ABSTRACT
This introduction lays out the tangible afterlife of blackface minstrelsy in and around the figure of Michael Jackson. Firstly, this is in terms of how, as an artistic and political strategy, Jackson reappropriated minstrelsy's gestures and tropes and recalibrated their meaning and value. In turn, it is in relation to how, at the height of his fame, Jackson was reduced to ‘Wacko Jacko’, a derogatory caricature created by the media as a gesture of containment and control. Finally, it is inherent in Jackson's creative response to his media treatment in the way in which he deployed many of the strategies Black minstrels used in defence against their own derisive caricatures.
