Abstract: Joseph Vogel, an author well-known to Michael Jackson researchers, has produced a new book focused on the short film for Jackson’s song “Black or White.” The television premiere of the film (a.k.a. music video) in November 1991, brought howls of protests from those viewers who could not understand the “panther dance” coda. MJ Studies Today columnist Kerry Hennigan follows Vogel’s discourse on the film, covering its historical context, and its importance in Jackson’s artistic evolution.
Column by Kerry Hennigan, editor of the free monthly newsletter A Candle for Michael, administrator of the fan group “Michael Jackson’s Short Film Ghosts” on Facebook, and an MJ blogger on WordPress. Kerry holds Certificates in the Archaeology of the Ancient World and the Archaeology of Ancient Britain from Cambridge University’s Professional and Continuing Education and is passionate about Viking longships.
REFERENCE AS:
Hennigan, Kerry. “MJ Studies Today CXXII: Considering “Black or White” through Joseph Vogel’s monograph “Black or White. Inside Michael Jackson’s Most Controversial Short Film,” published December 2025.” (14-02-2026). The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies Vol 12, No. 3 (2026). https://michaeljacksonstudies.org/mj-studies-today-cxxii/
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Considering “Black or White” through Joseph Vogel’s monograph “Black or White. Inside Michael Jackson’s Most Controversial Short Film,” published December 2025.
By Kerry Hennigan
Photo collage © Kerry Hennigan
Joseph Vogel, author of Man in the Music: The Creative Life and Work of Michael Jackson,[1] has produced an important, albeit slim, volume titled Black or White: Inside Michael Jackson’s most controversial short film.[2] He has previously written significant essays on this subject, but in this instance focuses specifically on the Black or White short film which premiered on television on November 13, 1991. As Vogel recalls it, “For eleven minutes, the world stopped.”[3]
Written in easy to digest, non-academic language, Vogel’s book puts those eleven minutes into context, reminding readers of the events that had been dominating the headlines not only in the US, but around the world in the first years of the 1990s.
The song “Black or White” had been released to radio stations just two days prior to the short film’s premiere. It shot to number one on the US charts and held that spot for seven weeks. It claimed top spot “in at least twenty countries,” Vogel writes,[4] spreading Jackson’s message “It don’t matter if you’re black or white,” to a multi-cultural, multi-lingual global audience. Then came the short film, directed by John Landis, which opens with a humorous skit featuring Macaulay Culkin, George Wendt and Tess Harper as a “typical” American family. It then becomes “a globe-trotting spectacle,”[5] with Jackson dancing with African tribesmen, Native Americans, Sri Lankan Tamil dancer Yamuna Sangarasivam, traditional dancers from Thailand, and Ukrainian folk dancers performing the hopak, based on a Zaporozhian Cossack dance.[6]
Jackson bursts through flames declaring that “I ain’t afraid of no sheets” (referring to the notorious Ku Klux Klan) and the music concludes with the famous face morphing sequence to remind us that “we’re all the same.”[7] Then, as Vogel describes it, “The fantasy of harmony collapses into rage.”[8] This was the “infamous” panther dance, which prompted viewer feedback expressing confusion and anger towards an artist previously considered “family friendly.” He even had his own attraction (Captain Eo) at Disneyland, for goodness sake! – kids loved him. [9] With Black or White, however, his aggressive and sexually charged final dance sequence was considered a shocking betrayal. As Vogel writes, “Viewers demanded to know why the man who sang ‘Man In The Mirror’ was now smashing storefronts and grabbing his crotch on primetime television.”[10]
It is from this moment on – the night that sparked outrage from viewers, and caused the final sequence to be edited or removed [11] – that Vogel launches into a deep dive into the making and meaning of the Black or White short film. For those born too late to have experienced the event, or living outside the US, Vogel places the initial impact of Black or White against the changing music and music video scene of 1991. As he describes it, “The medium had changed. The audience had changed. The stakes had changed. And now, so had Michael Jackson.”[12]
Change, on a global or local scale, is not always easy. Some will cling to what they feel comfortable with, wishing things could always stay that way. But, they never do. Changes, whether subtle or seismic, occur on a daily basis. For artists to remain relevant, they too must change or adapt if they are to have a career beyond their first number one hit. In 1979, when he was 21 years old and already a household name as a member of the Jackson 5 and a solo artist with Motown, Michael had written a manifesto that signalled unambiguously his intention to transform himself into “a totally different person.” By 1987 and the release of his album Bad, as Susan Woodward, author of Otherness and Power: Michael Jackson and his Media Critics, writes, “it was very difficult to imagine that he was the same person who had been the child lead singer for the Jackson 5.”[13]
Jackson’s choreographer on Black or White, Vincent Paterson, considers the “panther dance” coda “a brave act for an artist that wanted nothing more than to unify and be loved.” Paterson sees Michael as one of the few heroes in the world, “someone who represented harmony, innocence, and idealism on a planetary scale,” (Vogel’s words paraphrasing Paterson).[14] When Michael stepped outside that representation, people couldn’t deal with it, Paterson says.
So, from what deep, dark part of his psyche did Jackson’s performance spring? In the most compelling (to this reader) part of his book, Vogel reminds us that perceptions of African Americans, and where they were in the social hierarchy of their own country, “didn’t begin with music videos, or even with television.”[15]. They began with the medium of film itself.[16] The time was 1915, and the film was an epic of silent cinema – D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, a film that “portrayed Black people as sub-human – and Black men, in particular, as a threat that must be controlled through white violence.”[17]
Michael Jackson would certainly have known about Birth of a Nation, “having a near-encyclopaedic relationship to entertainment history,” Vogel writes.[18] For Black or White, Michael took the familiar racist tropes depicted in Nation and other media representations of African Americans, and flipped their meaning – what Vogel describes as “using the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house, or at least rattle it hard enough that people have to look again.”[19]
In the long run, Vogel sees the Black or White short film as “a video that won’t stay buried.” The violence that has plagued the streets of urban America in recent years has made it newly relevant, “less like a relic of early-1990s multicultural optimism and more like a prophetic text.”[20] And of the artist himself, Vogel writes, “His refusal to embody a single, stable version of Black masculinity made him a lightning rod long before social media amplified such scrutiny.”[21]
Black or White: Inside Michael Jackson’s Most Controversial Short Film reminds us of a time when the world’s best known entertainer courageously signalled his determination to do more than just entertain. This is why Black or White is still being written about, analysed and interpreted – and reinterpreted – thirty-five years after it first aired.
Kerry Hennigan
14 February 2026
Sources:
[1] Vogel, Joseph. Man in the Music: The Creative Life and Work of Michael Jackson. Vintage paperback edition, 2019. https://www.amazon.com/Man-Music-Joseph-Vogel/dp/0525566570/ref=sr_1_1
[2] Vogel, Joseph. Black or White: Inside Michael Jackson’s Most Controversial Film. Cardinal Books, 2025. https://www.amazon.com/Black-White-Michael-Jacksons-Controversial/dp/B0GDD6YH6P/ref=books_amazonstores_desktop_mfs_aufs_ap_sc_dsk_2
[3] Vogel, Black or White, page 7.
[4] Vogel, Black or White, page 8.
[5] Vogel, Black or White, page 10.
[6] Encyclopaedia Britannica “Hopak” https://www.britannica.com/art/hopak accessed 10 Feb 2026.
[7] YouTube. Michael Jackson – Black or White (Official Video – Upscaled) https://youtu.be/pTFE8cirkdQ?si=aTTj_P3plj_0Jtos
[8] Vogel, Black or White, page 11.
[9] Hennigan, Kerry. “MJ Studies Today LXVII: “We are here to change the world.” Michael Jackson’s Disney collaboration, Captain Eo. Part 1.” (14-07-2021).” The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies 8, No. 1 (2021). https://michaeljacksonstudies.org/mj-studies-today-lxvii/
[10] Vogel, Black or White, page 12.
[11] Vogel, Black or White, page 12.
[12] Vogel, Black or White, page 22.
[13] Woodward, Susan. Otherness and Power: Michael Jackson and his Media Critics. Blackmore Books, 2014, page 79. https://www.amazon.com/Otherness-Power-Michael-Jackson-Critics/dp/0578138026/ref=sr_1_12
[14] Vogel, Black or White, page 94
[15] Vogel, Black or White, page 23
[16] Vogel, Black or White, page 24
[17] Vogel, Black or White, page 26
[18] Vogel, Black or White, page 29
[19] Vogel, Black or White, page 29
[20] Vogel, Black or White, page 99
[21] Vogel, Black or White, page 100
Illustration: :Photo montage “’cause we’re all the same…” compiled by Kerry Hennigan. No infringement of original photographic copyright is intended in this not-for-profit, educational exercise.
Additional Reading:
Vogel, Joseph. “’I Ain’t Scared of No Sheets’: Re-screening Masculinity in Michael Jackson’s Black or White.” The Journal of Popular Music Studies. Volume27, Issue1, March 2015. https://www.academia.edu/11493559/_I_Ain_t_Scared_of_No_Sheets_Re_screening_Black_Masculinity_in_Michael_Jackson_s_Black_or_White_Journal_of_Popular_Music_Studies_27_1_March_2015
Vogel, Joseph. “’Black or White’ How Dangerous Kicked Off Michael Jackson’s Race Paradox.” The Guardian. March 17, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/mar/17/black-and-white-how-dangerous-kicked-off-michael-jacksons-race-paradox