is forthcoming. He has held positions in sociology at the universities of Hong Kong and Tampa, USA and is currently an honorary professor at Aston University, UK.

• Introduction: Destruction and Creation: Timeline 11. Pact with the Devil 2. Ticket to Ride3. Nothing Strange about Your Daddy4. Prisoner of All Those Around Him 5. Yesterday’s News6. Through the Eyes of a Child 7. With Walt Disney or Michelangelo8. A Nightmare 9. In Aladdin’s Cave 10. Whatever Reality They Want11. Shifting the Needle12. From His Sexuality to His Face13. True or Not, It Didn’t Matter14. Wearing Different Masks15. Prophets of Black Conservatism16. Nothing Was the Same After17. Phantasmagorical Bubble Machine18. Without the Grit of Reality19. The Wand 20. Old Soul in a Young Body21. In This Good Land of Ours22. Close to the Threshold of HellDestruction and Creation: Key PlayersPlaylistBibliographyIndex

Cashmore’s book attempts to be more than another rehash of scandals. He discusses Jackson, who he calls ‘a bewilderingly complex character’, in the light of his role as a ‘shining symbol of a post-civil rights land of opportunity’, and looks at how Jackson’s character was affected by American culture.