In Honor of the 15th Anniversary of Michael Jackson's Death, We're Also Rerunning this piece on Michael Jackson's Halloween
I both envy and pity the executors of Michael Jackson’s estate. I envy them because they represent the posthumous will of a beloved icon and colossal talent whose songs are deeply woven into the fabric of American life.
Throughout my childhood, Michael Jackson loomed large as the most famous, successful, and talented man in the world. That is one hell of a hat trick. He released Thriller, the best-selling album of all time.
That’s good. In fact, it’s literally the best! Growing up, I didn’t just see Jackson as an absurdly, uniquely, even scarily talented creative genius; I saw him as something approaching super-human. He certainly seemed otherworldly, for good and bad.
It doesn’t get any bigger than Michael Jackson. Or any sadder, really.
I pity the executors of Michael Jackson’s estate because there is, of course, the other side of Jackson’s legacy. I am referring to the whole kiddy-diddling thing. There is nothing the American people hate more than a kiddy-diddler. It’s a crime that reflexively incites our most feverish emotions and incandescent rage, and it’s a crime that Jackson was credibly accused of throughout his adult life.
If seen from, oh, every angle, the construction of Neverland as a magical wonderland where Michael Jackson, his chimp Bubbles, and small children that were not his own could share a bed and innocent good times feels like the transparently guilty behavior of pedophile acting in plain sight.
But when Jackson died of a drug overdose at fifty in 2009, we seemingly made a culture-wide pact to forget about all those allegations and all that exceedingly suspicious behavior so that we could once again enjoy Jackson’s remarkable body of work with a clean conscience.
You don’t want to take Thriller away from us, do you? It’s Thriller. It’s literally Thriller. It’s the Thriller of albums. Or the Moonwalk? What about that weird leaning thing he did in the “Smooth Criminal” video? That was pretty neat, huh?
Then came the explosive accusations and revelations of 2019’s Finding Neverland, and it once again became impossible to ignore or deny that in his lifetime, Jackson did things to children that would forever taint his legacy and cast him in a light far different from the messianic one he preferred while alive.
The 2017 animated special Michael Jackson’s Halloween is a product of the golden period between the troubled singer’s untimely demise and Finding Neverland, when his sins and transgressions were seemingly forgiven, and he was restored to a state of purity and innocence.
It depicts Jackson not as he was, a profoundly troubled human being stumbling erratically to an early death, but rather as how he wanted to be seen and saw himself, as a messianic figure of light and goodness with a divine mission to save children and animals.
Though Jackson had been dead for eight years when the special debuted, it nonetheless feels like the product of an ego as big as Jackson’s fame.
In his lifetime, Jackson was obsessed with shape-shifting and becoming other people. It’s easy to see where this might come from. I’m sure Jackson wished that he could turn into someone else or disappear when his father was physically or verbally abusing him or his older brothers were fucking groupies while he was trying to sleep or read comic books.
In project after project, Jackson chose to depict himself as a shape-shifting trickster spirit who assumes many forms, only one of which is the Michael Jackson of the public imagination.
It’s not coincidental that morphing technology, where one image digitally transforms into another, was popularized by Jackson’s “Black or White” music video. In Moonwalker, Jackson cycled through different iterations. The same is true of the 1996 short film Michael Jackson’s Ghosts.
In Thriller, Jackson famously shape-shifts into a ghoul. Jackson used but mostly abused cosmetic surgery to alter his appearance with deeply tragic results. Jackson even used to put on elaborate disguises, including fat suits, to go door to door, proselytizing on behalf of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and would put on elaborate costumes when he went out in public.
Michael Jackson’s Halloween continues this obsession by portraying Jackson less as a man than as the spirit of Joy, Music, Innocence, and Friendship. We only see Michael Jackson’s face at the very end of the special. It’s as if they think it is so powerful and so pure that we cannot gaze directly at it for too long any more than we can stare directly at the sun. So Jackson’s essence must be divided among a series of alter-egos designed to teach a pair of plucky dreamers about the value of individualism, following your dreams, and listening to the music in your heart rather than the angry dictates of your bosses.
Lucas Till voices Vincent, an earnest young man with music in his soul and fingertips who wants to be a DJ but is being pressured into taking over the family grocery store business by his father. Kiersey Clemons voices Victoria, an aspiring dancer who must juggle her creative aspirations with her day job as an intern at an evil corporation where she is being sized up for a job in the nameless and faceless cogs division.
To help Vincent and Victoria choose between following their dreams and listening to the music in their hearts or becoming soulless drones glumly going through the motions and praying for the sweet release of the grave the spirit of Michael Jackson sweeps into town with wily sidekick/jack of all trades Bubbles (voiced by Brad Garrett) and makes a spooky mansion materialize out of thin air.
Our hero and heroine are lured to the instant haunted house, where they encounter singing and dancing creatures at war with the evil Conformity (Lucy Liu), a scantily clad vixen whose distracting, out-of-place, and in-your-face sexuality reminded me of the similarly hyper-sensual villain in Foodfight!
First up the heroes encounter Hay Man (Jim Parsons), a magical scarecrow with a pumpkin head who moves suspiciously like a certain King of Pop.
I assumed that Michael Jackson’s Halloween would stick to the hits. So I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it instead offers wall-to-wall dance remixes that mix and mash up and distort and combine the hits but also a fair number of obscurities and does so with panache and gleeful irreverence. It’s essentially Michael Jackson’s Spooky Dance Halloween Mixtape, and that ends up being far more effective than hearing the smashes all over again.
Throughout the special, we hear snippets of Jackson’s iconic oeuvre, like Vincent Price’s sinister cackle from “Thriller,” Jackson’s backup vocals for Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me,” and a falsetto vocal from The Jacksons’ “Torture.”
This refreshingly obscure and unexpected take on Jackson’s life’s work highlights his love of spooky stuff and deep investment in dance music. Jackson wasn’t terribly prolific as a solo artist but that has not kept DJs and producers from endlessly re-mixing and re-imagining the songs he made during his brief lifetime.
The next fantastical creature to sing and dance just like Michael Jackson, is an excessively British military spider voiced by Alan Cumming. If you think Jackson is impressive with two legs, just wait until you see him with eight!
The final iteration of Michael Jackson's ineffable spirit is a mad scientist cat with a thick Germanic accent who is turned around pretty quickly by the heroes and becomes a more or less instant convert to peace, love, and music. Oh, and they all have a song inside them, and if they lose it, they become zombies or something.
It isn’t until the very end of the special that we get to see Michael Jackson’s face when he defeats Conformity through a climactic performance of “Thriller.”
Yet the animation and character design for Jackson is so off that it looks as much, if not more, like Bruno Mars than the dead legend whose spirit hovers over this production, and not in an entirely innocent or benevolent fashion.
Even on Halloween, Michael Jackson is a saint and the spirit of childhood innocence and adventure. And he’s willing to move heaven and earth to get two fans to believe in themselves and all that other tired propaganda.
I’ve now watched Michael Jackson’s Halloween twice. I’ve got to say that I was very pleasantly surprised by it. Story and character-wise, it’s nothing special, but the choreography for, ironically, every character other than Michael Jackson is impressive, and the music alone more than justifies the whole strange endeavor.
It’s Michael Jackson, after all, so perhaps I should not be surprised that this overachieving special has music so banging that it makes you forget about all the other stuff. And that is saying a lot because the other stuff, hoo boy, it is BAD.
Nathan needs teeth that work, and his dental plan doesn't cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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