Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video from 1991 was groundbreaking for its special effects and simultaneous global premiere across 28 countries reaching an audience of 500 million people. The video begins by transporting a white father through his suburban home and across the globe as Jackson dances with various ethnic groups, representing his message of unity across racial and cultural divides. While celebrating diversity, the video also deconstructs racial stereotypes by revealing the constructed nature of the multicultural scenes.

1. Black or White
Michael Jackson
LO: To begin to apply the Theoretical
Framework to the video Black or White

2. WHAT DO YOU KNOW?
American singer, dancer,
song writer, record
producer, actor and
philanthropist.
debuted in 1964 as one of
the Jackson Five then
began his solo career in
1971
By the early 80s he was a
dominant figure in the music
industry and his album ‘Thriller’
earned him the title of the ‘King of
Pop’, as it is the best-selling album
of all time.
Jackson’s music
videos were so
unusual that
they helped to
transform the
medium into
both an art
form and a
promotional
tool.
The MTV cable channel was seen as
a platform for Michael Jackson to
showcase his video talents and by
airing his videos regularly, MTV was
also able to reach greater heights.
The music video for ‘Black or White’
premiered on 14th November, 1991,
in 27 countries simultaneously. It
reached an audience of 500 million
– the highest ever for a music video.
The song reached number
one in 20 countries around
the world, and meant that
Michael Jackson was the first
artist to have number one
hits in the 1970s, 1980s and
1990s.

3. Michael Jackson's "Black Or White" was the first of nine short films from 1991's Dangerous. Directed
by John Landis, "Black Or White" features groundbreaking special effects and electrifying dance
sequences. The original full-length short film premiered simultaneously in 28 countries for a record-
breaking global audience of 500 million!
Written and Composed by Michael Jackson Rap Lyrics and Intro by Bill Bottrell Produced by Michael
Jackson for MJJ Productions, Inc. and Bill Botrell Executive Producer: Michael Jackson From the album
Dangerous, released November 26, 1991 Released as a single November 11, 1991 THE SHORT FILM
Director: John Landis Primary Production Location: Los Angeles, California Michael Jackson's short
film for "Black or White" was the first of nine short films produced for recordings from Dangerous,
Michael's fourth album as an adult solo performer. As a single, "Black or White" was an international
sensation, topping the charts in 20 countries in 1991 and 1992, including the United States, Canada,
the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. "Black or White" was certified
Gold and Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America on January 6, 1992. The song
was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance - Male in 1993. Both "Black
or White" and its follow-up "Remember the Time" received BMI Urban Awards in 1993 for being two
of the most performed songs of the year. The ambitious "Black or White" short film again found
Michael pushing the boundaries of the "music video" as art form. An extended prologue stars
Macaulay Culkin as a boy whose father (George Wendt) is angered by the playing of loud rock music
after bedtime. After being admonished for "wasting your time with this garbage," Culkin vengefully
plugs a guitar into an enormous speaker, blasting his father out of the house and across the globe, still
sitting in his easy chair. The main body of the "Black or White" short film reflects the song's lyrical
plea for racial and cultural unity. Michael is seen on the plains of Africa, the Vasquez Rocks in
California, and outside traditional Russian architecture, singing and dancing with African tribesmen,
Thai women, Native Americans, an Odissi dancer from India and a troupe of Hopak dancers. F

4. Share your work at the end of the lesson and
Mrs. Raji will mark and give feedback
• Watch ‘Black or White’ pausing in key places, for
examples in each different location, to make
notes. Then answer these questions giving
examples:
1. Describe the mise-en-scene in detail. How do
the visual codes communicate meanings about
the different worlds of the video?
2. What impact do the special effects have?
3. Outline the structure of the video. Can you
identify elements of narrative such as
disruptions or oppositions?

5. 4. What is Michael Jackson’s star persona and how
is it established?
5. How are representations of different ethnic
groups constructed through visual and technical
codes? Are stereotypes upheld or subverted?
6. What messages are communicated? How do
they reflect the social context of the early
1990s?
7. How did you respond to the video? How might
an audience in the 1990s have responded?

6. Intro context
• Michael Jackson’s 11-minute short film, Black or White, was the
most watched music video premiere in television history
• Released on November 13, 1991—a year many consider the
cultural peak of music videos
• The video premiered simultaneously in 27 countries
• In the United States, it was shown simultaneously on Fox, MTV,
VH1, and BET. Internationally, it likewise played in primetime on
major networks, including the United Kingdom’s Top of the Pops
on BBC1,
• It had an estimated audience of 500 million people. It’s the
largest audience ever to watch a music video, or anything on TV
for that matter. To say the video was a success is a massive
understatement.

7. Intro to Media Languages and
Representations
• Black or White isn’t just a simple song proclaiming we’re all
the same and we should unite
• When you deconstruct the lyrics and accompanying
images, you will find that Michael Jackson is passing
commentary on historical social and political issues to do
with race.
• The video communicates messages very relevant to its
production context of 1991
• Michael Jackson lyrically communicates his own personal
interactions with racism and what it means to be a black
man in America. This is also communicated in the “Panther
Coda” *a concluding event, remark, or section.

8. Analysis
• What type of music video is it?
• The video doesn’t have a narrative – and is more concept
The audience is floating in
the sky at night with a bird’s
eye view of the world below,
before the camera
pans down, gradually
zooming in on a typical
middle class American
suburb.
It is a sort of Google Maps
affect, moving from the
expansive, big picture
view down into the local.
Taken from Joseph Vogel’s essay
“I Ain’t Scared of No Sheets”: Re-
Screening Black Masculinity in
Michael Jackson’s Black or White

9. As the camera moves through the
neighbourhood, we see empty,
immaculate streets and homogeneous,
cookie-cutter homes, before being
introduced to an anonymous white
family.
a father (played by George Wendt,
best known from the television
sitcom, Cheers) sits in a recliner,
watching a baseball game; a
mother (played by Tess Harper)
reads a tabloid newspaper; while
their child (played by Home Alone
actor Macaulay Culkin) rocks out
to his music upstairs.

10. Eventually, the father’s TV watching is disrupted by the volume of his
son’s music. He storms up the stairs in a rage. “I thought I told you to
turn that noise down!” The boy, it should be noted, is surrounded in his
room by black icons, including posters of Magic Johnson, MC Hammer,
and Michael Jackson (which the father shatters)
While the scene, then, is on the one hand a classic reiteration
of generational rock and roll rebellion, it is also indicative of the
cultural shift among young people in the so-called “crossover
era” of the 1980s and 90s (of which Jackson was at the
forefront).
Jackson, Prince
and others who
managed to
break through the
glass ceiling were
called “crossover”
stars, because
they managed to
cross over to the
mainstream (re:
white) audience.

11. After being scolded and disciplined by his father, the white boy responds by coming
downstairs with a guitar and large amps, and blasting him through the roof—La-Z-Boy
recliner and all—all the way to Africa.
It is intended to be humorous, of course, but it is
also a revealing site of relocation, by symbolically
returning to Africa, the cradle of civilization. Out
of Africa, he suggests, not only came the entire
human family in all of its diverse strands, but also
the roots of rhythm, music, and dance.
Now removed from his suburban insulation, the archetypal white
father (and by extension, the white audience) undergoes a sort of
cultural re-education. Effectively divested of his authority and
centrality, he must become an observer and a listener.

12. Jackson proceeds to transport from
culture to culture like a cosmopolitan
shaman, fluidly adapting to the dance
movements, and styles of different
ethnic groups.
He is the direct opposite of the
traditional white American patriarch,
offering an alternative vision of
adaptability, global cooperation, and
harmony without hierarchy.

13. there is a deliberately staged, two-dimensional quality to these dioramic
scenes that deserves closer scrutiny.

14. Diorama - a model
representing a scene with
three-dimensional figures,
either in miniature or as a
large-scale museum
exhibit.
the video draws attention to the
constructed nature of these scenes
when the African Warriors
literally leap with Jackson out of the
borders of their “set” into an all
grey sound stage; or when an
elevated white stage appears in the
middle of what looks like a
traditional “cowboys and Indians”
movie; or when Jackson’s dance
with Russians is revealed to be the
inside of a snow globe.
Jackson is simultaneously celebrating
cosmopolitanism, while exposing these constructed
images as just surface stereotypes
it is significant to note
that in each
set/dance, he identifies
with the cultural or
racial “other,” from
Africans
and Native Americans
to Thai, Indians and
Russians

15. it is significant to note that in each set/dance, he identifies with the cultural or racial “other,”
9Russians (the latter group, incidentally, the “white” group most foreign and threatening to the
United States in the aftermath of the Cold War).

16. Among the scenes that elicited the most scorn is the rap solo performed by a group of
children (including Macaulay Culkin) on a city stoop beginning at the 4:37 mark. “It’s a
turf war on a global scale,” the children lip sync. “I’d rather hear both sides of the
tale/See it’s not about races/Just places, faces . . . ” Such sentiments and visuals were
miles away from the tough imagery and lyrics of hip-hop groups like NWA and Public
Enemy. It felt more like something that might appear on Sesame Street or The Cosby
Show.

17. “It don’t matter if you’re
black or white,”
The most quoted (and misunderstood) line
from Black or White has often been interpreted
in this post-racial vein. The chorus refrain, “It
don’t matter if you’re black or white,” seemed
to many listeners like a simplistic platitude
advocating colour blindness.
Loving v. Virginia was a Supreme Court
case that struck down state laws banning
interracial marriage in the United States
Yet a closer look at the lyrics suggests otherwise. The
full lyric reads: “If you’re thinking of bein’ my baby/It
don’t matter if you’re black or white.” Jackson, in other
words, is not saying that race does not matter; he is
saying that the choice of whom he loves is his and not
dependent on race.
Such a sentiment might seem harmless enough if
not for the long, troubled history in America
concerning interracial relationships—particularly
between black men and white women.
Emmett Till

18. “It don’t matter if you’re
black or white,”
In 1989 (the same year Jackson began writing “Black
or White”), the murder of another young black man,
Yusef Hawkins, made national headlines when he was
attacked by a large group of white teenagers who
thought he was coming to visit a white girl in
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. (Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever,
released the same year as Black or White, also
took up the theme of relationships between a black
man and a white woman, exposing many of the
stereotypes, complications, and taboos surrounding
such pairings in a 1990s context. Lee dedicated the
film to the memory of
Yusef Hawkins).
The verses further illuminate the meaning of the chorus. “I took my baby
on a Saturday bang,” he sings in the opening line. Then, occupying a
white man’s voice: “Boy, is that girl with you?” To which Jackson
responds: “Yes, we’re one and the same.” The use of the condescending,
historically loaded term, “boy,” in this interrogation is no accident.

19. At the five-minute mark, in this triumphant
spirit, Jackson stands atop a model of the
Statue of Liberty, the iconic torch-bearing
“Mother of Exiles” and symbol of multicultural
possibility. A black man, the visual suggests,
realized the dream, made it to the top.
as the camera zooms out we see: a
utopian world without borders or
hierarchies. Behind Jackson are
architectural landmarks from around
the world: Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower,
the Acropolis, the Golden Gate
Bridge, the Taj Mahal, the Sphinx.

20. In the midst of this celebration,
however, comes a striking interjection.
Between the rap solo and the Statue of
Liberty shot, two babies, black
and white, are shown playing with a
snow globe on top of the world.
the image of a powerful black man
who challenges nearly every way
people have sought to define identity,
bursting through a burning cross,
defiantly
shouting,
I ain’t scared of your brother
I ain’t scared of no sheets
I ain’t scared of nobody
Go when the goin’ gets mean (“Black
or White”)
The sheets Jackson refers to, of course,
are the sheets of the Ku
Klux Klan.

21. “morphing sequence.”
A much-buzzed-about part of the video
in 1991, the morphing scene utilized
Cutting edge CGI technology to present
people of various races, ethnicities,
and genders seamlessly mutating from
one to another.
At a moment when “multiculturalism”
was perceived as the greatest threat to
the (white male) Western canon, it
displayed the beauty of difference, of
diversity, of borderlessness, while
simultaneously celebrating our common
humanity. In the spectacular techno-
metamorphosis, there is no privileged
race or gender: all are literally a part of
each other.

22. Social & Political
Context
Seven months before Black or White
debuted, another video about race
relations in America premiered on
television. Its grainy footage depicted
a young black man being relentlessly
struck with batons by a gang of white
police officers on a darkened street.
The anonymous victim, the nation
soon learned, was Rodney King.
The video of the Rodney King beating had an
enormous cultural impact. It was, in essence,
the first home video to go viral. Not since the
civil rights era was racial injustice so vividly
exposed on the screen.
The King narrative seemed to speak for itself:
Rodney King was the victim of excessive and
unnecessary police brutality. In the video
footage, even as he lays motionless on the
ground, the blows continue. He is shot twice
with taser guns, kicked multiple times in the
head, and struck relentlessly with batons (it
was revealed during the trial that he was hit
56 times by police officers). By the time he
arrived at the police department, he had
endured multiple facial and skull fractures, a
shattered eye socket, bruises, lacerations, a
broken ankle, and brain damage.
The police officers were acquitted and this lead to the LA Race Riots

23. Why the “Panther Coda”?
• Had Black or White ended with the morphing sequence as
audiences expected it to, it likely would not have shaken
the sensibilities of most viewers.
• it appeared to most to be a simple upbeat call for
interracial harmony.
• In the tradition of black social protest, Part One seemed
primarily intended to appeal to and educate white people,
palatably positioning a more inclusive vision of the world,
ending with the exuberant, triumphant spectacle of happy
faces transforming from one race to another. For corporate
executives hoping to market “Michael Jackson” the global
brand, it was a relatively seamless sell. But Jackson had
more to say.

24. Similar contemporary music videos
This is America – Childish Gambino (2018) and
Formation –Beyonce (2016)

25. “I want[ed] to do a dance number
where I [could] let out my frustration
about injustice and prejudice and
racism and bigotry,”
When Sony executives saw the
coda they were horrified. “When they
showed me ‘Black or White’,” recalls
marketing executive Larry Stessel, “I
said, ‘Are you crazy? A black guy
beating the shit out of cars in the
ghetto? You can’t send that to MTV”
“Panther Coda”

26. “Panther Coda”
• Jackson had always performed in a way that
was acceptable and palatable to white
audiences – at the end of Black or White he
breaks free

27. The Panther Coda begins just as the “official video” seems to be ending. The music
concludes and the director, John Landis, yells out, “Cut!” before moving out in
front of the camera. The actress is a black woman; all the people around her,
including the director, are white men. “That was perfect!” he praises her. The
camera then pans back to reveal that everything we have just witnessed is artifice,
an elaborate Hollywood production created in a soundstage. The crew busily chats
while closing up shop. This cut, Jackson suggests, is the only version plausible in
Hollywood under white direction.

28. The Black Panther Party,
founded in 1966 by Huey
Newton and Bobby Seale, made
the black panther an icon of
resistance, revolution, and
black empowerment. Among
its Ten Point Program was a
demand for freedom, full
employment, decent housing,
fair trials, and an end to police
brutality.
The presence of the black
panther at the start of the
coda is “uncanny” both in
the literal shock the viewer
feels at seeing such a
dangerous animal lurking on
a Hollywood soundstage, as
well as in its radical symbolic
representation.

29. Jackson never made any explicit
connections to the party and its
ideology, commenting instead
on the mystery and beauty of
the animal. In explanatory
defenses of the panther coda,
he spoke of trying to interpret
“the panther’s wild and
animalistic behavior”
(quoted in Williams). In this
way, he helped further open
and expand what the black
panther signifies: it could
suggest identification with
black resistance to white
supremacy, while at the same
time representing the
mysterious, mercurial, and
chaotic impulses of the animal.

30. The juxtaposition of shots from the inside to the outside is supposed to
symbolic represent segregated Los Angels. The white fantasy world, the
version reproduced and “seen” in Hollywood films vs. South Central “the
ghetto” It is here that the panther (Jackson) escapes, to lift the veil
between these largely segregated realities.
This geography, of course, is not just literal. It also represents the alienation and
marginalization Jackson faced as a black artist in a predominantly white entertainment
industry. Jackson allows the audience to see this reality by appropriating and inverting
Gene Kelly’s iconic dance number from perhaps the most famous musical of the MGM era:
Singin’ in the Rain (1952).

31. “The appeal of Kelly’s famous dance
number can be seen as a retaking of
territory that Kelly himself had
appropriated from the Black street-
corner tappers who preceded
him historically” (Elizabeth Chin)
What Jackson does, however, is not only reclaim,
but redefine what tap has previously signified in
film. Jackson’s version of street tap is a
replacement of the cheerful, happy-go-lucky tap
of Kelly and others.
Where Kelly’s street is filled with people,
Jackson’s is desolate. Where Kelly’s mood is
exuberant, Jackson’s is angry and indignant.
Where Kelly’s dancing is light, clean, and carefree,
Jackson’s is sharp, violent, and sexually
aggressive. In place of Kelly’s “jaunty puddle
splashing” Jackson stomps and screams with a
vengeance. These are two very different
worldviews—and experiences—being
represented

32. Walking into a lone spotlight he turns and stares directly into the camera. His
gaze shatters the “fourth wall”; it is piercing, unsettling. The spotlight on
Jackson in this frame reminds of a traditional stage performance, but
Jackson’s stoic stare indicates that we are in for something else, that the
long-established expectations for black entertainers is about to be (or is
already in process of being) subverted.
The remainder of Jackson’s performance contains no music or words.

33. Particularly troubling to many viewers was the
aggressive sexuality in the coda. Throughout Jackson’s
panther dance, he repeatedly grabs, rubs, and otherwise
draws attention to his phallus. The question few critics
(or audience members) asked is, why? The simple
explanation was that It was a “stunt” like the sexual
provocations of Madonna, aimed at generating
publicity.
Yet given the context of the video—and the deeper history of black
male representation—it is worth considering alternatives. White
fears about that sexuality, particularly in relation to white women,
were addressed through both literal and symbolic emasculation. The
phallus then becomes a symbol of (contested) power. He is making a
statement about who he is in the face of endless scrutiny and
interrogation regarding his blackness, his masculinity, and his
sexuality. He is also protesting the cruel history of mutilation by
flaunting the symbol of his creative power and identity as a black
man.
The brute caricature

34. For the first time in his career, Jackson also engages in
acts of violence and destruction on screen, bashing in a
car with his elbow and a crowbar, before proceeding to
attack the windows of a nearby building. In a clear
allusion to Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, released just
two years earlier, he throws a trashcan into a storefront.
Throughout the personalized riot, he says nothing,
communicating only through non-verbal vocalizations,
screams, and howls. The ambiguity of these acts (and lack of
explicit graffiti in the original version) again caused some
critics and viewers to be perplexed. However, just six months
before the Los Angeles Rebellion, it is difficult in retrospect
not to read it in this context. His pain and anger seems both
personal and representative. His destruction of white
property can be interpreted on one level as a symbolic
identification with the rage and powerlessness felt by many
of his black brothers and sisters in Los Angeles.

35. In one of the final moments of the video,
Jackson spins like a tornado and falls to
the ground in a puddle of water; he rips
open his shirt and wails in anguish.
Sparks of fire spray off a fallen hotel
facade behind him.
He tilts his head and arms back,
still howling, as if experiencing
an exorcism. It is a startlingly raw
moment in which the pop icon
reveals, against the weight of a
thousand media narratives, that
he is human: the performer has
stopped performing (at least for
entertainment), the dancer has
been brought to his knees, the
effervescent voice transformed
into a guttural scream. He is
expressing the unspeakable.
After this climactic outburst,
Jackson transforms back into a
black panther, which turns and
looks into the camera, before
sauntering down the empty street.
The meaning of what has just
happened is again left suspended
for the audience to contemplate.
Jackson, however, anticipates the white reaction to this coda by
having Homer Simpson, another archetypal “white father,” reprimand
his son Bart, before turning off the TV. For a brief few minutes, it
suggests, Jackson was able to express something honest. But just as
we witnessed at the beginning of the video, the white father
misunderstands and censors black creative expression. The final frame
is static grey.

36. • Following the television premiere of Black or
White, angry white viewers, in essence,
demanded what Homer Simpson did at the end
of the video. Besieged with complaints, Fox and
MTV compelled Jackson to excise the final four
minutes before it was re-aired. All subsequent
airings of the full short film (which were rare)
included superimposed graffiti to make the
violent destruction of property more intelligible.
To this day, the final four minutes of Black or
White are missing on Michael Jackson’s official
YouTube channel.