2007·Early YouTube·skill
CPDRC Dancing Inmates
Fifteen hundred prisoners in a Philippine jail performing Thriller in formation, filmed from a balcony.
You might remember it as Cebu prison Thriller, dancing inmates Philippines
An early online video
Originally published on YouTube.
- SourceOrigin not yet established
- MediaNot held by ViralWorld
What this was
It first appeared in 2007, during early YouTube.
It is one of the earliest global YouTube phenomena to come from outside the English-speaking internet, and it arrived with a genuinely difficult question attached: whether a rehabilitation programme that produces a spectacle for the world is rehabilitation or performance, and whether men serving sentences can meaningfully consent to being filmed by the institution holding them. NPR was covering it within weeks; the BBC returned to the prison three years later.
By January 2010 the Thriller video was among the ten most-watched on YouTube, with over twenty million views. The programme continued for years, drew tourists, and outlived the administration that started it. Michael Jackson's choreographer visited. The inmates were never paid.
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Grouped by explicit relationships where evidence exists, and by shared theme otherwise.
Behind the recordWhere it came from
Original source uncertain. This is the earliest copy currently known.
No original upload has been established for this record. The index is showing the earliest copy it currently knows about, and says so rather than guessing.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.