Michael Jackson Dangerous by Susan Fast

In the 100th volume in Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series,
Susan Fast embarks on a hyper-intelligent work of
critical scholarship, positioning Michael Jackson’s
Dangerous (1991) as both a revealing, multifaceted
concept album and the precipitous beacon of
Jackson's subsequent downfall.
Dangerous, Fast argues, is Michael Jackson's coming
of age album. Granted, that’s a bold claim to make given that many
think his best work lay behind him by the time this record was made. It
offers Jackson on a threshold, at long last embracing adulthood—
politically questioning, sexually charged—yet unable to convince a
skeptical public who had, by this time, been wholly indoctrinated by a
vicious media.
This book tries to cut through the din of dominant narratives about
Jackson, taking up the mature, nuanced artistic statement he offered
on Dangerous in all its complexity: a compelling narrative arc of
postmodern angst, love, lust, seduction, betrayal, damnation, and
above all else racial politics, in ways heretofore unseen in his music.
Dangerous offers a Michael Jackson that was mystifying for a world that
had accepted him as a child and as childlike and, hence, as safe; this
Michael Jackson was, indeed, dangerous.

168 pages, paperback.