Break Yo’ TV: Michael Jackson - “Liberian Girl”
Is there any musical phenomenon more depressing than a bad video undermining a perfectly good song? As Michael Jackson ballads go, “Liberian Girl” is one of his most heartfelt, and a genuine highlight of 1987’s Bad. My 13-year-old self had all the words memorized, and I frequently imagined myself as the titular heroine.
Unfortunately, the video tries hard to make you forget what a good song it is. Its wretchedness is only amplified by the fact that this video was made by one of — if not the — most inventive video artists of all time. He, who married visuals and songs in such surprising and inventive ways, produced this?
Perhaps it was too much to expect MJ to come up with another killer video for the ninth and final single released from Bad. Could he really recreate the cheesy genius of the “Bad” video? The sharp-dressed sleekness of “Smooth Criminal?” The haunting images of “Man in the Mirror” or the creepy stalker vibe of “Dirty Diana?” Probably not. But that didn’t mean he had to turn out this turgid three-and-a-half minute exercise in scene-dropping. What begins with a scene in an African village that seems related to the song’s lyrics quickly transforms into a wink-wink, nudge-nudge, spot-the-celebrity cameo silliness.
The plot of the video, such as it is, finds everyone from Rick Schroeder to Whoopi Goldberg waiting (in vain, it seems) for the King of Pop to arrive before the filming of some big project. A better video? Sadly, that never happens. By the time MJ shows up in the video’s final second, the one feeling you’re left with is anger — at him, for making you sit through this tripe.
At the 1:29 mark, Goldberg asks of no one in particular, “Who’s directing this?” I have better questions. Why is Richard Dryefuss steering a boat? Why are John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John lip-syncing the words to the song in a vain attempt to recreate their Grease shtick? And most importantly, what, beyond MJ’s need to show us how many celebrities he can corral for one video, is the point of all this? My only minor joy in watching this video was seeing Debbie (sorry, Deborah) Gibson.
And therein may be the one level on which this video actually does work: There might not be a better repository for unrelated ’80s celebrities in existence.
MJ I love you…but when I saw Steve Gutenberg….I had to bow my head…blah indeed
Highlight of the video is the “shot of Ackroyd’s career”: “AW MIKE!” It’s said with confusion and disappointment…and lots of neck fat.
Gillian Rosheuvel, you said: “Its wretchedness is only amplified by the fact that this video was made by one of — if not the — most inventive video artists of all time. He, who married visuals and songs in such surprising and inventive ways, produced THIS?”
I hope that my following words would help you to explain your daughter why THIS video is the work of a genius.
First of all to appreciate it you really NEED to see the full version, which is 5:43 minutes long. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGXPGBoouNI
Hint: credits are the most important in this particular video!
Stop the video at mark 5:24, there you’ll see a man in bondage with 3 arms and “?” under his picture. Simple joke? Barely…..Read this, though it’s too long, you won’t be disappointed:
The Man Who Had Three Arms
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is a two-act play for three actors by Edward Albee.
The play takes place in a theatre where the main character HIMSELF is about to speak to the assembled group about his life of celebrity as The Man Who Had Three Arms.The other two actors of the play, MAN and WOMAN, play, variously, two people who are introducing HIMSELF, the parents and wife of HIMSELF, and the manager of HIMSELF. In the first act, HIMSELF describes his transformation from a successful family man to a person who is horrified to discover that a third arm is growing from between his shoulder blades. In the second act, HIMSELF describes being on the celebrity circuit and all that entails—“money, sex, adulation”—while he grows more and more in debt. His wife leaves him. He falls apart in front of the audience only to deal with a final surprise. Albee directed the Broadway premiere of the play at the Lyceum Theatre in New York City in April 1983 with Robert Drivas in the title role.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Had_Three_Arms
And here’s the excerpts of this play’s review for better understanding what it’s all about:
THE MAN WHO HAD THREE ARMS
By Frank Rich
Published: April 6, 1983, Wednesday
HIMSELF is mad because he was once ”the most famous man in the world” and now he isn’t so famous anymore. A standard-cut advertising man with a wife and three kids, he had one day awakened to discover that he was growing a third arm on his back. Suddenly Himself was sought after by royalty, cheered by ticker-tape parades and toasted by talk-show hosts. He had become, one might say, a contemporary Elephant Man – complete with trunk.
But when we meet Himself, the parade has passed by. The third arm ultimately withered away, and so did the protagonist’s celebrity and fortune. While he used to command $25,000 for a personal appearance, he now speaks for ”half a grand and a toddle or two of gin.” In the lecture we see, Himself is a last-minute replacement for a morefamous speaker who has died. Drunk and in debt, he’s now just another ordinary-looking man at the end of his rope.
One of the more shocking lapses of Mr. Albee’s writing is that he makes almost no attempt even to pretend that Himself is anything other than a maudlin stand-in for himself, with the disappearing arm representing an atrophied talent.
It’s hard to feel much sympathy for a man who, by his own account, greedily helped himself to the perks of fame – unlimited publicity, power, money and sex – and now complains that the adulation was ”idiotic,” that the power was short-lived, that the fortune was recklessly squandered, and that the sex was empty.
”Baggage” is easily the nicest term by which Himself refers to women. Indeed, the only person not treated contemptuously during the monologue is the speaker, who frequently likens his martyrdom to Christ’s.
HIMSELF whips himself and the audience ”into mutual rage and revulsion.” But only at the end does the anger come to a point. It’s then that Mr. Albee at last begins to deal seriously with the issue his play wants to be about – an inability, as Himself puts it, ”to distinguish between my self-disgust and my disgust with others.” As the curtain falls, the sobbing HIMSELF falls to his knees, torn between asking the despised audience to leave and begging it to stay.
It’s a painful, if embarrassing, spectacle, because it shows us the real and sad confusion that exists somewhere beneath the narcissistic arrogance and bile that the author uses as a dodge to avoid introspection the rest of the time. While ”The Man Who Had Three Arms” is mostly an act of self-immolation, its final display of self-revelation holds out at least the slender hope that Mr. Albee might yet pick himself up from the floor.
Did you see any parallels?
Watch this video one more time. From the very beginning its main theme is illusions and audience’s deception . The video is dedicated to Liz Taylor but where’s she? It begins with “a scene in an African village that seems related to the song’s lyrics”, but it’s another illusion. Then we see a girl, but it’s not about her. “Who’s directing this?”, asks Whoopi and we see Spielberg.
Dreyfuss asks: “WHICH MICHAEL JACKSON ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?”
“One of the most inventive video artists of all time, who married visuals and songs in such surprising and inventive ways?” Over-operated freak with a prosthetic nose - Wacko Jacko? A child prodigy? The man, who had “weird” attraction to children? A reclusive pop-star? A drug-addict? etc. How many faces of Michael Jackson we’ve seen through all 40 years of his career? Do we still know whom he really was?
Probably, he was just a human being with his “anguish, pain and turbulations” and shaky relationships with audience who both praised and despised him at the same time. “The victim of selfish kind of love” denied the right to make mistakes without being critisized by each and everyone. And certainly a genius, foreseer, if you like, who knew exactly from the very beginning, how the “show” of his life would develop and end up, but unwilling to change anything, ’cause though “it was strange what he had to deal with, he dealt with it anyway”.
It’s just my humble opinion about the message of this video.
Oh, I SO agree!!!! This has got to be the most meaningless MJ video of all time. It has no relation to the song, which is so beautiful. Even if he made some regular lip-syncing music video, it would be miles better than this.
Man, that really is a who’s-who of 80s nostalgia! Ah, Steve Guttenberg. Why couldn’t all his films be Police Academy?