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Michael Jackson's “Beat It”

About and why I like it

"Beat It" is a song written and performed by American recording artist Michael Jackson and produced by Quincy Jones.

Following the successful chart performances of the Thriller singles "The Girl Is Mine" and "Billie Jean", "Beat It" was released on February 3, 1983 as the album's third single.

The song was promoted with a short film that featured Michael Jackson bringing two gangs together through the power of music and dance.

The reason I like this music video is due to the narrative Michael Jackson puts into it. He does this with most of his videos, another good example of this is Thriller.

Type of Music

The video is a mix of performance and a narrative.

The performance part of the video intercut with the narrative of shots of the artist singing, whilst there is a gang war taking place inside a diner.

The gang war is prevented by the singing and dancing of Michael Jackson. This prevents a knife-crime fight, which suggests that one person would kill the other.

Genre

The music video has qualities of both rock and pop .

The performance of the video which involves singing and dancing, is very stereotypical towards most pop videos as they contain these characteristics.

The outfits are more of the rock genre: tatty jeans, dark black clothes aren’t things you would really find in a pop video but could easily be found in a rock video.

The narrative is something that is more common of the pop genre, problems being solved by singing and dancing happens a lot in pop videos.

All of these characteristics show it is a mix of the genres.

Visual and lyrics relationship

The visuals are not a don’t have that much of a close relationship to the lyrics, but there are some parts that do .

The visuals are set in the future when the fight is happening and the lyrics act as the back story to these visuals.

The visual and lyrics are asynchronous since a lot of the time when he is mentioning the fight it’s showing Michael Jackson instead of the brawl.

Visuals and music

The music is edited in time with the lyrics.

The music gradually picks up pace over time and each shot time begins to increase in speed. This means that as the music gets faster the pace of the edit gets faster.

Another bit of relationship between the visuals and music is that when the music begins to get an instrumental section, the fight breaks out. When the lyrics resume the fight is broken up. This helps to show the narrative that it is singing and dancing that solves the problem.

Camera shot types

Throughout most of the narrative section, long and medium shots are used (which are more common in the rock genre) to help show the tension and anger between the rival gangs.

During the narrative section, it is mainly close ups (which is common for the pop genre).

However when the dancing begins it becomes long shots so that the dancing can be seen, this is still common of the pop genre as it is a performance element.

Voyeurism and Intertexuality

There is no voyeurism in the video. This makes the artist look more respectable as he does not need the help of sex to sell his work.

The entire plot of the music video is reminiscent of American Gangster films. The fact that it is set in a diner, and two gangs are against each other is the stereotypical plot for an American Gangster film.

The entire music video is a lot like Broadway Musical ‘West Side Story’ in the fact that two gangs are out to get each other, and there is crime involving knife. However it is not a homage or pastiche because it was never intended to look like the musical.