Michael Jackson: Bad

[V] rewind to 1987 with Billy Russel

Admittedly, I don’t know much about gang warfare (I thought a drive-by was usually followed by the admission that there’d be a two minute wait on my fries), but I would have thought that trying to prove one’s badness (which, in the present instance, should be read as ‘rebelliousness’... notwithstanding that its normal usage would create less issues) would have little, if anything, to do with dancing. Alas, it seems that no one sent the memo to poor old MJ, who, playing a street-rat-cum-college-boy in the video for his 1987 track Bad, declines the challenge to mug an elderly citizen and instead opts for some fully-fledged, group-choreographed sashaying around a subway station in order to show his old partner-in-crime (played by a young Wesley Snipes) that he’s still got it. Yeah! Unfortunately (but perhaps unsurprisingly), not even the wardrobe department (black leather, you guys!) or the assistance from director extraordinaire Martin Scorsese can make Michael Jackson believable as a petty thug. Regardless, in the full 18-minute version of the clip, we’re treated to a perfect slice of late ‘80s pop which more or less overshadows the manifest delusion of one man to whom the whole world failed to respond truthfully when asked ‘Who’s bad?’y bratwurst.