Michael Jackson in Prison, Showing Us We Matter
They Don't Care About Us, courtesy of the happy & sometimes tear-jerky news aggregator, sunnyskyz.com, posted yesterday. Sunnyskyz is a fair substitute for the now long-gone CuteOverload.com. Check the right hand column for cute as dickens ducklings, kittens, puppies, and other goodies. goodnewsnetwork.org is another mood-boosting clearinghouse, if you can stand the risk of crying your heart out sometimes, as both these sites have an eye for moving and uplifting stories.
I'd somehow never heard of this video, or heard and forgotten, most likely because I live in a pop culture "cave", having given up mass media for Lent decades ago. No Facebook, etc, so I miss more generalized viral media waves. Can’t handle the godawful time sink and the ugly trash that gets mixed into the feeds of facebook, twitter, etc, so I use my handful of daily minutes for media indulgence on the sites listed above.
Not that this is pop in any sugar-coated teeny-bopper sense of the word. Rather, high-fiber radical truth, spoken-danced in compelling manner, the participants in the various versions of the video obviously enjoying the work.
And that Prison Version was the second version, made after this Rio - Olodum version:
That was quite the scandal at the time. The participants again show they feel the love; even the Brazilian police are clearly there in a supportive role as they line the village streets. Love how his shirts each get ripped open more and more, but the editing shows he’s a time lord since the shirts are later whole, or only half ripped, and then again whole, and then ripped. I can’t but smile, thinking how the crowds must have loved his ventilation adjustments as he ripped the collars...
SunnySkyz and wikipedia both indicate that the video was so radical that it was basically suppressed upon release, here in the States. And Michael tried twice, with *two completely different videos*, both enhanced by direction from Spike Lee. Who bothers trying again, after an expensive and politician-challenged video production effort?? It must have mattered to Michael, to try again to get this message to us.
I have to believe that Michael Jackson would support #BlackLivesMatter, and in his gentle way, he'd also acknowledge with equal love that #WhiteLivesMatter, #JewLivesMatter, #PoorLivesMatter, and keep going onward, listing as many as he could think of.
Sadly, I’m certain he'd’ve pissed off the #PoliceLivesMatter crowd, even if he included them in the list. Had that video been promoted with any diligence in the USA, then or now, my conservative friends who consider him a kind and good artist, a fine American, would be agast. The googles are telling me the video was showcased in #BlackLivesMatter protests, but yet I still missed it, at that time. Ugh! Drawback to not wading into social media with any stamina.
In trying to find the video as a youtube link to include in this diary, I found a much newer version that I may have seen when it first appeared a few years ago, but didn't grok, at the time, as the lyrics aren’t meaningfully highlighted by the dancers, who are distractingly attractive and talented. Michael’s prison version packs a much heavier intellectual punch, catchiness notwithstanding.
This prisoner choreography lead by Michael’s long-time choreographer Travis Payne and dancers Daniel Celebre and Dres Reid is mind blowing for the dancing alone:
And the prison that supported this video was (is?) lead by the inspired warden, Byron F. Garcia. Please drop down on the video notes to read his astounding explanation for why he had prisoners dance to Thriller:
Not any sort of cutesy “because it’s popular!” reasoning, there. Can anyone doubt that Michael would be touched at this great use of his songs?
Has dancing training for inmates reached any USA prison? Google’s got nothing useful to tell me.
As for lasting positive impact, Billboard in 2009 had this to say about the Rio version:
BRAZIL
Less than a day after Michael Jackson's death, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, announced that the city would erect a statue of the singer in Dona Marta, a favela that was once notorious for drug dealing and is now a model for social development.