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JANET Jackson may sport the same plastic face as her brother Michael, but the difference between them is more than a pair of silicone breasts. Unlike her self-mutilating sibling, Janet positively radiates good health.
In her latest video "Runaway," Jackson becomes a fairy-tale character, leaping from global monument to global monument like a kung-fu heroine. Along the way, she also manages to join two other dancers in an Asian-influenced sequence, executed on an airliner wing.
It's a marvelous piece of entertainment, a fast-paced update of classic Hollywood musicals. The song, with its constant punctuation of temple bells, even sounds pretty good heard on its own as the opening track of Design of a Decade 1986/1996 (Helicon) Jackson's new greatest hits selection. That's the good news. The bad news is that listening to 18 consecutive formulaic dance tracks without the visual aid of her sumptuously imaginative videos, is a bit like discovering the picture of Dorian Grey.
Brother Michael may wear his sickness on his lacy sleeve, but for all his sad confusion, one can still hear his soul somewhere in there under the scar tissue. Janet, on the other hand,...