Synopsis

A young boy, played by Macaulay Culkin, blasts rock music from his bedroom and sends his annoyed father flying into space. The father lands in Africa, where Michael Jackson appears and leads a globe-spanning celebration of music and dance. Jackson performs alongside African, Asian, Native American, and Eastern European dancers before joining children for the rap section. The video concludes with a rapid-fire morphing montage that blends people of different races, ages, and genders into one constantly changing human face.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video premiered on November 14, 1991, simultaneously in 27 countries. An estimated 500 million people watched, making it the largest television audience for a music-video premiere at the time.

• Reported production costs reached approximately $4 million, making "Black or White" one of the most expensive music videos produced up to that point.

• The celebrated morphing sequence was created by Pacific Data Images. It helped popularize digitally generated facial morphing in music videos, shortly after similar effects appeared in films such as *Willow* and *Terminator 2: Judgment Day*.

• Macaulay Culkin appears in the opening section, alongside George Wendt and Tess Harper. Members of the hip-hop group Another Bad Creation also appear during the rap passage.

• The international dance sections were filmed at locations including Vasquez Rocks in California. The performers represent several traditions and regions, including Africa, Thailand, Native North America, India, and Eastern Europe.

• The extended version's closing solo, in which Jackson smashes windows and car parts while performing more provocative movements, prompted widespread criticism. Jackson apologized, and the sequence was removed from many television broadcasts, although it remained available in longer home-video versions.

• The video's final face-morphing montage became its most enduring visual legacy and was frequently imitated in commercials, television programs, and later music videos.

• "Black or White" received the Grammy Award for Best Music Video, Short Form.