watch it: Michael Jackson’s “Black and White”

Thanks for teaching me a new word! That pretty much sums up my feelings on the man.

To me it’s just a reminder of how over-rated and hyped he was. The intro is stolen from Twisted Sister, followed by a series of dorky stereotypes that only a 5-year-old would accept as illustrating the cultural diversity of our world, and it ends with a pointless John Landis cameo.

I remember watching it and being impressed with the CGI transitions from one face to the next at the end, which was cutting-edge for the time. But what does that have to do with Jackson or, for that matter, Landis, who almost seems to be trying to take credit for it by showing himself directing a scene that was manufactured by computer geeks?

I’m exactly the age where it is expected that Jackson would have been an important figure in my cultural environment growing up, but he was never that impressive to me. He had a few catchy tunes, and a few good dance moves, but he was weird and infantile, and never had much to say.