Michael has been framed as a bit of a referendum on Jackson\u2019s public image, a reputation that\u2019s been distorted and dented over the years, if not fatally. It feels a bit unfair: Michael is squeaky clean by design<\/a>, charting Jackson\u2019s childhood in the suburbs of Gary, Indiana, his difficult relationship with his father and manager, Joe, and his ascent to superstardom. We meet Bubbles, Jackson\u2019s primate bestie, and watch as he buys himself board games, comforts sick children, makes the \u201cThriller\u201d video, and wows Wembley. He is practically saintly; a lovely albeit lonely man who blessed us with the gift of his music and did absolutely nothing else, your honour. And because the film ends in 1988, with Jackson on top of the world, all the weirdness of Jackson\u2019s later life \u2013 from the child sex abuse allegations first made against him in 1993, to his bizarre marriages to Lisa Marie Presley and Debbie Rowe, to the increasing surreality of his augmented face \u2013 is left off-screen. A sequel has been threatened. God knows how that\u2019ll work.<\/p>\n But the cold truth is that it might not matter. Jackson is our most uncancellable artist, living or dead, and proof that as long as you can waggle something shiny and expensive (and ideally brilliant) in the faces of the masses, everything else is met with a shrug.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople don\u2019t care that he was a child molester,\u201d said documentary filmmaker Dan Reed this week<\/a>. \u201cLiterally, people just don\u2019t care \u2026 I think a lot of people just love his music and turn a deaf ear. And short of having actual video evidence of Michael Jackson engaged in sexual intercourse with a seven-year-old child, I don\u2019t know what would be sufficient to change these people\u2019s minds.\u201d<\/p>\n Reed is the director of Leaving Neverland, the 2019 docuseries based around interviews with Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who alleged childhood grooming and rape by Jackson. Leaving Neverland, released a decade after Jackson\u2019s death in 2009, made shockwaves, but not to an extent that his image was permanently wounded overall. The series is also impossible to legally see in the US anymore, with the Jackson estate having taken advantage of a non-disparagement clause in an early-Nineties contract between Jackson and its broadcaster HBO for an unrelated concert film. HBO pulled the series from its streaming platforms as a result, chalking up a win for an estate determined more than ever to keep the Jackson brand as spotless as possible.<\/p>\n Jackson devotees are understandably protective of their idol, but the success of Michael suggests that even those outside the more voracious cult of his fandom are willing to overlook the King of Pop\u2019s darker contours. It\u2019s arguable that Jackson\u2019s music makes him just too good to phase out of public life entirely, that the bombastic genius of \u201cThriller\u201d and the influential razzle-dazzle of his live performances overpower the ickiness of his private life. Time has also been an asset: younger generations probably won\u2019t remember the headlines about Jackson\u2019s baby-dangling balcony theatrics, or the Nineties and Noughties comedy series that reiterated the idea of Jackson as a creepy boogeyman. Nor Martin Bashir\u2019s once inescapable 2003 sit down with Jackson<\/a>, which \u2013 leaving aside Bashir\u2019s ultimately shady investigative practices, as exemplified by the revelations about his famous Princess Diana interview<\/a> \u2013 saw Jackson admitting to and defending sharing his bed with young boys.<\/p>\n This week, Jackson\u2019s nephew Taj \u2013 the son of Jackson\u2019s brother Tito \u2013 suggested that all of the above was a malicious media confection<\/a>, cannily using the Trump playbook that has become the default of modern image-laundering. \u201cSorry media, u don\u2019t get to control the narrative anymore of who Michael Jackson truly was,\u201d he wrote on X. \u201cThe public gets to watch this movie\u2026 they will decide for themselves. And you can\u2019t handle that.\u201d<\/p>\n What is frustrating about this is that Jackson shouldn\u2019t really be \u201ccancelled\u201d, or his music exiled from public life. Instead, a smart response to disgraced or at least questionable artists from the past should be to place them in context \u2013 celebrate the art, while also acknowledging the horror, alleged or otherwise. Last year, the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft staged an exhibition of works by the artist Eric Gill<\/a>, a figure of significant contention since 1989, when a biography revealed that he had sexually abused his daughters. The show was curated by real survivors of sexual abuse, who selected the art to display and determined how it should be presented. \u201cIf you don\u2019t show his work, you\u2019re not telling the story of this man,\u201d Vivien Almond, one of the show\u2019s curators, told The Guardian<\/a>. \u201cMy view is it needs to be seen, but included alongside it needs to be the story of what this man did.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael had an opportunity to reflect the complexity of the Jackson story, and our collective relationship to artists accused of doing very bad things. Instead it has leant into crude absolutes: Jackson as virtuous angel; his accusers as money-grabbing frauds not worthy of consideration. Lost is the potential of a teaching moment about the messy realities of humanity, and the emotional hold that great art has on us. And if you thought a sequel might do just that, think again. Filmed for Michael, but left on the cutting room floor at the behest of lawyers<\/a>, was an entire segment dramatising the 1993 sex abuse allegations by 13-year-old Jordan Chandler<\/a>, which led to a raid on Jackson\u2019s home and a lawsuit. (Jackson settled for $23m, and the investigation was closed.) Director Antoine Fuqua told The New Yorker this week that he intended for the scenes to exonerate Jackson, adding: \u201cSometimes people do some nasty things for some money.\u201d<\/p>\n Oh well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-550024","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-52767193.jpeg\")
Michael Jackson leaves a courtroom in 2005 (Getty Images)<\/p>\n![\"Jaafar](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/MICHAEL_KM2_0106R10C5.jpeg\")
Jaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson in the new biopic \u2018Michael\u2019 (Lionsgate)<\/p>\n