‘Billie Jean’ and ‘Beat It’ Videos
In March 1983, Michael hit number one again with ‘Billie Jean’. It would stay atop the charts for seven weeks, primarily because of the impact of the
Motown 25
appearance, but also as a result of the video Michael made for the song. ‘When his people approached us about doing the video for “Billie Jean”, they didn't have any ideas at all,’ recalled Simon Fields, who produced the ‘Billie Jean’ video. Fields said that the concept came from its director, Steve Barron. ‘Basically, Michael was just following our direction,’ he said. ‘But the guy is a genius, so you can count on him to do wonderful things.’
‘Billie Jean,’ the first video from the
Thriller
album – and Michael's first major music clip – is ultimately too artsy for its own good. In a series of abstract shots, Michael plays high-tech hide-and-seek with a stalking, probing photographer – the only other major character – clearly suggesting Michael's paranoia about the press. However ‘Billie Jean’ the song – about a girl who haunts Michael, insisting that he is the father of her son – boasts too strong and visual a storyline to have been so overlooked in its video. In the end, the video is largely a series of odd scenes strung together.
Michael Jackson's biggest advance with this video was in showing viewers a new side of himself. Here Michael was cool, mysterious and evasive. The most compelling moment in ‘Billie Jean’ comes, as usual with Jackson, when he dances. With each step he takes, the sidewalk underneath his feet lights up as if infused by, as Michael would say, ‘magic’.
Michael demonstrated more of his deft dancing abilities in his excellent ‘Beat It’ video. While he had begun with only a vague concept for the ‘Billie Jean’ clip, he knew precisely what he wanted for ‘Beat It’. Veteran commercial director Bob Giraldi and Broadway choreographer Michael Peters collaborated with Michael on what would be one of the most dynamic, and expensive, videos to date. The choreographed ensemble-dancing in ‘Beat It’ would be often imitated in years to come, and is still a staple in the videos of many pop artists.
Perhaps of all the numbers Michael had presented his fans during his career, the ‘Beat It’ video marked the biggest departure. As a song, the track was unadulterated rock and roll, something Michael's core fans, especially the majority of his black ones, initially rejected. Beyond that, the video depicted a Jackson never before seen: Michael as urban dweller, a kid living on the wrong side of the tracks – a
human
Michael.
Some of Michael's public, particularly those living in urban neighbourhoods, found the storyline patronizing. In ‘Beat It’, which Michael has said was written with youngsters in mind, he is the good guy who ultimately stops two powerful gangs from warring with each other. Those viewers unable to separate Michael Jackson the musical enigma from Michael Jackson the actor missed the point when they asked angrily, ‘What does
he
know about gangs?’ and ‘Does he really think dancing through the problems we're having down here – muggings, killings, drug addiction – is the answer to our woes?’
‘The point is no one has to be the tough guy,’ Michael would explain. ‘You can walk away from a fight and still be a man. You don't have to die to prove you're a man.’
Visually, Michael's video was convincing enough. Shot on location on the mean streets of Los Angeles, it looked dark and grimy. In a quest for authenticity, one hundred members of two real-life, rival Los Angeles street gangs were hired as extras and atmosphere people. (They were each fed and paid one hundred dollars for two nights' work.)
‘The gangs were sort of on the periphery of the location,’ choreographer Michael Peters once said, ‘so Michael really didn't have to deal with them. But he was a little nervous, as we all were at the beginning. However, he was wonderful with them. I think the turning point was when the gangs saw us dance. They had, I think, a different respect after that. Michael signed autographs and took pictures with them.’
Acting was easy for Michael: he'd done a form of it onstage, singing, all his life. However, with ensemble-dancing, he found himself on uncharted terrain. Fans had never seen Michael in a Broadway-style setting, and some of them probably wondered why a hoofer like Michael needed someone to teach
him
steps, but choreographer Michael Peters succeeded in creating a dazzling, funked-up,
Chorus Line
-like dance effect. It all looked so easy, it seemed that anyone could do it. But, just try. ‘Looks can be deceiving, especially when it comes to dance,’ Michael would explain with a grin. Overall, the clip is rock theatre at its best. Its style and artistry actually succeeded in making the music more interesting, which has always been the ultimate goal of music videos.
What's really interesting about Michael's
Thriller
videos, however, is how they boosted the popularity of the then-fledgling MTV network. MTV, the twenty-four-hour-a-day cable station that plays only music videos, became a phenomenon when it began airing in 1981, yet by 1983 it rarely played the videos of black artists. The station's format was ‘strictly rock and roll’, said Bob Pittman, the executive vice-president and chief operating officer of Warner American Express Satellite Entertainment Company and the driving force behind MTV. Pittman's definition of rock and roll excluded most black artists from the station's play lists. In fact, of the over 750 videos shown on MTV during the channel's first eighteen months, fewer than two dozen featured black artists. It was acceptable to have Phil Collins sing The Supremes' ‘You Can't Hurry Love’ and Hall and Oates singing other black-sounding material, yet the real thing was completely unacceptable on MTV at that time. When videos of black artists were submitted, they were quickly rejected as not being ‘rock and roll’.
MTV's research and marketing departments had somehow decided that white kids in the suburbs did not like black music and maybe were intimidated by black people. There was nothing wrong with that, Bob Pittman reasoned; after all, ‘Bloomingdale's wouldn't work if it carried every kind of clothing ever made.’
Bob Giraldi, director of Michael's ‘Beat It’ video, best summed up many black critics' opinions of MTV when he said that the station was run by ‘racist bastards’. Motown recording artist Rick James, whose videos had been rejected by the station, also charged that the network was racist and had set black people back four hundred years. Bob Pittman was probably not a racist, but he and MTV certainly catered to white suburban racism.
When CBS submitted Michael Jackson's ‘Billie Jean’ to MTV, the cable station quickly rejected it. CBS then threatened to pull all of its other videos from MTV unless they ran ‘Beat It’. Michael Jackson had become so popular, Bob Pittman – and suburban white America – simply could not ignore him. Finally, in early March 1983, the ‘Billie Jean’ video was played on MTV, and in so-called ‘heavy rotation’, meaning often during the day. ‘Beat It’ followed. After that, MTV began to play a few more videos by black artists, and though the network still leans heavily towards white rock and roll, at least some black artists – though not many – receive airtime, mostly as a result of the Michael Jackson breakthrough so many years ago.