{"id":1463,"date":"2014-10-28T18:17:27","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T01:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=1463"},"modified":"2014-10-28T18:17:27","modified_gmt":"2014-10-29T01:17:27","slug":"dangerous-and-the-revolution-of-michael-jacksons-panther-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=1463","title":{"rendered":"Dangerous and the Revolution of Michael Jackson’s Panther Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m loving one of the recent 33 1\/3 books<\/a> (the 100th<\/sup> volume?!) focusing on Michael Jackson\u2019s Dangerous<\/em><\/a>. I distinctly remember buying the album just as I began flirting with my own sense of musical interest. My friend down the street would regularly play the record when we were hanging out, while a separate group would shortly engender me in the cult of grunge that was quickly snapping up the interests of many of us (the author, Susan Fast, points out, early on, that Nirvana\u2019s Nevermind<\/em> would eventually best Dangerous<\/em> on the charts \u2013 probably a key moment in Western musical history). Because of the album\u2019s centricity in my formative years in elementary and middle school, it is probably the Jackson album I\u2019m most familiar with (despite the fact that most of Jackson\u2019s biggest hits were years past in his repertoire by this point).<\/p>\n

With 20 years of distance, I appreciate Fast\u2019s emphasis on the album\u2019s two biggest hits as transgressive moments in Jackson\u2019s oeuvre. The saccharine \u201cHeal the World,\u201d being so much more than a feel-good yawn-fest and \u201cBlack or White\u201d being a confrontational moment of racial politics.<\/p>\n