In her 2006 book On Michael Jackson, Margo Jefferson homes in on the singular power of the “Thriller” video on Jackson’s legacy:
When people praise Michael Jackson today, recall his gifts and why they loved him, they always mention the 1983 Thriller video. That’s because it’s a short masterpiece, a perfectly thought-through and executed horror tale. It is the tale of the double, the man with two selves and two souls, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, like Poe’s William Wilson or Dorian Gray and his portrait. The everyday man and his uncanny double. Which is his true self? [...] who is Michael Jackson’s double? Is it the brown-skinned self we can no longer see except in the old photos and videos? Is he a good man or a predator? Child protector or pedophile? A damaged genius or a scheming celebrity trying to hold on to his fame at any cost? A child star afraid of aging, or a psychotic freak/pervert/sociopath? What if the “or” is an “and”? What if he is all of these things?