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Acknowledgements
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(1958– ). American singer and actor.
Contributed songs to soundtrack: Ben (Phil Karlsen 1972); Charlie's
Angels (Joseph McGinty Nichol 2000).
There were early signs of Jackson's interest in the fantastic: his willingness
to sing the theme song to the revenge-of-the-intelligent-rats epic,
Ben, and his engaging
performance as the Scarecrow in an all-black film version of The Wizard of Oz that might have been charming
had anyone other than Diana Ross been cast as the lead. But the indisputable
turning point came with his breakthrough video Thriller.
Drawing upon the best talent available, including film director John
LANDIS and actor Vincent PRICE—Jackson
crafted a fast-moving but bizarre narrative that defied interpretation:
first, while Jackson and his girl friend are walking down a lonely
road at night, Jackson turns into a werewolf and threatens the girl;
then, that event is revealed as a scene in a horror film Jackson and
the girl are watching, which Jackson enjoys but which causes the displeased
girl to walk out of the theatre; in the city street outside, Jackson
and the girl are surrounded by an army of zombies straight out of
George ROMERO's Night of the Living Dead, and Jackson turns
into a threatening zombie as well; then, all that is revealed as the
girl's nightmare, though a final green glint in Jackson's eyes as
he looks at the screen indicates that he is in fact some type of unearthly
being. It is hard to say what message all of this is supposed to convey:
that all people who enjoy horror films are monsters at heart? That
horror films serve primarily as a way for nasty little boys to torment
little girls? Surely, while purportedly a homage to horror movies,
Thriller projects a
childish delight in wickedness that seems antagonistic to the sincerity
and sentimentality of most horror films.
Jackson's other ventures into
"long-form" video—Captain Eo, Moonwalker, and Ghosts—never duplicated the success of Thriller. The least problematic of these, Captain Eo (a three-dimensional short film
shown only at Disney amusement parks), is best described as a bad, ten-minute
parody of Star Wars, with Jackson
as a spaceship captain beset by cute robots and a menacing, Medusa-like alien,
followed by a entertaining five-minute music video. Moonwalker and Ghosts
are lengthier and more disquieting. Both cast Jackson as an heroic figure—respectively,
a wanderer who becomes a Transformer-like warrior and the misfit
leader of a band of gleeful ghouls—admired by young children of various
races; both are essentially series of episodes presenting crowds of people
gazing in awe at Jackson as he sings and dances amidst dazzling special
effects; both show Jackson first dying, then being gloriously and triumphantly
born again. The kindest thing to say is that these convey a tendency towards
juvenile self-celebration—as is also suggested by the ill-conceived short
film Jackson made to promote his 1995 album HIStory:
Past, Present, and Future, which features Jackson as a general who
liberates an East European country and is wildly cheered by immense crowds as a
gigantic statue of Jackson is unveiled, making a viewer positively long for
some redeeming sign of deprecating self-humor, like a pigeon who flies over the
statue and poops on it, that never appears. Yet in Ghosts, by simultaneously casting himself as the elderly
white man who hurls insults at the young eccentric, Jackson further suggests
that an element of self-loathing is creeping into his psyche, as his immense
global popularity continues to diminish. All in all, these are films to
analyze, not to enjoy.
For those not interested in placing Jackson on the psychologist's couch, there
is better entertainment available in his true videos, though these
are less obtrusively revelatory as well. Several of them are fantasies,
like "Remember the Time," depicting Jackson as a magician entertaining
an Egyptian pharaoh (played by Eddie MURPHY)
and enticing his wife, and "Earth Song," where a world ravaged by
pollution is miraculously restored to its natural beauty by a mighty
healing wind. And "Black or White" is truly extraordinary: Jackson
dances with people from all over the world, stands atop New York's
Statue of Liberty in an amalgamated world city including London's
Big Ben and Paris's Eiffel Tower, and finally cedes the stage to a
series of men and women of different nationalities successively "morphed"
into each other. While there is power in its argument for unity among
all types of people, the video does reflect a dangerous desire to
be all things to all people, to appeal to everyone and offend no one.
As a fortuitous antidote to
these gooey embraces of the entire human race, Jackson at other times lashes
out at the world like an angry child, aiming biting invective at various
critics. "Leave Me Alone" (an episode from Moonwalker
often shown separately as a video) takes Jackson on an amusement-park ride past
various fantastic images, with scenes that visualize tabloid news reports to
complement the song's denunciation of the media. And "Scream," his hostile
commentary on the widespread allegations of child molestation, places Jackson
and his sister Janet on a stark, black-and-white spaceship, where he morphs at
times into Janet, appears as a head in a glass chamber in scenes that recall
William Cameron MENZIES's Invaders from Mars,
plays a computer game resembling Pong with Janet, knocks down vases in a
zero-gravity shooting gallery, and stands on the walls and ceilings mouthing
the bitter lyrics—all in all, a powerful depiction of exiles increasingly
going crazy from boredom and loneliness.
It would seem, then, that
Jackson's videos employ the imagery of fantasy to express his identification
with the world, and they employ the imagery of science fiction to express his
estrangement from the world—revealing that, while Jackson may be a strange
manchild indeed, he is also smarter and more perceptive than most people think.
So, whether he is Invincible (as
claimed in the title of his latest album) remains to be seen, but he will
always claim our attention because he is so interesting.
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