This Saturday marks 35 years since Michael Jackson unveiled one of the boldest music videos ever made. On November 14, 1991, the short film for his single “Black or White” premiered on four TV channels at the same time, MTV, BET, VH1 and Fox, with a British airing on “Top of the Pops.” Millions of people tuned in at once to see what the King of Pop had cooked up.
The video wastes no time picking a fight. It opens in a suburban living room where a boy cranks his electric guitar so loud the whole house shakes. His father, parked in his recliner, bellows at him to turn it down. The boy answers by rolling a giant amplifier into place and blasting the old man clean out of the house, chair and all.
That angry dad was played by George Wendt, the actor most people know as Norm from the TV comedy “Cheers.” The boy was Macaulay Culkin, the young star of “Home Alone” and a real-life friend of Michael’s. Their little showdown sets the whole tone. The song is about getting past skin color and prejudice, and it kicks off with a father and son who just can’t agree on the music.
From there the film travels the world, with dancers from faraway places and faces that morph one into the next. John Landis, who had directed Michael’s “Thriller” years earlier, was behind the camera again.
Here’s the part most people have forgotten.
The long version doesn’t just fade out on a big dance number. It circles right back to where it started, another living room, another dad and son going at it over the same song. Only this time the boy watching Michael on TV is a cartoon. It’s Bart Simpson, bouncing along to the beat, while his father Homer barges in and shouts, “Turn off that noise!” Bart fires back, “Chill out, Homeboy.” Homer clicks the set off, and the screen cuts to a close-up of Michael and the words “Prejudice is ignorance.”
So the whole film is bookended by the exact same argument. A real boy and his dad at the top, a cartoon boy and his dad at the bottom, both squaring off over Michael’s music. It’s a sly, funny wink that wraps a serious song inside a family joke.
There’s a sweet backstory too. Michael loved “The Simpsons,” and that very same fall he had quietly lent his voice to a character on the show. Sliding Bart and Homer into the end of his own video was his kind of fun.
The short film was a giant event in its day, and the long version was later edited down. But the full cut still holds that cartoon surprise at the end.
Watch the complete video below, and stay with it all the way to the finish, where that second father-and-son fight is waiting.
The full “Black or White” short film, from the opening amp blast to the cartoon ending
Plenty of fans grew up on the shorter cut and never once saw the cartoon ending, which is exactly why the full version is the one worth finding.