it's close to midnight

For some reason, yesterday I was thinking about Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' (the song, not the album), and wondering whether it really contained a line about "the thing with the forty eyes". And yeah, checking the lyrics, it does. Funny how that's the bit that's always stuck with me - and this is a song that has stuck with me: one of the first songs I remember being genuinely obsessed with and listening to repeatedly. Being driven to a school which was a foreboding prospect more mornings than not, somehow it was always the perfect soundtrack, especially on those bitterly cold, near-dark mornings in the depths of winter. Today, I find it harder to think of a song which I was into at an equally early age which I still stand by so passionately (even while the shadow of the artist himself languishes in his own personal circle of hell).

I think the explanation for my younger self's fascination has to be connected to the context in which I was raised: happy-clappy Evangelical Christian, casual reader! There was something undeniably apocalyptic about 'Thriller'. Something that promised judgment and damnation, something with the same fantastical imagery as the Book of Revelations. The Thing With The Forty Eyes, that shall appear in the last days and be worshipped by all nations... It sent chills down my spine. But what kind of chills? Not fear, exactly.

There's this weird tension between the idea of impending damnation, and the urgent excitement not only of the adrenaline and the chase but also of corruption itself - the high that comes from being Bad, even from being Devilish. Jacko's zombie fantasy fits very well with the vampire fantasies of something like The Lost Boys (I always thought that ending, if not a large chunk of the film, was a cop out, a betrayal for anyone else who remembers seeing those posters and thinking "yeah, I bet it IS fun to be a vampire!"). 'Thriller''s thrill feels like the same transgressive kick that informs the slasher/horror movies of the time: a harsh, Victorian morality crossed with an undisguised obsession with the same sins that are being punished - primarily sex, naturally. I found myself wondering whether Jackson was tapping into the idea of dancing as sin, the Devil as the real Lord of the Dance, Kevin Bacon, 'Once More With Feeling', yada yada yada.

But then I took another look at the lyrics to Vincent Price's contribution and realised that in fact, I had it twisted. It's not the people who dance who are going to be pulled into the Hellmouth. It's the people who won't dance, the ones who are "holding the wall" as Outkast would have it. The sheep will be separated from the goats:

"...And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpse's shell..."

In other words, it's dance or die. Spooky.