Michael Jackson - ''Bad''

The ‘Bad’ song is one of Michael Jackson’s highest selling video’s from his 3rd solo album ‘Bad’. In the video of the song, Michael Jackson recreates a true story from which he read from a newspaper. The story was about a young teenager living in America who grew up in the ‘ghetto’. After high school, he was lucky with the grades he achieved, to go to one of the best colleges in the country, in which had the chance to move out of the ‘ghetto’, which he did. During the summer break, the boy returned home to his single mother and his three best friends who were also gang members. As his friends were jealous due to his academic success, his friends shot him dead. In the ‘Bad’ video, the boy ends up surviving in which Michael plays the young boy, he was peer pressured into mugging an innocent old man by his three friends which one of them was played by Wesley Snipes. Michael lets the man run away in the video and is approached by one of his friends, whom is played by Wesley Snipes which Michael Jackson screams ‘You ain’t bad! You aint nothin’! I’ll show you whose bad!’. Michael then emerges into the trademark ‘Bad’ leather outfit which is based on a Rock ‘n’ Roll theme shown by a low angle shot, as he intended to use a mixture of rock elements and R ‘n’ B. In the video, Michael Jackson’s intention was to show young people who’s bad, he shows this by including dance moves from street dance, to ballet, to body pop and more. This was shown by the use of high angle shots, long shots and medium shots. There were also shots tracking back, following Michael's movement during dance routines. The editing cut shots to match Michael Jackson's dancing, following him around the subway, showing off his different dancing styles. The mise en scene of the underground subway emphasized the unknown talent around the country. Michael requested Prince to star alongside him in the video but Prince refused due to disagreement of ideas, this was to emphasize the rock theme of the video. The question ‘who’s bad’ is aimed at young gang members who think they’re ‘bad’, which Michael tries to change the meaning by saying ‘I’m bad’ referring to the talent young people have, to which they’re the ones who are really ‘bad’. At the end of the song, Michael Jackson goes acapella which he repeats the lines ‘Who’s bad’ and ‘You’re doin’ it wrong’ with his back up dancers including Daniel Jefferson, an artist who is most famous for his song ‘Shalamar Nights’ who was the first music artist to publicly do the moonwalk on television, adding to the talent involved in the video. After this, Michael then shakes hands with the boy who is played by Wesley Snipes which denotes his success of getting his point across to his friends to 'who's bad'. Our intention is to put across an important point through our media production that ‘They Don’t Care About Us’, however, in a different approach than the ‘Bad' video.