Monday 23 July, 2007

Thrilling

I remember where I was when I first heard Michael Jackson's Thriller when I was 19 and backpacking in France. It blew me away - as the young Jackson always did (Michael? What happened to you? You were SO FUCKING GOOD. And on rewatching the Thriller clip your transformation from good Michael, to ghoul, seems so prophetic). A mere 24 years later I was lying on the couch last Friday night and flicking between the Geelong-Western Bulldogs match (we won - that's 11 in a row) and Suddenly 30, the film starring Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo - the entire point of the latter being a Thriller dance sequence in which the suddenly 30 Jennifer dances out her adolescent angst 20 years too late. But nothing beats this interpretation from 1500 choreographed Filipino prisoners. I found it on Defamer Australia though it's so viral you may well have seen it already. You could theorize about all the different and complex meanings generated by a extraordinary piece like this (especially the end!) and you still couldn't nail why it's so fabulous.