Our Childish Debate over Michael Jackson 

Michael Jackson was the King of Pop. Stop sullying his reputation with unproven charges of sexual abuse! 

Michael Jackson molested children. Stop listening to his music!

Welcome to the debate—such as it is—over Jackson, who is the subject of a new movie that set box office records last weekend. Nobody contests Jackson’s incandescent talent or his influence on popular culture. But we can’t seem to agree on how we should address the ugly parts of his past. 

That’s because we’re all stuck in a kind of perpetual childhood, where everything is simple. We can’t accept that terrifically gifted people can do terrible things. So, we either deny what they did or cancel them, which are different sides of the same coin. 

The director of Michael, the blockbuster biopic about Jackson, seems to be in the denial camp. In an interview in The New Yorker, Antoine Fuqua, the acclaimed director of action films including Training Day, cast doubt on the charges against the singer. “When I hear things about us—Black people in particular . . . there’s always pause,” said Fuqua, who—like Jackson—is African-American. “Sometimes people do some nasty things for some money.” 

Translated: Jackson was accused of molesting children because of his race. And his accusers are gold-diggers. 

In 1994, Jackson settled a lawsuit for an estimated $23 million with the family of a boy he allegedly abused. The original version of Michael opened with a police raid in that case at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, in which Fuqua depicted the star “being stripped naked, treated like an animal, a monster,” the director said. Again: Jackson is the victim, not the perpetrator. 

That scene got cut from the film after attorneys representing Jackson’s estate realized there was a clause in the settlement that blocked any mention or depiction of the family that accused him. The movie ends in 1988, before allegations against Jackson surfaced. 

In the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland, two men said that Jackson molested them as children. And earlier this year, four siblings in a family that was close to Jackson charged that they, too, were abused by him. 

But to Jackson’s defenders, there’s nothing to see, folks. It’s all rumor, innuendo, and character assassination. He’s been railroaded, just like so many innocent Black men before him. 

Meanwhile, critics said that watching the movie—or listening to Jackson’s music—makes the audience complicit in his awful acts. “It’s time to take a stand,” British journalist Charlotte Cripps wrote last week. “That means turning off the radio when his songs come on, and walking off the dancefloor at weddings.” 

That’s her right, of course, but that’s different from insisting that others do the same, or that they’re accessories to Jackson’s crimes if they don’t.  

This is the heart of cancel culture, which seeks to erase any trace of the monster. It’s not enough to criticize J.K. Rowling for her supposedly transphobic comments: you must stop buying her books. You shouldn’t attend a performance by comedian Louis C. K., who exposed himself to colleagues. And by all means, never go to a Woody Allen movie. 

Our heroes must be clean. And if they’re not, we need to drag them—and anyone who still admires their work—through the mud. 

The same holds in our stale debates about history. Either Thomas Jefferson was the freedom-loving father of our country or a racist who fathered children with a woman he enslaved. And to take a more recent example: either Cesar Chavez was a courageous spokesman for farm workers or a vicious predator who groomed young girls for sexual abuse. Either Roald Dahl was a brilliant children’s author or a chronic antisemite. (A new play on Broadway, Giant, makes the case that he was both.) 

You’re good or bad, friend or foe, victor or vanquished. That’s a child’s world, much like the one Michael Jackson created at Neverland. It featured a Ferris wheel and a petting zoo. And it’s also where he allegedly molested children. 

So, should we cancel him? Intriguingly, the director of Leaving Neverland—which detailed Jackson’s abuse of two boys—doesn’t think so. “I’m not trying to stop anyone from consuming his music,” Dan Reed said last week, as the Michael biopic opened. “Book burning is for the Middle Ages and the Taliban.” 

But people also need to reckon with Jackson’s misdeeds, Reed added, instead of blindly worshiping him. “It’s like religion,” he observed, denouncing Jackson’s defenders. “They think he’s a God, so blasphemy is not permitted.” 

Michael Jackson wasn’t a God. He was a human being with huge talents and horrible flaws. Why can’t we say both things at the same time? It’s time to leave Neverland. It’s time to grow up. 

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