ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how Michael Jackson reclaimed and politically reworked the classic iconography of minstrel dance. This is through the close examination of his 1983 televised performance of ‘Billie Jean’ at Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, the performance that catapulted Jackson to a new level of superstardom. As the chapter illustrates, within this seminal dance, Jackson transformed the twisted Black body of minstrel caricature into an image of a different sort to at once symbolically recalibrate its history and usher in a whole new era for the tradition of blackface minstrelsy.
