Supplemental Post #4: Michael Jackson's Moonwalker Video Game

Kobena Mercer’s article, “Monster Metaphors”, demonstrates how the theme of transformation is prevalent in Michael Jackson’s work. Her take on the Thriller music video -- in which we see Jackson as a movie-star, nice guy boyfriend, zombie, and werewolf -- brought me back to the 90s when I watched Moonwalker (1988) as a kid.

And I remembered that Mecha-Jackson scared the living daylights out of me.

The King of Pop’s transformation into a maniacal death machine had me covering my six year-old eyes back then. It wasn’t the death machine part that really bothered me. It was that the juxtaposition was off-putting. Here, an androgynous, racially-ambiguous, and sexually ambiguous singer transforms into a bad-ass Optimus Prime. The kid in me loved the robot angle, but was utterly confused by those other mixed messages.

Mercer touched on the fact that the media billed Jackson as a Peter Pan figure that never grew up, which they would claim as an explanation for his childlike nature. I think the Mecha-Jackson clip from Moonwalker attempts to wrestle with anxieties regarding his relationship to children. Kids’ media is often defined by hard delineations of good and evil, boy and girl, etc. The fact that he saves kids from peril is supposed to make him less threatening and less ambiguous to an audience of children.

Another example of Michael Jackson trying to appeal to kids can be found in the Moonwalker video games. Back then, video games were considered a children’s medium, and they were often associated with toys. As such, designers created story lines and gameplay suited for younger audiences. In the Moonwalker video game series, players take control of Jackson himself. The object of the game is to save kidnapped children from bad guys that you beat with your dance moves. The Thriller dance becomes a deadly number that forced baddies to dance until they die. Meanwhile, moves like the hat throw or the moonwalk can be used as a projectile or dash attack respectively. And of course, you can transform into Mecha-Jackson for a period of invincibility and ultimate power. Yeah, it’s pretty insane.

The idea of Michael Jackson rescuing kids seems ridiculous to us now because of the sexual molestation charges in Jackson’s later career. As a kid, however, these games really did make me more interested in the King of Pop. The idea that you could beat up evil gangsters by dancing provided a very different take on masculinity as depicted by the typical video game hero of the time period.