What should we do about the Man in the Mirror?
OPINION: It's been nearly a year since the shocking documentary Leaving Neverland confirmed what most of us had already suspected - that Michael Jackson was a systematic paedophile.
The response to this well-established narrative was fairly consistent: no more Beat It played on podcasts and in parties around the world. Album sales and US radio airtime dropped. The Jackson songs we were used to hearing in public places and retail areas were removed from playlists. While some fans adamantly refrained from such drastic actions, there was a widespread click on pause for the music of one of the modern world's greatest musicians.
I must admit, I miss his music. For some reason, I remember the last time I heard Jackson's tunes wafting along public airwaves. It was at the supermarket at 9pm; the doldrums of throwing Weet-bix into my trolley were blown along by the bold rhythms of Rock with You. Endorphins surged as I headed into the frozen food section, full of the contagious energy Jackson magicked up for more than four decades of music-making.
But the detail, conviction, and integrity of Jackson's victims' accounts of the abuse they endured over several years was compelling enough to make me turn his music off, at least for a while.
Since much of the world is not listening anymore, I wonder if it matters. And more broadly, does it really matter what we think of the artist when their art is so good?
Take the French painter Paul Gauguin. After deserting his wife and five kids in Paris, he ended up in Tahiti and the small Pacific Island of Hiva Oa. He married three young brides – all below the age of 15. He painted them too, beautifully, erotically, masterfully, all while infecting many of the local girls with syphilis and having nightly parties in his Tahitian home, dubbed the House of Orgasms. It's hard to look at his painting Three Tahitian Women outside of this telling backdrop.
Is this piece of extraordinary art, or Bill Cosby's ground-breaking, African-American themed comedy series The Cosby Show, or Harvey Weinstein-produced films like The King's Speech and Shakespeare in Love, or – ouch – closer to home, wife-beating, serial-adulterer Barry Crump's book A Good Keen Man ... do these rich contributions to life deserve none of our attention because of the unforgivable behaviours of their deeply flawed, misogynistic creators?
We are, after all, complex creatures. We are all made up of varying bits of good and bad, creative and dull, tense and calm, colourful and plain, skilled and clueless – few of us sit at the ends of the trillions of continuums that make up our multi-layered, labyrinthine selves.
And so it goes that "great art can be made by terrible people," as Greg Tate of The Guardian argues in response to Jackson's apparent crimes, and "that believing an artist automatically embodies goodness because we like their work is a dreadful mistake".
Then there's John Lasseter, another fall-out from the effective #MeToo movement that exposed Weinstein's and many others' exploitative behaviours, legitimised in the world of movie-making. Lasseter, who brought the movies Cars and Toy Story into the world, admitted and regretted his sexual transgressions, underwent therapy, and carried out charity work, but was told, in the end, that there was no longer a place for him in Pixar's executive team.
In Lasseter's letter accepting that decision, he asked an important question: how could a man in his position ever redeem himself?
Like many other abusive and brilliant men in the arts, Jackson can no longer redeem himself. But his estate can, and they certainly are trying to downplay the extensive damage that Leaving Neverland caused to his legacy.
Will snubbing Jackson's music and Gauguin's paintings assert my repulsion to abuse and violence while appreciating genius and hard work for what it is?
There must be some middle ground where these complexities, like our multi-faceted selves, can be respected.
Maybe the answer is linked to money. If my enjoyment of the art involves a commercial exchange – airtime royalties, streaming sales, purchasing Jackson-branded gifts – then my money has enabled his posthumous success (and by association, his alleged crimes) to continue.
But if I'm dancing around my lounge listening to one of Jackson's old CDs, can I be doing anyone any harm?
Or maybe the answer lies in time.
RNZ's Kathryn Ryan suggested, in the aftermath of the Leaving Neverland broadcast, that we have a grace period where we don't play his music in recognition of the fact that we respect the hurt and vulnerability of Jackson's victims.
This sounds sensible enough. So now I ask myself: is the grace period over? Can I sing along to Man in the Mirror as I brush my hair or, riskier still, in aisle 8 of Pak 'n Save?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/119353034/what-should-we-do-about-the-man-in-the-mirror
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