Black or White

Inside Michael Jackson's Most Controversial Short Film

ON NOVEMBER 13, 1991, the world stopped to watch a music video.

Broadcast simultaneously across four major networks and viewed by an estimated 500 million people worldwide, Michael Jackson’s eleven-minute short film for "Black or White" was billed as a triumphant return—his first new visual statement in years. What audiences got instead was something far more unsettling: a dazzling global unity spectacle that ended in rage, destruction, and a prowling black panther disappearing into a dark Los Angeles alley.

The backlash was immediate. The final sequence was censored. Critics were baffled. Parents complained. Executives panicked.

In Black or White: Inside Michael Jackson’s Most Controversial Short Film, Joseph Vogel—author of Man in the Music, widely regarded as the Michael Jackson bible—revisits the moment when pop spectacle collided with America’s unresolved racial anxieties.

In this definitive account, Vogel explores:

• How Jackson reshaped MTV and the possibilities of music videos

• America's obsession with Jackson's body and face

• The groundbreaking CGI morphing sequence and its revolutionary impact

• The symbolic meaning of the panther dance and its connection to repression, race, and the “shadow self”

• The censorship, backlash, and critical misreadings that followed

• And why Black or White may be more politically urgent now than ever

Blending cultural history, film analysis, and behind-the-scenes reporting, Vogel traces the short film’s origins through Hollywood’s racial mythology, the legacy of The Birth of a Nation, the rise of MTV, the Rodney King beating, and the charged atmosphere of early-’90s Los Angeles. He unpacks the revolutionary CGI morphing sequence, the symbolic power of the panther coda, and the anger and misreadings that followed—revealing Black or White as one of the boldest artistic statements of Jackson’s career.