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- Critics condemn Michael for a sympathetic portrayal that largely skirts the child molestation allegations and stops before later legal battles.
- Jackson family fiercely rejected Leaving Neverland, but public belief and legal limits on suing the dead kept accusations alive.
- While applauding performances by Jaafar Jackson and the film's music, controversy around Michael Jackson persists and cannot be silenced.
by Earl Ofari Hutchinson
The predictable backlash against the Michael Jackson biopic came fast and furious. Many critics either panned the film or savaged it. There isn’t much middle ground. But that’s no surprise. It was that way with Michael for many of his later years. You were either wildly enthralled by him or wildly repelled by him.
Many of the anti “Michael” the film critics are ticked off because it paints a way too sympathetic Michael, and skirts the damaging claims of child molestation, and his long drawn out well-documented legal woes. The fact that the film stopped in 1988 and could not even if there was intent cover the legal charges and allegations because of legal prohibitions didn’t stop the carping.
The film gives huge nod to his conflict with his tyrannical, all controlling father. But for the most part it’s a knockout music and entertainment film.
Still, the film does prompt another look at Michael the man, and yes, the controversy. The instant a promotional screening at the Sundance Film festival of an earlier Jackson film, Leaving Neverland was announced in early 2019, the Jackson family loudly screamed foul. The family called the film a lie. The “lie” was a fresh claim that Jackson molested two young boys. Jackson’s defenders, along with the family, went down a checklist of facts about the pair that made their decades later claim of abuse seem the “lie” that the family charged it was.
However, the protests of Jackson’s family were maligned bumped up against some bitter facts. One was that it’s not legally possible to sue, shame or slander a dead man. Another was that Jackson was that dead man and he couldn’t speak or fight back.”
The bitterest fact of all, though, was that during Jackson’s life, and in the years after his death in June 2009, legions never stopped believing that Jackson was indeed the child molester that the pair claimed they were victims of. This made it easy to hype the documentary, and their subsequent appearance on a panel of sexual abuse survivors on an Oprah special, made the pair credible, and ensure that the taint on Jackson as child molester would remain firmly emblazoned on his name, dead or not.
The truth is that Jackson has always remained an inviting target of both fascination, speculation, and outright attack in death as in life. While the buzz and controversy around the documentary Leaving Neverland and to a lesser extent “Michael” would come and go, the controversy around Jackson will not.
The Jackson name and the issue of child molestation would hang heavily as a damning indictment that feeds the gossip mills and gives an arsenal of ammunition to Jackson detractors. This is not a small point. The child molester claim doesn’t rest on Jackson’s trial and clean acquittal on multiple child abuse charges. The claim of Jackson as child molester never hinged as much on the allegations as on the prurient fascination with a celebrity that in life and death took on preternatural stature.
This fascination in turn was fertile ground for any salacious, titillating, morsel of gossip, no matter how disgusting. There’s still more to the latest Jackson beatdown.
No charge stirs more disgust, revulsion, and pricks more emotional hot buttons than the charge of child molestation. The accusation stamps the Scarlet letter of doubt, suspicion, shame, and guilt on the accused. The accused can never fully expunge it.
There is simply no defense against it. Under the hyper intense media glare and spotlight that Jackson constantly in life remained under, the allegation no matter how bogus would have been endless fodder for the public gossip mill. This would have wreaked irreparable damage to Jackson’s ever shifting musical career and personal life.
Many will thrill at the phenomenal, patented Jackson song and especially dance movements, as I did, in the film, “Michael..” They will applaud the sterling performance of Jaafar Jackson as Michael, as I do. However, that won’t quiet the whispers, doubts, and hostility that the name Michael Jackson still raises with many. No film no matter how entertaining on Jackson will ever silence that.
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