Core Post #3

The Thriller video clip is considered a narrative script that overcomes the musical part of it through its narrative greatness. In this case, the context of the visual narrative semantically exceeds the meaning of the music itself. It is mounted as a film: the music functioning as a soundtrack, with special makeup effects (then only used in film), characteristics of horror movies (lighting and screenplay) and also musical elements (music gaining much importance in staging). The images created by John Landis to the script done in partnership with Michael Jackson himself, frighten and thrill, due to perfect camera movements, costumes, lighting, noise and choreography. The transformation of Michael Jackson himself into a werewolf in the short film, and later in zombie, also characterizes this junction between music and film.

Many songs use the narrative style of script, considered a more formal approach to the music, because this emphasizes the chorus of the song, giving it a musical archetype. Before Thriller, music clips were only a vehicle to show the song, it did not contain such action or narrative to do justice to the lyrics. It was just the band, situated somewhere; a garage, for example, playing their instruments, musically and verbalizing the lyrics. You could say, in a way, that no emotion was passed to the viewer. It lacked a compelling element that holds the viewer to want to watch the video several times; in this case the narrative, with characters, like the woman, the villain, children, animals, etc., so that the clip really makes sense. Michael Jackson captured this spirit and applied it to Thriller.

It engages in a playful parody of the stereotypes, codes and conventions of the ‘horror’ genre” (Mercer, 304). As the clip title suggests, Thriller refers to a filmic genre, characterized by terror and the presence of characters in the post-mortem in order to frighten humans, whose reality in relation to the genre is restricted to entertainment. This causes the effect of fiction and reality, by contrasting two real characters with the fictitious, not typical of their reality. The other element that proves this relationship is the artist’s transformation into a zombie, which, bringing to our reality, is something unreal, imaginary, fictitious. It can be said that there is a reality within a reality, and a reality within the fiction in the video clip.

Kobena Mercer approaches Michael Jackson’s masculinity in the article “Monster Metaphors” by refering to his androgynous look that does not fit in the typical masculine stereotype that we are used to. For example, when Jackson becomes the zombie in the clip, it represents asexuality, “suggesting the sense of neutral eroticism in Jackson’s style as a dancer” (Mercer, 311). However, in the beginning of the clip, when Michael Jackson becomes a werewolf, considered a monster, he seems more violent and aggressive. Especially when he jumps on top of the girl, looking almost like a rape scene, and binding the “sexual relation of romance with terror and violence” (Mercer, 311). This creates a paradigm as to Jackson’s sexuality in the clip – which points to his sexual vagueness.

Michael Jackson is portrayed not only sexually ambivalent but also racially ambiguous. The video clip is detrimental in the metamorphosis of Jackson from black to white. It popularized black music in the white market – transcending race boundaries and allowing him to reconstruct his image. Furthermore, Michael was the first black artist to break the racial segregation of American mass culture, where only white artists could show their work in videoclips.