Fox, the US station that originally aired the video, was bombarded with complaints. The so-called “panther dance” caused an uproar more so, ironically, than anything put out that year by Nirvana or Guns N’ Roses. The video ends with Homer Simpson, another White American Father, taking the remote from his son, Bart, and turning off the TV. He bashes a car in with a crowbar he grabs and rubs himself he grunts and screams he throws a trash can into a storefront (echoing the controversial climax of Spike Lee’s 1989 film, Do the Right Thing), before falling to his knees and tearing off his shirt. In contrast to the upbeat, mostly optimistic tone of the main portion of the video, Jackson unleashes a flurry of unbridled rage, pain and aggression. The coda that follows became Jackson’s riskiest artistic move to this point in his career – particularly given the expectations of his “family-friendly” audience. Just when the director ( John Landis) yells “Cut!” we see a black panther lurking off the soundstage to a back alley.
In the age of Trump and the resurgence of white nationalism, even that multicultural message remains vital. The message seemed to be that we are all part of the human family – distinct but connected – regardless of cosmetic variations. The main portion of the video culminates with the groundbreaking “morphing sequence,” in which ebullient faces of various races seamlessly blend from one to another. He acts as a kind of cosmopolitan shaman, performing alongside Africans, Native Americans, Thais, Indians and Russians, attempting, it seems, to instruct the recliner-bound White American Father (played by George Wendt) about the beauties of difference and diversity. Jackson, adorned in contrasting black-and-white apparel, travels across the globe, fluidly adapting his dance moves to whatever culture or country he finds himself in. The first few minutes of the Black or White video seemed relatively benign and consistent with the utopian calls of previous songs (Can You Feel It, We Are the World, Man in the Mirror). Watched by an unprecedented global audience of 500 million viewers, it was Jackson’s biggest platform ever a platform, it should be noted, that he earned by breaking down racial barriers at MTV with his groundbreaking short films from Thriller. The first indication of this came in the video for Black or White. In fact, if anything his identification as a black artist had grown stronger.
#MICHAEL JACKSON TRANSFORMATION SKIN#
His skin had changed but his race had not. I am proud of who I am.”įor Jackson, then, there was no ambivalence about his racial identity and heritage. It is something I cannot help, OK? But when people make up stories that I don’t want to be what I am it hurts me … It’s a problem for me that I can’t control.” Jackson did acknowledge having plastic surgery but said he was “horrified” that people concluded that he didn’t want to be black. “I have a skin disorder that destroys the pigmentation of the skin. Jackson first publicly revealed he had vitiligo in a widely watched 1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey.
However, in the early 1990s, the public were sceptical to say the least. When Jackson died in 2009, his autopsy definitively confirmed he had vitiligo, as did his medical history. According to those close to him, it was an excruciatingly humiliating personal challenge, one in which he went to great lengths to hide through long-sleeve shirts, hats, gloves, sunglasses and masks. Yet in the mid-1980s Jackson was diagnosed with vitiligo, a skin disorder that causes loss of pigmentation in patches on the body.
To this day, many assume Jackson bleached his skin to become white – that it was a wilful cosmetic decision because he was ashamed of his race. Sure, critics said, he might sing that it “don’t matter if you’re black or white”, but then why had he turned himself white? Was he bleaching his skin? Was he ashamed of his blackness? Was he trying to appeal to every demographic, transcend every identity category in a vainglorious effort to reach greater commercial heights than Thriller? The conversation surrounding Jackson at this point, however, was not about his music.
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