On November 14, 1991, the world premiere of the Black or White music video aired simultaneously on Fox, MTV, BET, and VH1 in the United States, plus broadcasters in 27 other countries. The simulcast was scheduled to lead into the season premiere of The Simpsons on Fox. The audience that night is estimated to have been around 500 million people — the largest live music-video debut in history.
The full short film ran 11 minutes. It was directed by John Landis, the same director who had made the Thriller video eight years earlier. It featured Macaulay Culkin (then 11 years old and at the height of Home Alone fame), Tess Harper, George Wendt, and a then-revolutionary digital morphing sequence in which faces of different races, genders, and ages transformed seamlessly into one another while singing the song's central refrain.
The morphing technology, developed by Pacific Data Images, had only existed in any usable form for about two years. The Black or White sequence used it on a scale no one had attempted before, and it became the most widely seen application of digital morphing in any medium for the rest of the decade.
The final four minutes of the short film, known as the panther dance, generated weeks of controversy. Michael, alone on a dark city street, danced furiously while smashing windows and a parked car. Parents complained. MTV briefly added a disclaimer. Michael eventually issued a public statement explaining that the sequence was meant to depict the rage of being judged by skin color. He also added a small image to one of the windows to frame the violence within the song's broader message.
Dangerous, the album Black or White launched, debuted at number one in 14 countries and went on to sell more than 32 million copies. The era of the visionary, multi-disciplinary Michael — the one who made short films instead of music videos — was fully open.