Michael Eric Dyson. Mercy, Mercy Me: The Art, Loves and Demons of Marvin Gaye

African American Review, Summer, 2006 by Ama Mazama

Michael Eric Dyson. Mercy, Mercy Me: The Art, Loves and Demons of Marvin Gaye. New York: BasicCivitas, 2004. 290 pp. $23.95 cloth/ $13.95 paper.

This essay, the author announces as "a work of biocriticism" (p. xiii), that is, not so much as another biography of a widely acclaimed artist, but primarily as an assessment of Marvin Gaye's cultural and intellectual greatness and influence on his contemporaries. Accordingly, the book is divided in six chapters, designed to explore various and relevant aspects of Gaye: his search for a style (chapter 1), the politics of soul music (chapter 2), sexuality and spirituality (chapter 3), black love and secret romance (chapter 4), eroticism and exodus (chapter 5) and afroedipalism, corporal punishment, and the politics of self-destruction (chapter 6), followed by an after-word largely devoted to R. Kelly's analysis of Marvin Gaye.

The book is well researched, full of captivating anecdotes and details about Gaye. It is also wittily written, for Dyson has a truly unique gift for words; he is able to capture in deceivingly simple phrases complex realities. This book, however, is not a scholarly treatise, nor does it claim to be. Of his theoretical assumptions, Dyson says nothing, and we are therefore left to figure them out. Two, however, seem to run through Dyson's writing. The first one, hardly provocative, is that Gaye's music mirrors his times. Thus, Dyson embarks on analyzing Gaye's most famous songs, such as "Let's Get It On" and "What's Going On?" as calls for the social and sexual liberation of the 1960s and 70s. The second, more troublesome assumption is that sexuality is key to any real understanding of the artist. Dyson is more particularly impressed with the tension that he claims haunted Gaye throughout life, between sexuality and "spirituality."

This second assumption is of paramount importance to Dyson, for whom, the significance of sexuality cannot be underestimated. It helps even explain Gaye's troubled relationship with his father. The latter apparently had an ill-defined sexual identity, which led to his cross-dressing, for instance. A man of great cruelty, he frequently whipped his children, including Marvin, naked. This punishment leads Dyson to discuss "the sexualized brutality of the whippings" received by Marvin and his siblings. While sexuality certainly plays an important part in human behavior, Dyson's over-reliance on sexuality to explain Gaye becomes quite annoying at times, for at least two reasons. For one, it is reductive. Chapter 6, for example, is not grounded in any solid theory, but reads as bold proposition about the effect on Marvin of his father's wearing his mother's panties, and thereby greatly trivializing the whole matter. At that point Dyson abuses his gift for words, and tries to dazzle the reader with what seems to me nothing more than wild (and cheap) speculation on his part. In addition, his reliance on sexuality inhibits engagement with some other important aspects of Gaye's personality, such as his cultural dislocation. The alleged tension between sexuality and spirituality makes sense only in the context of the Christianity to which Gaye submitted, perhaps as a result of the enslavement of black people.

Had Gaye operated from his own cultural center, as a man of African descent, he would have been spared such agony since African religions generally regard sex as sin. That he could have done just that was not impossible, since after all, he lived at a time when many African Americans sought consciously to link themselves with Africa. Stevie Wonder is one of the best examples of a contemporary of Gaye's who embraced African cultural rebirth. Why Gaye did not or could not follow that path deserves attention, especially if he were truly to mirror his times. Regrettably, Dyson's own location (or dislocation) might have made such a discussion impossible. The author displays no awareness of Africa, even as he deals with Gaye's Pentecoastal upbringing. In the end, Mercy Mercy Me: The Art, Loves and Demons of Marvin Gaye reads as an entertaining book on Marvin Gaye, and will be recommended as such, and nothing more.

Reviewed by

Ama Mazama Temple University

African American Review, Volume 40, Number 2 [c] 2006 Area Mazama