His records were woven into the lives of millions – but the
documentary Leaving Neverland appears to make clear the King of Pop was a paedophile. So can we divorce the music from his alleged crimes?
Greg Tate: ‘We recognised MJ’s special kind of self-destruction decades ago’
All forced conversations in America about race, sex and celebrity are inevitably framed by horror and absurdity, history and the modern day. Because of this, many of my people – as in American born Blackfolk – refuse to countenance moral or legal absolutes when allegations of our stars committing sexual assault hit the news. They instead invoke a form of mathematical objectivity in pursuit of American democracy’s most impossible dream: a racialised level playing field. In this accounting, Bill Cosby and R Kelly aren’t defended despite victim-testimony and compelling evidence, but because not enough equally evil-ass white men have suffered enough public shaming for their crimes.
So Michael Jackson’s legacy is being discussed in another judicial session and once again black folk are being asked to weigh in on the latest charges. The thing is, our community recognised MJ’s special kind of self-destruction decades ago. Many Blackfolk learned to compartmentalise Jackson the moment they saw the
cover of Thriller, they separated the spectacular soul singer and dancing machine from his increasingly mad choices, including self-erasing skin-bleaching facelifts, chin enhancements and rhinoplasty. Would the brown-skinned, big-lipped, wide-nosed MJ who appears on the cover of
Off the Wall have been allowed by white parents to have as much unsupervised time with their pre-tweens? Would he have been trusted to disappear into his mansion for hours days and nights with them?
Having seen only the trailer for
Leaving Neverland, whatever confessional justice was intended by its two informants is compromised by its director’s hackneyed, tabloid true-crime approach. It doesn’t mean the testimony is untrue, just that it depends on the film-makers selling several racially burdened oxymorons at once: white-male innocence, white-male fragility and white-male truth-telling. Of course, MJ doesn’t belong just to the court of white public opinion or to the miscreant deeds he may have perpetrated at Neverland. He got connected to something far bigger than himself way back during his Motown years: he became an inextractable and irrevocable piece of Blackfolk’s story that can only be crooned, shouted, stomped, screamed and sanctified into the public record.
Greg Tate is a New York-based writer and musician. He was a staff writer at The Village Voice from 1987-2003.
Alexis Petridis: ‘Too many people have too much of their lives bound up with his music’
About five years ago, I interviewed
a collection of diehard Gary Glitter fans, unbowed by the singer’s convictions for possession of child pornography and sexual abuse. Some of them were clearly in denial about his crimes. Most weren’t, though, and talked calmly about separating the artist from the art. One told me that when Glitter was first convicted, he had thrown out all his records, only to find his music exerting an allure regardless. “You don’t choose music,” he said. “It chooses you.” Later he added: “It’s not just wiping him out of history, is it? It’s us, they’re whitewashing us as well. They’ve nicked 15, 20 years of my history.”
I thought about that remark when the furore around the Leaving Neverland documentary blew up. More compelling allegations that Jackson was a paedophile will undoubtedly lead to more calls for his music to be treated the way Glitter’s is – unofficially banned from radio and TV, never mentioned in public (even the Glitter fans I met would only talk to me under a veil of anonymity). I can see why, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. You can’t easily eradicate Jackson from history: too many people have too much of their lives bound up with his music. And perhaps you shouldn’t. Perhaps it is all right that his music continues to be heard, so long as it comes with a caveat: that it reminds us great art can be made by terrible people, that talent can be weaponised in the most appalling way, that believing an artist automatically embodies goodness because we like their work is a dreadful mistake that can have awful consequences.
Alexis Petridis is the Guardian’s chief pop critic.
Lyndsey Winship: ‘Choosing to listen to his music is a personal reckoning’
Separating man and music is difficult when that man’s output amounts to a cultural phenomenon and his influence went way beyond music. Jackson brought black dance styles into the mainstream. He didn’t invent steps like the moonwalk but he was responsible for bringing them to the world’s attention. He inspired people to dance – especially boys, especially non-white ones – and he is cited by some of the superlative performers of their generation as the person who sparked their desire to move. From Cuban ballet star Carlos Acosta to kathak-contemporary dancer Akram Khan, from the back streets of Havana to suburban Wimbledon, Jackson’s reach was immense.
But, the allegations against him are hideous. Abuse can never be excused. As a society, what we consume and what we celebrate is what forms our values. Does that mean a ban on his music? It is impossible to erase from our consciousness (and much of its brilliance was created by others – Quincy Jones, Rod Temperton – not Jackson alone), but choosing to now actively listen to, or dance to Jackson? Once people have seen the film, that will be a personal reckoning, yet it must be possible to condemn the person, even shelve the records, without being ashamed of the influence his music had on us, the good things he inspired and the careers he started.