Nothing in the biopic Michael reminds you of the drawn-out lawsuits, the accusations of child abuse, the testimonies from the documentary Leaving Neverland. The film ends before the Bad Tour in 1988, when the rumors could no longer be suppressed. That was also the moment when, as a sixteen year old, I saw him perform live for the first time in the Kuip in Rotterdam.
I remember that we had already seen Michael Jackson for a few years at that time.Wacko Jacko” mentioned; children and teenagers clearly sense when adult men deviate from the norm. We weren’t too concerned about it; the total package of a superstar seemed to naturally come with necessary aberrations.
Times have changed, stars can no longer get away with misconduct or worse. I join the camp of those who watched the film Michael musically phenomenal, but which does not attract nostalgic canonization.
The overall message of Michael is clear: Michael Jackson is a victim, he was oppressed by his big bad father. Anyone who wants can see a penis reference in a joystick scene, where Michael gives a child instructions on how to play a game, or see a reference to ‘evil’ (read: sexual abuse) in the snake, Michael Jackson’s pet. Because the reality of the changed zeitgeist full of #metoo scandals cannot be pushed away while watching.
There is more that is troubling. Michael Jackson’s drawn-out love for animals also doesn’t work in this day and age. It’s not at all cute to have a chimpanzee, a wild animal, in your room, just as it’s not endearing to have a giraffe in your backyard. With a very benevolent look you might see another panpsychic – pansexual? – or animistic view of life.
That panpsychism, the idea that everything around us has a spirit/soul/consciousness, seems to be on the rise. While ‘tree hugger’ Princess Irene was once mocked for it, now there is a film about the feelings of trees (Silent Friend), and this newspaper published a book special about contact with trees. But the discomfort I feel with the relationship between Bubbles the chimpanzee and Michael prevails: we have now learned that animals are not props.
In a hedonistic and consumerist society you are in a state of perpetual adolescence: your entire life forever young
The love of animals and sick children act as signals of innocence; This of course also applies to Peter Pan. In Michael the book Peter Pan comes up so often that it becomes a liability. Michael identifies with the boy who wants to grow up in innocence, he calls his estate Neverland.
Journalist Margo Jefferson puts it in words About Michael Jackson. An analysis of The King of Pop (2019) aptly: “Neverland is a cheerful presexual island ruled by boys.” It is one of the best books I read about the Jackson trial, with attention to the role of fiction in it: the defense wanted a psychiatrist to testify who would explain why Jackson’s (children’s) book collection – including his obsession with Peter Pan – showed that he did not fit the profile of the pedophile. But the prosecutors in turn threatened to have a psychiatrist review the same books and conclude the opposite.
Peter Pan was created by philosopher Susan Neiman Why would you grow up? (2014) once declared a “symbol of our time”. Peter Pan, she writes, was “most thoroughly imitated by Michael Jackson.” Unfortunately, she argued, we are stuck in a system that presents adulthood as something unattractive. Growing up is boring and serious, being young is adventurous and above all you are at your best. In a hedonistic and consumerist society you are in a state of perpetual adolescence: your entire life forever young.
Is Neiman’s Peter Pan hypothesis still valid today? No, because it’s woefully outdated, I think. Take the Netflix series Adolescencein which adolescence is no longer the blissful time of innocence and beauty, but a period in which your child can take a knife to school, disappear into Andrew Tate dens, and one day stab a girl. Moreover, there is nothing to indicate that teenagers would like to live in Neverland: at the age of fourteen they are showing off their CV on LinkedIn. Adolescence has become the most dangerous period: vaping, depressed and looksmaxxing to the end.
What would be the symbol of this time? I think of an impressive statue I once saw in the Vigeland Park sculpture park in Oslo: a stamping toddler, it’s called Sinnataggingcan be translated as little hothead. There is something strange about that statue: the left hand is worn off, just like the genitals. People touch that all the time, it seems. They adore the child. There is also something going on with the fanblind to reality, possessed by the dream. Margo Jefferson ends her book this way: “Michael Jackson speaks to and for the monstrous child in all of us.” Neverland has been supplanted by that monstrous child.
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Film about Michael Jackson is a saint’s life, with the father as the devil
