It’s a tale of glossed-over controversies.
Michael Jackson’s once-celebrated legacy has been marred by serious and repeated accusations of child molestation, casting a long shadow over his storied career.
Reports suggest even his daughter, Paris Jackson, has come to believe the allegations of pedophilia against him.
Despite this, Hollywood, along with much of the Jackson family, has pressed on with the release of ‘Michael,’ a biographical film that presents a sanitized version of his life. The movie sidesteps the abuse Jackson faced during his childhood, his struggles with drug addiction, and notably, the enduring accusations of pedophilia that tarnished the reputation of the former King of Pop.
Remarkably, the film omits any mention of his 2005 criminal trial, where he was acquitted of charges related to molesting a 13-year-old boy, effectively erasing a significant chapter of his life from its narrative.
This idealized portrayal has not resonated well with audiences or critics. The film, which debuted on Monday, holds a mere 34 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics lambasting its revisionist approach to Jackson’s history.
‘This is a frustratingly shallow, inert picture, a kind of cruise-ship entertainment, which can’t quite bring itself to show that Michael was an abuse victim, brutalized by his father and robbed of his childhood,’ said The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw.
‘Perhaps this is because it would have a cause-and-effect implication [on the later part of] Jackson’s life in which his behavior was increasingly perplexing, dangling a baby over a hotel balcony — as well as facing sexual abuse allegations.’
The new ‘Michael’ biopic (pictured), which premiered Monday, currently has 34 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and critics have savaged its alternate take on history.
Indeed — there was an ambient concern, never quite vocalized for legal reasons, that a grown man who preferred the company of very young boys, who was first accused of child molestation in 1993, and who told Oprah in a televised interview that he considered sharing his bed with little boys, during what he called sleepovers, ‘a beautiful thing’ now had children of his own.
One of whom he dangled over a hotel balcony when that child, named Blanket, was a baby.
Whether you believe the accusations or not, Michael Jackson was weird. His best friend, in adulthood, was a chimp named Bubbles.
Jackson — again, as a grown man — slept in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber.
He named his estate ‘Neverland’ and built an amusement park on its grounds. He claimed his fixation on childhood games, rides and preoccupations — on children — was because he never had a childhood of his own.
Jackson told Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, in a series of interviews published in the 2009 book The Michael Jackson Tapes, that he would watch children playing in the park across from his recording studio and cry.
‘I wanted to go over there so bad it was killing me, just to make a friend to say, ‘Hi,’ Jackson said. ‘I used to walk the streets looking for someone to talk to’.
Boteach: ‘How old were you?’
Jackson: ‘It was during the Thriller album.’
Let me answer that question directly: Jackson was 24 years old when he made Thriller. A grown man, at the height of his artistry, crying because he couldn’t go play with children.
Not that that’s in the movie. Or that there’s any given conflict of interest in Michael’s nephew playing Michael, or in the Jackson family — the beneficiaries of Jackson’s estate — being heavily involved.
New York Times critic Alissa Wilkinson wrote, ‘The movie itself becomes a tale of triumph and glory for someone everyone admired, rather than an estate’s attempt to scrub clean the life story of a star who has been multiply accused, in harrowing terms, of child sexual abuse. That same estate is the reason that an HBO documentary that gives space for two men who have accused Jackson to tell their story has been deleted from its streaming platform; you can’t watch it, because it might as well not exist.’
As the Daily Mail exclusively reports, Paris has become close to the Cascio family, who say that her father repeatedly raped four of their children for years.
‘Paris has stayed in touch… and she is especially close with their mother, Connie,’ a source told the Daily Mail. ‘There have been some very candid conversations over the years between Paris and the Cascio family and, based upon those, Paris knows exactly what her father did.’
Paris, now 28 and living in Los Angeles, is not ready to speak about her beliefs publicly — yet.
‘This will come out officially from Paris in time,’ the source said. ‘It’s going to come out when Paris wants it to come out.’
She has only recently altered tattoos memorializing her father, including a sizable one of his face on her arm — that one defaced by a scar caused by her apparent self-harm.
As the Daily Mail exclusively reports, Paris Jackson has become close to the Cascio family, who say that her father repeatedly raped four of their children for years. (Michael is pictured with Dominic Cascio)
Paris (pictured) has recently altered tattoos memorializing her father, including a sizable one of his face on her arm – that one defaced by a scar caused by her apparent self-harm.
For a very long time, Paris had been among her father’s defenders. Her outspokenness comes with great cost. If the Cascio family wins the lawsuit they’ve filed against the Jackson estate, that costs Paris money.
Why risk that? And why risk permanent estrangement from the Jackson family?
It’s worth noting – as the New York Times points out – that HBO very quietly pulled the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland, in which two alleged survivors accused Jackson of serially molesting them as children, from its streaming service after a legal dispute with the Jackson estate.
Has #MeToo meant nothing? Harvey Weinstein? Sean Combs?
Now is surely the time to truly examine who Jackson was and how – and why – the media and the culture may have allowed him to hide in plain sight.
None other than Paris Jackson said it herself on social media last summer.
The new Michael hagiography, she said, is full of ‘lies’ and inaccuracies, and she opted out of it completely rather than fight what she implies is — for now — an unwinnable fight.
‘The film panders to a very specific section of my dad’s fandom that still lives in the fantasy,’ Paris said. ‘And they’re going to be happy with it.’
