SCREAM

Abstract

AbstractThe SCREAM chapter examines Michael Jackson’s 1995 music video “Scream,” which staged a rageful response to his treatment by the media. The chapter introduces the idea of re-facing Jackson to account for the allegations of sexual abuse that surfaced in the documentary film Leaving Neverland in 2019. The idea that Jackson is re-faced also comes through his changing visage. Michael Taussig’s concept of “defacement” illustrates how the discourse around Jackson’s face both acknowledges the social construction of race but appeals to a biological heritage to make sense of his facial freakery. To understand Jackson’s choreographic scream, the chapter calls upon Fred Moten’s conception of the scream as an originating trauma in Black subjectivity that is both recited but can also be given a radical breakdown through Black artistic expression. While Jackson’s potent scream serves to shatter an equilibrium, the question remains as to whether its efficacy can be maintained.