Michael Jackson is "evil"

(xp) Ah right, I was thinking he must have mentioned something about basketball himself in the documentary.

I honestly have not spent much time digging into the MJ accusations, since I had WGW’s take on things, always thinking he was more a deeply fucked up victim and deeply weird than an actual criminal. Obv he was a victim at this be point too, of course...

It’s not surprising at all that his hardcore fans would completely disbelieve it, we live in world where Ted Bundy still has fans who believe he was innocent, the scumbag from lostprophets probably gets fan mail every day, R. Kelly is being railroaded and the girls were “getting something out of it too...”

I just wonder if he was always like that, if any of this shit goes back further than these accusations. I haven’t read any biographies on the dude so idk. From the far outside looking in, he seems to have had it more together at the beginning of his solo success, and then he just rapidly disintegrated personally, professionally, creatively...

Obv he was a victim at this be point too, of course...

“...a victim at one point too...”

In that thread I linked above ilxors compare MJs behavior w kids to an adult who climbs trees - ie weird but not dangerous or criminal

just an Icarus flying too close to the sun

or a kelly slater of pedophilia, endlessly riding the barrel, but never gettin truly pitted into the nastiness of it all

the scumbag from lostprophets probably gets fan mail every day

a while back i was startled at seeing him on the cover of some true crime magazine on the stand at walmart.

confirmation bias : I voted for X so he must be right, I liked Y's records so he must be innocent

looking forward to seeing this, but...I’m surprised there are so many MJ truthers on this site

i think we can safely remove the quote marks from this thread's title now

Yeah, no

https://globalnews.ca/news/4890058/michael-jackson-musical-to-hit-broadway-in-2020/

all hardcore fandom is bizarre, but that there are people, in 2019, sending threats to the director of an anti-MJ movie is just astonishing to me

I mean, he was probably the greatest performer of the 20th century

Wrong

James Brown

Come on, it's clearly Shakin' Stevens

Bert Williams

how can you all be so wrong?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aH_hS_AVuA

(well, at least until the Netflix Charo documentary, which i hear is a major bummer)

I think the reason people wanted to not believe wasn’t because they didn’t take it seriously, but because they did. The crimes are too reprehensible to square with the idea of the person eho made such great music. Not an “excuse” for overlooking the crimes but an explanation.

what does great music have to do with being a piece of shit person (or not), though? pretty much all of what we publicly knew about MJ's private life and psyche, even prior to the major revelations about his pedophilic abuse, pointed to a deeply fucked-up person at best. i mean, i found the allegations surprising insofar as such things are always surprising, but him being a great talent didn't factor into that one way or the other.

I have known that art can be disconnected from the creator's morality for awhile, it's true

i'm sort of inclined to think that expecting those who make the art you like to be wonderful people is sort of childish.

or any particular kind of people at all...

ok but like

what he is accused of is unconscionable. it makes sense ppl would be disturbed to know they were dancing along to music made by someone who did that.

he wasn't accused of being a cheater or a jerk. he has been accused of being a predator.

Is being a murderer more unconscionable than being a child molester? Because I've been known to listen to music by a few of those tbh.

i mean

i don't think ppl "shouldn't" enjoy the music

but

it promotes a different kind of relationship to the artist

and the musical "text"

dude

stop

we are embodied subjects. art of any kind is interesting to us because people made it. there isn't just "art" and "life" these things are co-implicated

soto, why should i stop?

it's just a reflex for you guys to get annoyed when i am engaging normally with the topic of discussion

Think to yourself.

it's just a reflex for you guys to get annoyed when i am engaging normally with the topic of discussion

i think it is

"Michael Jackson likely assaulted children and should I keep listening to his music?" is the question, and it doesn't require every tergiversation of thought on ILM.

it's an old question fair enough. i was just pushing back against the idea i saw implied that for some listeners the knowledge wouldn't matter--like you can make a neat separation

Treeship, I assure you that for some people it won’t matter.

and it doesn't require every turdferguson of thought on ILM.

required posts only. got it.

i hear you, treeship. i don't know that a "neat separation" is necessarily possible in any situation, since our minds are always active and moving from one thing to the next, even while listening to "billie jean."

but i do think humans have an incredible ability to compartmentalize, in a way that is at once necessary, useful and, often, extremely disturbing.

for ex., it disturbs me greatly that i spent most of my life able to eat meat without thinking about the sufferings of nonhuman animals (who experience emotions much as we do). but what makes that disturbing is not only the act itself, but because by eating meat i helped, indirectly, to perpetuate suffering. i don't know that i've heard a concing argument that by not "cancelling" thriller etc., we are helping perpetuate child abuse in any sense, although i recognize that some do make arguments of that nature.

uh, not "concing".. convincing.

I find that the tendency to think of the scruples of an artist as being somehow transferable with their genius is the root cause of why an individual like MJ's behaviour was enabled. Being able to enjoy MJ's music while acknowledging that he's a child predator becomes an act of defiance, consuming the man's work while vilifying the man. The ultimate expression of this idea I guess would be if somebody were to learn the moonwalk so they could dance on his grave

People also ask
Is Captain EO still open?

Is Captain EO still at Disney World?

How much did Captain EO cost?

Can you rent out Disneyland?

https://media.giphy.com/media/6bdgw4Myfpxr1jkTiG/giphy.gif

I think the reason people wanted to not believe wasn’t because they didn’t take it seriously, but because they did. The crimes are too reprehensible to square with the idea of the person eho made such great music. Not an “excuse” for overlooking the crimes but an explanation.

― Trϵϵship, Saturday, January 26, 2019 3:46 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't think people wanted to *not* believe, i just think that casual knowledge of the situation would lead one to think that the real story was he was a super strange, childlike, damaged man, and his hanging out with kids all the time was deeply misunderstood as a result, and since nothing ever came of the allegations years ago, it could have all just been some kind of misunderstanding.

for a long time i've personally really only had extremely casual knowledge of the situation and allegations from long ago, and as a casual observer i thought it really was a thing where he was completely fucked up and creepy but maybe not exactly creepy in *that* way.

In a vacuum, without specific reference to Michael Jackson, at this point, I would consider “hanging out with kids all the time” to be indicative of someone likely to abuse kids.

yeah that’s a good summation. i was less willing to believe the basic reporting, because it seemed like such a gleeful takedown. the deeper investigative reporting I read left me with the impression that he had spent so long messing with reporters that the ultimate media field day about his pedophilia was largely of his own doing. but at the time it also felt like the initial accusers were kids coached by cash-grabbing parents.

it’s not that i didn’t think it was possible he was a legit predator, it was more that I hadn’t found what was being reported at the time to be convincing/credible. I admit part of me didn’t want it to be true, and i had some confirmation bias for sure.

and since nothing ever came of the allegations years ago

Nothing except Jackson’s representatives paying tens of millions to his accusers, and corroborated testimony of him regularly plying his prepubescent same-bed sleepover pals with alcohol, and Jackson throwing massive publicity stunts to try and avoid testifying, and...