After the breakout success of The Jackson 5 with the release of 1969’s ‘I Want You Back’, Michael Jackson, who was 11 at the time he began as lead singer in the band, has been front and center within the public eye. While Jackson’s first four solo studio albums saw middling success, it was only after his first album with Epic Records, 1979’s ‘Off the Wall’, that the whole world witnessed as he ascended from relative fame into superstardom, crowning him as the ‘King of Pop’ as he became the largest icon in popular music, and to a greater extent, popular culture. Speculation by academics and regular people alike on how he such a feat was achieved mostly centers around the revolutionary song-writing or the breathtaking production on his records, thanks to Quincy Jones. However, I believe an oft unrepresented aspect of his success is as follows: Michael Jackson’s manipulation of the music video was instrumental in his huge success and rise to fame within the context of popular culture. This essay will begin by analyzing how Jackson went about reinventing the music video through his incorporation of stronger visual storytelling and discussing how he used this visual style to facilitate the creation of his iconic style and persona and skyrocket his already booming career. I will then explore how Jackson used the medium to express his own ideas about more complex issues surrounding racial issues, identity and relatability.
Michael Jackson’s stronger incorporation of visual and auditory storytelling first appeared in 1963’s ‘Thriller’ album and brought forward a shift in the way music videos were conceptualized, produced and released due to creative use of the medium, and furthermore its financial potential. Jackson attempted to push the medium of music video forward by introducing a story element that would sit front and center in the video, standing out due it’s rejection of a well-known cliché of music videos at the time, which generally involved a ‘realist’ setting. Instead of depicting the band or artist playing as band in a studio, and miming lyrics, the use of a stylized ‘fantastical’ setting lent itself to not only aiding the lyrics, but it enabled Jackson to create a story and visual style that amplified and explored the roles or themes implied by the lyrical content and/or the atmosphere created by the song (Mercer, 1986). For example, Jackson used this concept when approaching the video for the album’s title track ‘Thriller’, through creative use of creative ‘fantastical’ imagery, such as turning Jackson into a werewolf or having the videos iconic dance be backed up by zombies (Mercer, 1986). Not only did this greatly reinforce the themes and atmosphere of the songs and its clear lyrical ties to the horror/thriller genre of film, the enjoyability of the video is also heightened due to the unique and interesting relationship between the audio and visuals. Another example lies in the in the video for ‘Beat It’, where Michael and director Bob Giraldi decide to visually represent, and furthermore juxtapose themes of sensitivity and vulnerability against themes of masculinity and violence (Rolling Stone, 2014). By employing hard cuts between shots of seemingly dangerous gangs, and Jackson, alone in his bedroom, Jackson and Giraldi create a clear link between the visuals and the song’s lyrical intent, which discredits ‘macho’ and violent tendencies. This link is only strengthened when the videos climax, depicting Jackson defusing a knife fight, only to lead a dance number, symbolizing a less violent approach as the clear winner (Mercer, 1986). It is clear that this incorporation of unity between the visual and audio elements allows ‘Beat It’, as well as ‘Thriller’ to transcend existing as a secondary part to Jackson’s music. Instead, it acts to amplifying the themes and lyrical implications an extent that it becomes a necessary facet of its experience as a piece of media. This style would become a main feature of Jackson’s videography, as the explosive mainstream appeal of the style drew in attention from all over the world, and consequent videos from many other artists attempted to replicate these newly found conventions so as to recreate the success of Michael’s videos. Quincy Jones, executive producer on the album shared a similar sentiment in a 2008 interview: “I still see every day, videos that were made last month that look just like the videos that he made 25 years ago. It’s amazing” (Vozick-Levinson, 2008).
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Now equipped with a strong base for his music videos, both financially and in entertainment value, Jackson was able to leverage the enhanced format to foster the growth of his persona and popularity through his depiction in them, and as a result, in wider media. Throughout his videos, Jackson constantly takes the chance to highlight his iconic style of dress and dance in the most alluring way possible, distilling a sense of virtuosity and star power into the core of his persona. Director Steve Barron drew inspiration from the Greek myth of Midas touch (in which a man is cursed, and everything he touches turns to gold) to communicate this in the video for ‘Billie Jean’, triggering different objects on set to light up as Jackson touched them while he moved around on set (Barron, 2014), such as making the sidewalk underneath him light up as he danced over it. Barron also goes out of his way to make Jackson look good in the video as he perfectly evades an invasive detective, and in the climax of the video, frames him as he baits him into taking a photo of a sleeping woman, only to be arrested by the police, effectively portraying Jackson as a smooth, calculated, and almost omniscient. The resulting video became so popular that children around the world began imitating the black leather suit, pink shirt and bow tie he wore in the video (Campbell, 1993, p. 58). This was not the last time that something in a Michael Jackson music video became widely imitated by children and adults alike, with similar events such as the immense popularity of Michael’s two red jackets from ‘Thriller’ and ‘Beat It’ in the years following their releases, with the jacket from ‘Thriller’ taking a solid place in 1980s popular culture as the most popular, and best-selling Michael Jackson jacket (Campbell, 1993, p. 101). Additionally, dance moves that appeared in Jackson’s videos were emulated in the same way, such as the ‘anti-gravity lean’ made popular in his video for ‘Smooth Criminal’. In this way, Michael Jackson’s extreme popularity, and by extension his heavy effect on popular culture at the time, was inextricably correlated with, and boosted by the iconic visuals and persona portrayed by Jackson within his music videos.
In years following the massive success of ‘Thriller’, Jackson received a lot of media attention, and while a lot of it was good, a large amount also centered around Michael apparent obsession with cosmetic surgery, the lightening of his skin over the years (which was actually caused by a skin disorder called vitiligo), and specifically calling into question if he was “ashamed of his blackness” (Vogel, 2018). While Michael rarely interacted with the media, outside of a few interviews and documentaries, he harnessed his music videos to respond to vehemently respond to not only these personal controversies, but also to more widespread injustice involving race.
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