Keeping track o' Wacko
Jacko
by Patrick Field
I saw Michael Jackson on
TV. He was getting out of a limousine in Australia wearing what looked like
a pollution mask. When I was a boy he was a child-star, black with an afro hair-style
and a round nose. Since then I became a man, he's turned white and his nose
has gone pointy. What can this mean?
Once it was fashionable for white people to be as white as possible. The idea
was that pale skin showed they had no need to toil in the fields. The notion
that white people toasted by the sun were more beautiful than raw ones only
caught-on after significant numbers had begun working in mills and mines. Factory
workers, pallid from minding machines indoors or underground from dawn till
dusk, diluted the aristocratic status of white, unweathered skin. In the South
of France between the two German wars Zelda and F.
Scott Fitzgerald, Coco Channel, Pablo Picasso and sundry other trendys invented
a new status-symbol for white people; the sun-tan.
There are holes in the upper-atmosphere which let in radiation. This radiation
threatens skin-cancer for people with blue or green eyes. It is hypothesised
that the holes in the sky are a by-product of human activity. If this theory
is correct it reveals a good example of the problems of trying to make human-existence
easier. Efforts to use technology to make the World more comfortable have produced
conditions that make life more difficult and dangerous for a significant section
of the population. (Regular readers may like to insert a ranting analogy with
some manifestation of motor-dependence here. e.g. one-way systems, speed humps,
out of town shopping...)
Many Australian residents are descended from European immigrants, they have
Celtic ancestors, red or yellow hair and pale skin. In Australia skin-cancer
is a significant cause of premature death. It was Australian cricketers who
first wore white, foundation on their noses.
Not so long ago Europeans considered Australia to be a terrible wilderness.
Exile there 'transportation' was a dreaded punishment. Fashions change. How
ever crowded the prisons of the UK become I doubt that Michael Howard will suggest
sending felons to waste away on Pacific shores. The present panic about naughty
children would be as nothing compared to the crime-wave that would be triggered
amongst teenagers if they thought that the consequence of misbehaviour was banishment
to the coasts of 'Neighbours' and 'Home and Away'.
In the days of 'transportation' people were frightened of the wide World and
what it could do to them. Sometime in the twentieth century, may be on the very
day that Zelda first noticed that her brown legs looked quite refined, people
ceased to be scared of the World. Humanity's mastery of technology meant that
the prospect of life on a Pacific beach with only a few scraps of clothing stopped
being hell and became paradise. You can tell the villains in 'Bay Watch' (different
coast same ocean) before they speak or act. They are the ones wearing clothes.
English is the dominant language of the wilderness countries of the USA and
Australia, a legacy of Britain's former imperial and industrial power. Industry
began in England for many reasons plenty of rain for water-power, lots of hardwood
for charcoal and ships, plentiful deposits of iron-ore and coal and lots of
capital accumulated in the Atlantic slave-trade. If the hole in the ozone layer
is a consequence of industry is it Africa's revenge? Perhaps there is a force
in the universe that won't allow the kidnap and abuse of millions of people
to go unpunished forever? From now on, to avoid ending up wearing one of our
buttocks on our forehead, I and all other blue-eyed pinkies will have to shell
out loads of cash for 'factor 97' sun-block and risk brown-eyed people smirking
at our Marcel Marceau make-up.
There are sceptics who claim that change in the weather caused by human activity
is just a theory got up by climatologists to get more and bigger research grants
but if you drill a sample of polar ice you can read the story of industry from
its carbon-content. With the right equipment you can spot the stains left by
the iron-age, the bronze-age, the Roman Empire, the industrial revolution and
various literal and metaphorical explosions of the twentieth century.
It was air-travel, refrigerators, automobiles, radio sets and all the other
miracles of the modern World (including bicycles) that turned the wide World
from a scary place into a thrilling playground. This transforming power has
now introduced a new fear. 'What will the World do to us?' has been replaced
by 'What will we do to the World?'. The danger isn't really the sunshine it's
the mess we've made of the biosphere.
In 1996 Michael Jackson released 'Earth Song' a big hit ballad moaning about
the damage humanity is doing to the World. Perhaps he turned white, wears a
mask and blue contact lenses to express solidarity with an endangered sub-species?
******
Have you noticed that even the counter staff in Building Societies have got
rings in their noses these days? White people who ride bikes and want to join
in the current craze for mutilation but haven't the nerve to get tatooed or
put a Campagnolo seat-pin bolt through their nasal septum can cultivate the
easy option of a cyclist's tan.
When summer comes round again simply ride about in the sunshine dressed as a
cyclist, including track-mitts and shades. Then, when you strip off - only in
the shade naturally - you will have white feet and ankles, brown calves and
knees, white thighs and torso, brown arms, white palms and knuckles, brown fingers
and a brown neck and face with white panda rings around your eyes. You will
look just as weird as if you had untold tantric symbols etched on your shoulders
or 500 grams of architectural ironmongery laced through your squishy bits.
Beware of Africa's revenge. Start slowly, baste yourself with oil of an appropriate
strength and keep checking those moles.
© Patrick Field
Cycling & Mountain Biking Today, January
1997