On Masks, Michael Jackson, and Culture

Just ran across a 1987 Village Voice piece entitled Man in the Mirror where Stanley Crouch is critiquing those who too easily concluded that Mike Jackson's cosmetic changes were simply about self-hate. Crouch writes:

The love of masks, of makeup, and of costumes is often much more than the pursuit of high fashion or the adherence to ritual convention; it is also the expression of that freedom to invent the self and of the literal fun Americans have often gotten from scandalizing expectations.