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Popular Music and Society

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Black or white: Michael Jackson's video as a mirror of popular culture

Robert Burnett & Bert Deivert
a b a b

Head of the Media and Communications Studies program, University of Karlstad, Sweden Head of the Film Studies program, University of Karlstad, Sweden

Available online: 24 Jul 2008

To cite this article: Robert Burnett & Bert Deivert (1995): Black or white: Michael Jackson's video as a mirror of popular culture, Popular Music and Society, 19:3, 19-40 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03007769508591598

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Black or White: Michael Jackson's Video as a Mirror of Popular Culture

Robert Burnett and Bert Deivert
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Michael Jackson and John Landis's music video collaboration Black or White was broadcast for the first time in November 1991 immediately following an episode of The Simpsons. Controversy erupted and many parents were outraged by the content and imagery of the last section of the video. On a CNN broadcast the next day, a news anchorwoman read: "Fox Broadcasting says that it made a mistake in broadcasting the eleven-minute Black or White video last night." In a press release following the controversy, Michael Jackson issued these statements: "It upsets me to think that 'Black or White' could influence any child or adult to destructive behavior, either sexual or violent." "I have always tried to be a good role m o d e l . . . I deeply regret any pain or hurt that the final segment of 'Black or White' has caused children, their parents or any viewers."1 Black or White was subsequently truncated and the modified version has continued to be shown on MTV and other outlets for music videos. Michael Jackson is now called the "King of Pop" by his record company. He said in a globally televised interview in February 1993 with Oprah Winfrey, that it was Elizabeth Taylor who first coined the phrase. Though he may be unwilling to call himself the "King of Pop," his status as an icon of the music business and a success story and role model for black and white children makes him a public figure with little time to be out of the spotlight. His unwillingness to give interviews and his condemnation of the tabloid attitude toward his private life in some of his videos, notably Leave Me Alone, leave much to speculate about

19

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since his videos and music are the ways his fans are able to read his attitudes toward life and the world. Fans do seek meaning in their idols' lives (Goodwin 105). Jackson's music videos are often innovative in technique and also often in the approach itself. MTV even has its Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award in honor of his decade of video achievement with numbers such as Thriller, Beat It, Billie Jean, Bad, and Leave Me Alone. Traditionally, if one may use that term, we consider the standard music video template to be a rather limiting format. Jackson and his associates have tried to extend the ideas of music videos and reach outside the confining space of a three- to five-minute song. An independent narrative appearing to be outside the context of the song, but at the same time illustrating it, has been the way that Thriller and Black or White dealt with the problem of expanding the music-video format. There are theoretical attempts to place music videos in a critical context and to categorize them, but ultimately it seems a futile attempt in an everchanging world of images to dance to. In this article we will attempt a "reading" of the Black or White video based upon both the visual and the musical elements.2 In doing so we will discuss the many intertextual references contained within the piece. It is the intertextuality that invites the audience to read the video as an open text. The open aspect of the video, which encourages a reading or interpretation that is not steered or controlled by the narrative (and therefore a closed reading), is increasingly a component of postmodernism in popular culture. This openness permits culturally specific readings from ethnic, national, or social groups that do not share common cultural backgrounds. Our experiences with Swedish and Norwegian students seem to confirm this idea. After the "reading" we will discuss the video in light of the comments we received from our undergraduate students who were exposed to it and show how Jackson and his Black or White music video can be seen as a mirror of an increasingly global contemporary popular culture. A major problem with most previous analyses of music videos is the use of existing models of genre differentiation based on visual structure and content alone. Kinder divides them according to a schema based upon visual content into "performance," "narrative," and "dreamlike visuals" music videos (5). Kaplan uses film theory to divide music videos into five main types, romantic, socially conscious, nihilist,

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Black or White 21
classical, and the post-modernist (55). The problem with both of these classification systems is their concentration on the visual with almost total neglect of the musical elements of music videos. An important yet difficult task then is to attempt to analyze music videos from a more integrated musical-visual perspective. Andrew Goodwin's main argument against the reading of a video as a visual product in the way film or television is analyzed is that the meaning cannot be really understood without the knowledge of the culture of pop stardom, fandom, and musical context (4). Black or White has many allusions to people, and texts (in the semiotic meaning), present in modern American popular culture. Local variations in the cultural reference structure occur, but there is a tendency to global references that are decodable by most consumers of popular culture throughout the world. This is made possible by the American entertainment industry's dominance in film, television, and music production and distribution, even though this dominance is showing signs of eroding (Burnett 749). If one believes in all texts as culminations and syntheses of all previous history and texts, then the concept of intertextuality as a generic and genetic design form within the music video structure is within reach. Michael Jackson and John Landis,3 the director of Black or White, have achieved a sometimes paradoxical work open to many interpretations, but with a rich and complex interaction with other works that opens doors to countless associations. The decoding of allusions for the viewer becomes an identification with the source material, thus creating a pleasurable activity based on a reminiscence. This evokes other associations in the mind of the viewer, using the primary source as a springboard. We argue that Black or White requires a vast amount of intertextual knowledge from the viewers in order to enjoy or identify with the video and its message. The video challenges one's specific knowledge about stars, films, music, peoples, and historical events and places. As Mercer has previously noted, "the intertextual dialogues between film, dance and music which the video articulates also draw us, the spectators, into the play of signs and meanings at work in the 'constructedness' of the star's image" (Mercer 30). Whether or not the authors of the video have intended the intertextuality is not important. Certain allusions may be arbitrary or

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22 Popular Music and Society

based on conclusions which work below the conscious level of the authors. This does not negate their value or significance to the viewer. What is important is that they do exist within the frame of reference of a specific cultural group. Certain references in Black or White will be shown to be of rather narrow significance to a larger group, but are decodable for viewers with special interests, such as film or rock music. We argue that these are intended. Many allusions on a general scale may be arbitrary and actually contain codes that enable several different interpretations or connections. These are not necessarily intended but become of a ricochet character when mirrored in the experience of the viewer. No list of such associations can be complete, since a reading of the specific application of the collective memory of all viewer groups to the video would be impossible. Our more modest goal is simply to show a number of allusions imbedded in the structure of the video. Intertextualitya Definition Before expounding on the ideas in this paper concerning intertextual references and decoding, we would like to establish a vocabulary of reference. Intertextuality has been defined by various theoreticians in slightly varying ways. While retaining a general adhesion to basic notions of intertextuality as a reference to other workstextual, artistic, cultural, and so forthcertain interpretations include other attributes of interest depending on one's reading/decoding of the primary subject matter. We will be using Gerard Genette's definition of intertextuality found in his writings on transtextuality. Intertextuality is just one of the five sections of his transtextuality theory. Intertextuality, according to Genette, is based on a relationship between two or more texts existing or showing their presence within a work. Quotation, plagiarism, and allusion are all intertextual modes (Genette 19). Our premise is that music videos contain a vast number of intertextual references and allude to other works within the same genre. Music videos also contain references to music, persons, ideas, places, works, and things that, through viewer reception within a specific cultural framework, trigger recognition and identification. These parts of the video may be the primary source, an original staging of a concept, or they may be a mirroring of another primary source, such as a parody of a well-known film. The mirroring of a primary source (subject) and the

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consequences of repeated mirroring, and modification, through other references to the primary or original work echo Eisenstein's theory of dialectical montage whereby one gains new meaning when two images/shots are juxtaposed (Eisenstein 45). The building blocks of dialectical montage are thesis-antithesissynthesis. The synthesized meaning of the two preceding shots becomes the basis/thesis by which additional shots modify the original, and a larger meaning becomes possible, one that is infinitely multiplied by the subsequent shots. The meaning becomes much more than the original. What this does to our understanding of the musical and video material and artist in the music video genre is of prime importance to understanding the popular culture of today.
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Black or White, Scene by Scene The music video opens with a high-angle omniscient or subjective camera shot in the sky, and the camera starts tracking downward through clouds and a series of dissolves. The immediate reaction as a film buff is to link the opening sequence with Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph Des Willens, where Hitler's plane sails through the clouds on its way with the Fhrer down to the city of Nuremberg.4 If it were not for the fact that several of our students who did not study film mentioned this, it could be excluded as a rather obscure reference. There are of course any number of similar cloud sequences in many films, but the sense of descending to the earth from an omniscient space is less common. It is at this point that we first hear the traditional uptempo heavy metal guitar rhythm and driving drum beat that is the musical accompaniment to the first one minute of the music video. When the camera reaches the street it levels out and speeds down the street as if using a Steadicam on a motorcycle, echoing shots from the Coen Brothers' film Raising Arizona.1 The hair-raising Steadicam shots were among the most memorable of the film and a stylistic trademark for the film. Many students identified this sequence as similar to the opening sequence of MTV at the Movies. The camera approaches a house, lifts, and approaches a window in the house. As it reaches the window, there is a cut to the inside, without actually tracking through the window. This is a favorite method of Hitchcock's, though he even moves the camera through the window at times. This is parodied in Mel Brooks's High Anxiety and preceded by

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Toland's animated and processed tracking shot at the nightclub where Susan Alexander works in Orson Welles's Citizen Kane. The cyclical form of the video begins here with the small boy, played by Macaulay Culkin from Home Alone, being reprimanded by his father for playing music too loudly, and ends with Bart Simpson having a row with his father over watching Michael Jackson on television with the volume turned up too loud.6 Culkin jumps up and down on his bed playing air guitar while listening to and mimicking the heavy-duty riffs. Parallel cuts are used between his room and the living room where his mother and father, played by George Wendt and Tess Harper, are sitting.7 Baseball is on the television and dually referred to in cuts from both rooms. Small baseball players with wobbly heads on springs bounce around in time to the music while standing on top of an amplifier that is showing LCD readings of great volume. This is a visual construction signifying the incredible volume that cannot be presented in film or TV due to optimal sound recording requiring limiting of the signal to avoid distortion. While Dad becomes increasingly distracted over the volume of the music competing with his ball game, Mother sits quietly reading a newspaper, shown to be a tabloid called the National Scooper? Finally yielding to his anger, Dad goes up the stairs. This is filmed using traditional expressionistic techniques with camera angle, wide-angle lens, and lighting calling many scenes to mind, but especially detective Arbogast's ascent of the staircase in Psycho. One tentatively expects Anthony Perkins to come out screaming, dressed as Mother and brandishing a kitchen knife. Instead, Father opens the door and Son comes gliding over the floor holding his air guitar while the note is held on feedback a la Jimi Hendrix. It is at this point that the music stops and we have silence. Using several reverse shots between son and father, with picture distortion using a wide-angle lens on the father, and alternating between high- and low-angle camera simulating the positioning of the characters looking at each other, the scene closes with the father demanding that the music be turned down, leaving, and slamming the door behind him. The framed Michael Jackson poster hanging on the back of the door smashes to the floor and the glass breaks. The poster then falls forward on the floor. This begins one of the recurring motifs in the video, that of breaking glass.

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With a devilish grin on his face, the son says "Okay." He then opens a guitar case, revealing a red guitar which is recognizable by guitar enthusiasts as an Eddie Van Halen model.9 This could be interpreted in several different ways, since Eddie Van Halen played guitar on Jackson's Thriller album, and now Slash from Guns 'n' Roses is playing on the Dangerous album from which Black or White is taken. Jackson's enthusiasm for doing duos with other stars and employing well-known musicians for cameos on his productions helps to sell his work to a larger market and enhances his standing with fans of the people he utilizes. The use of famous personalities from the entertainment industry in his videos also enhances the star quality of the productions. The possibilities of richer and more complex readings of the videos based upon the knowledge of these new personalities and their speculated or real relationship with Jackson can enhance the multitextual output and interpretation. The son comes into the living room pushing a large amplifier and puts a black glove on one hand (previously a Michael Jackson trademark, but also identifiable with the Black Power salute of American athletes in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City and the Black Panthers).10 The amplifier is turned up to full power, which is calibrated not with numbers but "Loud," "Louder," and "Are You Nuts!?!" Rob Reiner's inventive pseudodocumentary This Is Spinal Tap uses a similar joke." The son has sunglasses on and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He then says "Eat this." He plays a power chord on the guitar and blasts the windows out of the house. This is practically identical with a scene in Back to the Future.11 The blast wave blows Father away, sending him out of the house, up through the roof, and sailing through the sky from one continent over the ocean to another. This is so similar to a scene in Gremlins that it must be more than coincidence.1' It also resembles a scene in ET where Elliot and ET sail over the horizon on a bicycle. Cut to an African scene with lions and hunting warriors in pseudotraditional clothing and makeup. This introduces the second of recurring motifs, that of cats.14 Suddenly the scene of a hunt is interrupted when the chair with the father comes plummeting down from the sky and lands with a thud, shaking up a little dust, in the middle of this African plain. This is reminiscent of a scene from The Gods Must Be Crazy, where a Coca-Cola bottle dropped from a plane becomes the source of bewild-

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erment for a group of natives.15 Michael Jackson joins the natives and starts to dance. It is at this point, approximately two minutes into the video, that the actual song "Black or White" begins. It is here we recognize the characteristic guitar riff that drives the song and is repeated virtually throughout the entire song. After dancing with the natives, a representation of Jackson's ties with the African-American cultural heritage, he then moves on to other ethnic groups, showing his solidarity and illustrating the message in the text of his song. He leaps from the African setting only to land among a group of Asian dancers. At this point after four bars of rhythm guitar Jackson begins to sing, continuing over the same rhythm for the next twelve bars. He moves from the Asiatic dancers to a set that is revealed as some sort of Native American battle scene. Genre traditions of westerns come to mind, but at the moment the cashbox draw for films about Native Americans is very high. Dances with Wolves, Black Robe, Clearcut, and Last of the Mohicans, are some of the titles. As Jackson dances, yet another Mel Brooks film is evoked, Blazing Saddles. When the sheriff and men are riding out in the desert, music is heard, which is assumed to be nondiegetic. However, they come upon Count Basie and his orchestra playing, thereby transforming the music into a diegetic element of the film taking place at that moment, and part of the narrative. One gets that feeling from Jackson and his Native American dancers on the stage built up in the middle of what appears to be a cowboy and Indian film. One important element of this scene is Jackson's interaction with the child. He dances with a small girl on the raised platform, reinforcing the image he has as a friend of children. Children are often invited to his home, and his video/film Moonwalker features his relationship to children and underplays any kinship with other adults in the movie. At least one of his Pepsi commercials involves a child sneaking into Jackson's dressing room during a concert. During the clandestine visit, the child touching things and trying on clothes, Michael comes in and surprises him. A dramatic situation and pregnant pause occur, and fear seems to appear on the child's face. Instead of reprimanding the child, Jackson kindly smiles at him and engages in some sort of camaraderie with him. Dancing with the little girl in this segment of the video introduces this theme, which is echoed constantly in his work and private life and specifically is a motif in this video.

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The next scene is Jackson and a woman from India dancing in front of what appears to be an industrial factory with smoking chimneys. They are located on an island on a roadway with cars driving both in front of and behind them. This conflict between indigenous peoples and encroaching Western civilization/industry could also be considered in several scenes in the video. Snow begins to fall and suddenly Jackson is together with Russian dancers in front of a typical Russian-style church that makes one think of the glasnost that was so prevalent during the time that the making of the video occurred. Somehow a happy belief in the human family permeates the images in Black or White. At the end of this scene, the stage and people are frozen in motion. There is a dissolve to a glass globe of the sort used for paperweights. It is picked up by babies sitting on top of the globe (world). Inside it are Jackson and his dancers, frozen. This is an allusion to Citizen Kane. In the opening of Citizen Kane, Kane dies and drops a similar glass paperweight containing a winter scene, symbolizing his boyhood home. The cinematic use of the similarities of these scenes cannot be coincidental. Welles's film is a classic and one of the bestknown films in the world. The use of snow and dissolves is used later on in the film just as Landis uses it here. After four and one-half minutes, we come to the bridge in the song, which lasts about fifteen seconds. In this short sequence Jackson is seen walking through and in front of a wall of flames while various images from the news roll by. These include a Ku Klux Klan rally, riot troops, and an army tank in the process of delivering a barrage of shellfire. Images of Jackson's accidental burns come to mind as he emerges unscathed from the flames. His hair had ignited after coming into contact with a torch during the filming of a Pepsi commercial, and he had to be taken to a hospital for treatment and plastic surgery.16 The Klan message is underlined with the song text's reference to the KKK's white robes, "I ain't scared of no sheets" at this point in the song. During the bridge the tempo of the song is doubled as Jackson sings. The rap (written by Bill Botrell, producer and percussionist on the album) that follows this section is lip-synched in the video by Macaulay Culkin, who is seen on some brownstone tenement steps rapping with a group of in-style dressed children, including Jackson, in a scene reminiscent of Cyndi Lauper's True Colors video and numerous rap videos. Many Swedish students identify these steps as being like the

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house in The Cosby Show. This is a case of "aberrant decoding," as John Fiske would call it, since The Cosby Show is set in an upper-class neighborhood (Fiske and Hartley 81). The inability to distinguish between the codes of an affluent or poor environment is just one of the many aspects that changes the way these images reach viewers in other cultures. Guest artist LTB raps, accompanied by a funky guitar and drum rhythm. There is a match cut from the kids on the steps extending their hands forward with palms up, as in some greeting or offering of something, to Jackson standing at the Statue of Liberty's torch. Here the music returns to the refrain at precisely the fourth bar of the melody. Jackson sings:
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Don't tell me you agree with me When I saw you kicking dirt in my eye. But if you're thinkin' about my baby, It don't matter if you're black or white. The camera slowly zooms out and the Statue of Liberty is joined by Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Kremlin, the Sphinx, and the Parthenon. These icons for well-known geographical areas reinforce the global kinship message since they are placed near each other and not separated by great distances in reality or symbolically. The video then cuts to what many consider the best sequence: male and female faces of different shapes, sizes, and colors, lip-synching "it's black, it's white," blend into one another through the complex and expensive computer image technique called "morphing" (metamorphosis + changing). This technique was used previously by Godley and Creme in their video for the song "Cry." Musically we hear the same guitar rhythm as before, over which Jackson sings a traditional call and response with himself. During the vocal call and response, 13 different faces are morphed before we hear Landis shout, "Cut, it's perfect, how do you do that?" as he comes on the set and approaches the last model. This ironic line delivered straight is part of the self-reflexive nature of the production, a meta film or meta video. After Landis's comments to the last actress in the morphing scene, the camera tracks upward giving us the feeling of

Black or White 29
leaving this stage of action, and pans over the large sound stage with all its people and equipment, reminding us of the closing scene of Citizen Kane, where the camera tracks over a whole warehouse searching for something. There is natural sound but also that of a tape recorder rewinding a tape with the cue on so that the sound is going backwards. The camera then goes down to floor level where we see a black panther walk in from the right side of the frame, look around, growl, go through a door (growling at times), and continue down some stairs. The lighting is heavily filtered with blue and is expressionistically lit in the style of film noir or horror film. As the cat reaches the bottom of the stairs, it is transformed or "morphed" into Michael Jackson. Jackson has on different clothes than he had on earlier in the song portion of the video. He is wearing a black hat, similar to one his sister LaToya often wears, and is dressed in black, with white socks and sleeve rolled up to reveal a white armband on his right arm. He walks further on into the darkness and stands still. Suddenly a single light from above shines down directly on him. He tilts his head upward after an extreme close-up. His eyes and red lips are revealed to resemble those of his sister LaToya. The eyes are concealed at first under the hat. He makes some moves, ones that are later repeated with variations. At first the moves resemble a gunfighter going for his gun but then look strangely like some martial arts move and then similar to the sign of the cross practiced in the Catholic Church. He then does a little tap dance and strikes a pose with his hand up on the side of his hat. When the camera tracks away and cuts to a full shot of him posed under the round beam of light, he lowers his hand and stands still. Simultaneously, a low growl is heard. He hears something, looks, and there is a little shot/reverse shot between him and a cat. The cat meows, jumps out of a garbage can, knocking the lid over, and Jackson starts walking away. The sound of whooshing wind comes up; the picture is dissolved into foggy smoke and then into a lonely street where Jackson comes walking alone. He again moves his hands in the style of a gunfighter, and exaggerated sound effects of wind blowing and his shirt flapping are followed by a strong wind, almost hurricane-like, blowing down the street as he stands still against it. When Jackson sweeps back his shirt it is first photographed from the front and then viewed replayed from a side angle. This begins the motif of replays in the video. The video echoes its own imagesnot only repeating similar situations or motifs

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but also playing with the temporal structure and repeating images as if they were almost instant replaysby going back some frames on cuts and repeating what we have already seen, jump cuts of a sort. The street is dry, looks like a dead end, and is dirty and filled with papers and trash that blow around. On Jackson's immediate left are two parked cars. His head is lowered and he looks up, just as in the scene under the light by the stairs. There is a rich intertextual bank of memories and associations for this little section, since it evokes political memories of the Black Panthers' militant organization (the black panther as an icon); general associations with the lighting and location of film noir, horror film, and gangster movies; and specific associations with Cat People (the transformation and cat images), Alien (Jonesy the cat scaring people), Star Trek (the transporter scenes with similar overhead lighting), and Fred Astaire.17 Many students erroneously identify Singin' in the Rain and Fred Astaire as an intertextual reference although the film starred and was directed by Gene Kelly, a lesser known dance figure in the Swedish and Norwegian cultural memory of the present generation. The lonely street sparks associations with several other videos with Jackson, most notably Thriller, also directed by Landis. In Thriller there is a confrontation between Jackson, his girlfriend, and a group of ghouls. Seeing in Black or White similarities to Thriller and other horror-genre attributes generates an expectation of fulfillmentwe will soon be frightened. Jackson raises his right arm, pointing upward with his body in an asymmetrical position, and begins a rather bizarre tap dance. Cutting from various positions, showing him full-length from the side and then suddenly full-length from the front, creates an amusing effect, since he stands alone when viewed from the side. From the front one sees a newspaper page that has fastened between his feet. This entire dance sequence is accompanied by the extreme use of sound effectsknifelike swishing sounds, tapping feet in the dance, whooshing, growls, cat screams, explosions, and water splashing. At times the rhythm resembles more a drum solo by Buddy Rich than a dance. This is accentuated by Jackson's mouthing rhythms at the same time. The temporal structure of this whole segment is not really linear and chronological but is built on incongruities. Ellipses, slow motion as an effect within real-time sequences without logic, papers where there

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are none in the previous shot, water where there is none in the previous shotthese effects only succeed in enhancing the chaotic nature of the material, even though it is pleasing to the eye. One cat scream is partially replayed. After a full sigh of the cross, Jackson grabs his crotch. A masturbatory section of movements is juxtaposed with a wet shoe lifting up out of water with an explosive sound. After the dance, Jackson crosses the street; kicks a beer bottle, smashing it to bits, and casts off his hat, reminiscent of Odd Job in Goldfinger. Jackson then proceeds to demolish a car with a crowbar, screaming at intervals. After breaking side, back windows and then the windshield, he throws away the crowbar and begins his masturbatory stance again, standing on top of the car's roof, this time filmed from a low angle beside the car. Many of the glass-breaking sequences in the video are filmed in slow motion, including the originator of the motif, the breaking poster frame. Jackson's hand movement and placement resemble Madonna's masturbation sequence in the song "Like a Virgin" from her film In Bed With Madonna (also known as Truth or Dare). This, in turn, echoes imagery from L'Age d'Or, the surrealist masterpiece by Luis Bunuel. Male masturbation does not usually resemble this mode of representation. This only succeeds in emphasizing Jackson's ambivalent sexuality in the video. As Jackson rips the steering wheel out of the car and throws it through a building's window, the temporal structure is again restated and repeated with slow-motion breaking glass and a window that breaks twice before our eyes. More dance, and then Jackson stops to zip up his fly, jumps down from the car, and, reminiscent of the memorable scene in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, throws a trash can through a storefront window, which breaks in real time and is engulfed in steam or fog (which is also a motif in this section of the video). Even an imitation of the temporality of this sequence in the film (of an instant replay of the trash can through the window in Do the Right Thing) is done again. From steam apparently emerging from under the sidewalk through a grate, Jackson enacts a replay dominant in the mythical images of our memories of Marilyn Monroe, that of her skirt blowing up from steam or air.18 The camera tracks in towards him and passes him three times while his shirt is blown up around his head and he strokes his chest downwards with his hands towards his genital area. The camera is as

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fleeting and pliant as the wind. Piercing cries are repeated throughout this sequence. He flees to the street nearing the Royal Arms Hotel, doing a spinning pirouette and throwing himself down on his knees in a puddle of water which splashes up. This is repeated twice. Jackson then rips open his shirt (repeated thrice) and throws water up towards the hotel sign, which explodes in sparks and falls down to the street exploding.19 As he screams in his own voice, a lower- pitched voice also screams in a sort of choir unison, though not exactly in time with Jackson. Jackson turns his head to look at the falling sign and screams first like a jungle cat and then like a man. Cuts between the burning sign and then Jackson in a close-up profile. He growls, goes down on all fours, is transformed into a black panther, and disappears down the street. This particular growl is evocative, and Jackson is very animal-like in the way he turns his head with a predatory look. This sequence is also slow-motion, using a type of camera work and sound approaching that of David Lynch in a Twin Peaks television episode where Leland Palmer murders his niece Maddy (Collins 346). Leland is shown at normal speed, while Bob, his spiritual alterego/possessor, appears in slow-motion sequences. Prior to the actual murder act Bob bites/kisses Maddy's chin and growls like an animal. The bizarre resemblance to this particular section of the video is quite disturbing if one has seen Twin Peaks recently with those powerful images still fresh.20 As the panther walks down the street in a high-angle shot, the camera tracks back to reveal the Black or White video as if seen within an animated television set in Bart Simpson's living room. Bart is jumping up and down in time with the music on the couch, wearing a black Michael Jackson T-shirt. Homer comes in and tells him to turn it down. Bart resists and tells Homer to "chill out," but Homer takes the remote control and shuts off the TV. The music stops, the screen goes snowy, and the video ends. The Complete Version

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In the version of the video released for the European market,

Michael JacksonDangerous: The Short Films, the first frames of the Black or White video have a small title at the bottom, "The Complete

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Version." After all the controversy around the release of the video on Fox television, this seems to the viewer to be the real, original, "uncut" version. The appearance of authenticity with this release after the initial controversy lends credibility to the artistic integrity of Jackson as a performer/composer. This aligns him with more independent artists who have used the anticensorship issue as a mode of creating their particular star image, at the same time that he is intimately involved with the creation of his mass-market image through the transnational entertainment industry. This dichotomy creates more attention on both sides of the controversy, and consequently more publicity, by placing Jackson in the spotlight. Upon viewing this version of the video, we are struck by the blatant changes that appear to be computer manipulations of graphic images in the last section of the video during which Jackson smashes several windows on a parked car and in a storefront. The first change is the appearance of a Nazi swastika on the front left side window of the car, as well as "HITLER LIVES" on the left back window. We then see that "NIGGER GO HOME" is written on the back window, and "NO MORE WETBACKS" on the windshield. The words "KKK RULES" appear later in a shot on the window of the store. All these windows are smashed. After the final section with Bart Simpson, where the video normally ends with the TV shut off and a snowy screen, the text "PREJUDICE IS IGNORANCE" is superimposed on a shot of Michael Jackson with his black hat. This new version seems to give meaning to Jackson's anger, which in the first version was somewhat incomprehensible. In this version Jackson literally smashes the racial prejudices, thus connecting to the theme of the entire song. "It don't matter if you're black or white." The changes can also be seen as part of the process of recreating the "right" star image for Jackson, especially in light of his recent legal and image troubles. Reading like the cover of the National Enquirer, Jackson's problems have included the cancelling of performances, alleged drug abuse, and the alleged abuse of young boys (settled out of court). In a surprising publicity countermove, Jackson (the "King of Pop") has since married Lisa Marie Presley (the daughter of the King, Elvis). Can the public soon expect Jackson dance versions of the Elvis Presley repertoire?

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Discussion The complexity of filmic syntax and the added involvement with a culturally charged item such as rock music empowers the music video with something more than what it is on the surface. Each video creates its own context and therefore (much like film) makes any reading of it specific to that work and not useful as a general truth or paradigm that can be applied to subsequent works in a methodical, scientific way. Since Black or White was first aired, it has been shown to more than 500 Swedish and Norwegian film and communication studies undergraduates. Many of the intertextual observations that we made were echoed by students. In their own analyses, 50% of the students found up to nine instances of intertextuality; 40% were able to cite between 10 and 19 observations. The remaining 10% of students could refer to more than 20 examples of intertextuality. Combined, the students could cite more than 41 different films or TV shows referred to, as well as a dozen each of film stars and musicians that in some way were mirrored in Black or White. Perhaps most interesting was the fact that students could make direct references to ads from Benetton, Nike, Levi's, Pepsi, and Coke, as well as to previous Jackson videos such as Thriller, Beat It, Billie Jean, Dirty Diana, and Liberian Girl. One of the most interesting aspects of the study was the many other references specific to the students' cultural and ethnic background that were brought up. Popular television commercials, characters in Swedish and Norwegian popular entertainment, scenography for popular TV shows, and many other elements were mentioned as intertextual references in the Jackson video. These were all specific Swedish or Norwegian references, many of them made before the production of the Jackson video. This would suggest some validity to our open reading thesis. Several students commented on the message of the lyrics, "It don't matter if you're black or white," in light of the fact that Jackson has reportedly spent much time and money on changing his looks. Jackson denied this in the February 1993 Oprah Winfrey television interview and said that he had had only two operations. The students also pointed out that if one observes Jackson's album covers chronologically, he becomes continually whiter and more androgynous, losing his specific ethnic identification and approaching

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some sort of "morphed" vision closer in tone with Benetton's advertising for world brotherhood than truly being "just who you are." Upon questioning from Oprah Winfrey concerning "bleaching" his skin, Jackson replied that he had never even heard of such a treatment and that he suffered from a skin disorder. Makeup has to be applied in order to cover up blotches, and therefore his skin appears lighter, according to Jackson. While Jackson's personal integrity and right to privacy should be defended, his proposed image and fashions colored the students' interpretations of his works. One of the most fascinating aspects of the video is the transtextual transformation of the meaning of the last sequence of the video from the time the panther leaves the sound set. This is the part cut from the original and only seen by a small part of the total audience that has viewed the video. After the video was cut, Genesis came out with a very intertextual video of the song "I Can't Dance." It has allusions to David Bowie, ZZ Top, and Michael Jackson's Black or White. There is a very funny parody of the last sequence of Black or White at the end of / Can't Dance that employs caricature, with Phil Collins and his mates dressed up like the Blues Brothers. Before the Genesis video came out, the students to whom the video was shown were either quietly perplexed about the meaning of it all or adamant about the excessive violence employed in the final sequence. They didn't understand what the message was. The point after Genesis is that the whole thing becomes ludicrous. Students always laugh as soon as the dance starts, and especially when Jackson pulls up his zipper. This is a good example of how Jackson's original meaning is subverted through a subsequent text that modifies the original. Somehow music videos seem to be prevalent with the "already said" of postmodernism (Collins 333). Just as "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," intertextuality is in the eye of the viewer. Without the interpretation of the viewer, intertextuality ceases to exist. Though codes may be consciously imbedded in a work by its author, if they have no validity for the viewer each of these codes becomes a "new" viewing experience or image and not an element in which one can step back and "make strange" (Allen 3). The advance of a global culture enabling decoding of "public domain" images is certainly on the way in the areas able to receive and view satellite television transmissions.

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Musically, "Black or White" is not simply another dance song. It is a complex mixture of heavy metal, hard rock, rap, and a touch of funk, combined with a blues harmony and a pop melody. It also stands out from the rest of the material on the Dangerous album, which is a mixture of something borrowed and something new in an attempt at reaching the mass appeal crossover market. It is not hard for the listener to recognize "Heal the World" as a rewrite of "We Are the World" or that "Who Is It" sounds very much like "Billie Jean." Even the "Black and White" harmony sounds familiar from previous Jackson recordings, while the melody is reminiscent of a 1990s update of the Beatles' "Ticket to Ride." Certainly music critics' reception of the Dangerous album was not favorable. The New York Times of Novemer 15,1991, called it Jackson's "least confident album since he became a solo star," while the Los Angeles Times of the same date characterized it as "a messy grab-bag of ideas and high-tech non sequiturs, with something for everyone from the man who has everything." Studying music video form as a mirror of popular culture through intertextual references and the "already said" is something that should be explored further (Goodwin 90). Music video film form was originally considered groundbreaking but in reality has much in common with underground film of the '60s and '70s. In turn, those films owe homage primarily to avant-garde works of the '20s, '30s, and '40s. Technological advances in video techniques have enabled productions to use at the touch of a fingertip to the console any variety of effects previously unavailable in film format without a substantial lab investment. This is part of the reason a myth of music video as an innovator has prevailed among young people who have not had avant-garde and underground films available for comparison. One can hope that music video will break loose and become an art form based on creative capability, striving to rival musical innovation. However, due to its "selling" nature, the risk is that music video will continue to exist as a sibling to television commercials quoting the mundane world of a representative reality existing in the minds of music salespeople. In Jameson's valiant attempt to connect postmodernism with the logic of late capitalism, he characterizes "postmodern cultural practice" as the borrowings, echoings, repetitions, and stitching together of otherwise disconnected signsas pastiche (Jameson 61). Whether he realizes it or not, the "King of Pop" in trying to please everyone is both

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visually and musically in danger of becoming the "King of Pastiche," simply a mirror of popular culture, when he instead could be an innovator. Notes
1. These appear on the Dangerous: The Short Films video compilation. 2. Olle Edstrm, 44, for an informative musical analysis. 3. Primarily a film director, Landis has done both Thriller and Black or White for Jackson. Some of Landis's films axe American Werewolf in London, The Blues Brothers, Into the Night, Coming to America, Spies Like Us, Three Amigos, Trading Places, National Lampoon's Animal House, Kentucky Fried Movie, Twilight ZoneThe Movie, Innocent Blood, and Beverly Hills Cop III. 4. Waldekranz, Rune, 104. According to Waldekranz, the opening sequence was suggested by Walter Ruttman, director of Berlin: Symphony of the City, and Riefenstahl's mentor. 5. Andrew (158) suggests comparing Landis's filmmaking with that of Coen Brothers. 6. The same basic story is played up in Twisted Sister's video We're Not Gonna Take It. The father tells the son to turn it down and stop wasting time playing guitar. The son then blows him out of the window with a loud power chord. 7. George Wendt plays the Norm Peterson character on the Cheers television show; Tess Harper had a role in Crimes of the Heart (1986, Bruce Beresford). 8. The National Enquirer, scandal sheet with outrageous headlines, is vaguely disguised. 9. Guitar Player, 1, advertisement for Edward Van Halen guitar made by Ernie Ball/Music Man. 10. Ryan and Kellner, 29. A raised black gloved fist in the air is a gesture of Black Power. The cover of Bobby Seale's book on the Black Panthers features such an image. 11. This Is Spinal Tap (1984, Rob Reiner). The Marshall amplifier volume setting in this film goes up to 11 instead of 10! 12. Back to the Future (1985, Robert Zemeckis). Michael J. Fox is testing an amplifier which looks about the same size as the one in this video and blasts himself backwards.

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13. Gremlins (1984, Joe Dante). An old woman using a special lift attached to a staircase bannister is propelled through a window and into the air where she fatally lands in a snowbank. 14. These are specifically lions, panthers, and alley cats. 15. This film was the biggest foreign box-office hit in the USA, according to Maltin (420). 16. This was of course heavily covered by the news and is also parodied in Neil Young's This Note's for You video. 17. Altaian (120-21) notes the difference between musicals and MTV's rock videos. 18. This scene is from the Billy Wilder film The Seven Year Itch and has been copied and imitated in countless paintings, drawings, and advertising campaigns. 19. An American Werewolf in London (1981, John Landis); Ferdinand the Bull cartoon; Reminiscent of Highlander (1986, Russel Mucahy). 20. An American Werewolf in London (1981, John Landis), and the old Ferdinand the Bull cartoon, shown every Christmas on Swedish television, both feature people ripping their shirts open in a similar way; reminiscent also of Highlander (1986, Russel Mulcahy), in which the main character is surrounded by falling neon signs and sparks. 21. Television and Postmodernism by Jim Collins Maddy's killing ". . . is one of the most horrifying murder scenes ever to appear on prime-time American television"; also mentioned in John Alexander, Televersions, 131.

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Works Cited Books and Periodicals

Alexander, John. Televersions. Pyrford, England: InterMedia Publications, 1992. Allen, Robert, ed. Channels of Discourse, Reassembled. London: Routledge, 1992. Altman, Rick. The American Film Musical. London: British Film Institute, 1989. Andrew, Geoff. The Film Handbook. London: Longman, 1989.

Burnett, Robert. The Global Jukebox: The International Music Industry.

London: Routledge, 1996.

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. "The Implications of Ownership Changes on Concentration and Diversity in the Phonogram Industry." Communication Research 19 (1992): 749-69. Collins, Jim. "Television and Postmodernism." Channels of Discourse, Reassembled. Ed. Robert Allen. London: Routledge, 1992. Edstrm, Olle. Michael Jackson, Dangerous och dess mottagande. Gothenburg: Musikvetenskap, Gothenburg UP, 1992. Eisenstein, Sergei. Film Form. New York: Harcourt, 1949. Fiske, John, and John Hartley. Reading Television, London: Methuen, 1978. Genette, Gerard. "Den allvarsamma parodin." Ord och Bild vol. 3 (1990): 1836. Goodwin, Andrew. Dancing in the Distraction Factory. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1992. Guitar Player 25.4 (1991): 1. Jameson, Fredrik. "Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism." New Left Review 146 (1984): 53-92. Kaplan, E. Ann. Rocking around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism + Consumer Culture. New York: Methuen, 1987. Kinder, Marsha. "Music Video and the Spectator: Television, Ideology and Dream." Film Quarterly 38 (1984): 2-15. Maltin, Leonard. Leonard Maltin 's TV Movies and Video Guide. London: Penguin, 1995. Mercer, Kobena. "Monster Metaphors: Notes on Michael Jackson's Thriller." Screen 27.1 (1986): 26-43. Ryan, Michael, and Douglas Kellner. Camera Politico: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film. Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1990. Seale, Bobby. Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton. New York: Vintage, 1970. Waldekranz, Rune. Filmens historia: de frsta hundra ren. Del 2. Guldlder [1920-1940]. Stockholm: Norstedts, 1986.

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Films and TV References

L'Age d'Or Alien (1979) Ridley Scott, USA An American Werewolf in London (1981) John Landis, USA Back to the Future (1985) Robert Zemeckis, USA

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Black Robe (1991) Bruce Beresford, Canada Blazing Saddles (1974) Mel Brooks, USA The Blues Brothers (1980) John Landis, USA Cat People (1942) Jacques Tourneur, USA Cat People (1985) Paul Schrader, USA Cheers (1982-1993) NBC TV series, USA Citizen Kane (1941) Orson Welles, USA Crimes of the Heart (1984) Bruce Beresford, USA Dances With Wolves (1990) Kevin Costner, USA Dangerous: The Short Films (1993) Compilation, USA Do the Right Thing (1989) Spike Lee, USA ET (1982) Steven Spielberg, USA The Gods Must Be Crazy (1981) Jamie Uys, Botswana Goldfinger (1964) Guy Hamilton, England Gremlins (1984) Joe Dante, USA Highlander (1986) Russel Mucahy, USA Home Alone (1991) Chris Columbus, USA In Bed with Madonna (also known as Truth or Dare) (1990) Alek Keshishian, USA Last of the Mohicans (1992) Michael Mann, USA MTV at the Movies (1992) MTV show on films Moonwalker (1988) Jerry Kramer and Colin Chilvers, USA Psycho (1960) Alfred Hitchcock, USA Raising Arizona (1987) Joel Coen, USA The Seven Year Itch (1955) Billy Wilder, USA Star Trek (1966-1969) NBC TV series, USA This Is Spinal Tap (1984) Rob Reiner, USA Triumph Des Willens (1935) Leni Riefenstahl, Germany Twin Peaks (1990-1991) ABC TV series David Lynch/Mark Frost, USA Robert Burnett is head of the Media and Communications Studies program at the University of Karlstad, Sweden. Bert Deivert is head of the Film Studies program at the University of Karlstad, Sweden.

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