Michael Jackson is "evil"

"hey mom, Creepy Frank from Radio shack wants me to stay over at his trailer tomorrow night. He says he's gonna get KFC and let me play Atari." Vs. "Hey mom, this fabulously wealthy, globally famous superstar has asked me - ME! - over to his mansion for a sleepover party! He has a private amusement park and a collection of exotic animals."

True enough, but I am frequently surprised at how close some of these incidents are to the Creepy Frank scenario.

His actions were directly related to his fame, and in a lot of ways his predation was enabled by it. He would not have had the same access to kids if he were not MJ.

as opposed to run of the mill priests, scout leaders, teachers, sports coaches, party clowns ....

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

― Trϵϵship, Saturday, January 26, 2019 4:47 PM (yesterday)

this is a good point. Dunno why ppl were giving you shit about it ... though, there are some people who are "outliers" who do separate these things, or they do for certain artists/works ... like in general, I think this is true, but I don't think it's true of everyone and everything, but MJ tends to be someone who it is true of moreso than like, jazz dudes or classical composers, and I wonder how much the connection is fandom that began in childhood/youth, connecting this to the post upthread who commented that this was a childish mode of thought

otm. i think that the fandom starting in early childhood is def a big part of my experience & why it took longer for me to accept

and sure, childhood fandoms fade & some ppl don’t hold onto shit for that long & can accept facts etc but that wasn’t me.

I think it’s hard for a lot of people to connect weird era MJ to their childhood memories of peak level Off the Wall/Thriller MJ, it almost seems like two different people, like he completely transformed mentally and physically into another person. Which is not to say he wasn’t always weird or creepy, it just wasn’t so obvious earlier.

Anyway all of my comments upthread were to say that so many details of the earlier accusations were successfully brushed off by the payouts and joking tone of the media and how some of the gleeful mockery of MJ was so focused on his public image, which was separate from the allegations (and having known victims of childhood abuse I can say that at least one of them is so traumatized that she is similarly childlike and incapable of healthy relationships). I think the media coverage of this was a farce and didn’t serve the victims very well.

Agree with that omar

agree

A friend of mine is 5 years younger than me & always thought I was from outer space for liking MJ. She’s like, “all i remember is he was a creepy-ass weird looking dude” and she did NOT fuck w his music at all.

A few xps: Sarahell, fair point

I was born in 1986, so I don't remember a time when MJ wasn't a huge punchline. None of my friends were really into him, up until he died and suddenly it was "damn Michael you were always such a huge inspiration to me". To tell the truth I was sorta the same, it's not until he died and I saw the 24/7 coverage of his life that I realized how many great songs he really had. I'd never seen the "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" video, nor the Motown 25 performance, etc etc. The only ones I knew were the ones Weird Al covered and "Billie Jean". The accusations of molestation and whatever the fuck he was doing to his face kinda superseded everything. I read a *lot* about that and still had no clue what to make of it. Best I could conclude was the same as a lot of people here, the fact that he was so incredibly strange and obsessed with his lost childhood makes it difficult to conclusively say. MJ probably got scammed a *lot* while he was alive. I was in the "definitely inappropriate but probably not sexual" camp, though obviously that's wishful thinking since I was starting to like his music. I remember thinking, "if he really is guilty of this surely people will come out after his death"...

The real Xennial/Millennial generation gap regarding MJ is represented by what your elementary school did as the second bar of “I pledge allegiance to the flag/Michael Jackson is a fag”

MJ was my first musical hero, I played my tape of Bad constantly, went to the cinema to see Moonwalker, even read the tie-in book aged 10 or so, but then by the mid-90s I had gone off him completely and have never regained that interest, so was odd to see peers waxing nostalgic about him, always wanting to make excuses for his obviously terrible behaviour, what was it they were getting out of it? Still don't understand tbh.

xp - uh, what?

Did they not have that in OAKLAND? They certainly had it in Florida

What I assume was the OG version was about Pepsi, what I assume was the new school version was about the allegations

Never heard of either thing but I’m sheltered

Never heard of either thing either, does that make me a millennial or an xennial

I cannot be the only ILXor who had those!

Here, I was figuring I'd just never heard of it because we didn't pledge allegiance to a flag.

i was born in 76, was in love with MJ as early as I can remember, trying to dance like him, watching his videos all the time. like, i remember when he was so huge they would interrupt the goddamn evening news to debut a new music video. I stayed a fan for a long long time. but it dropped off hella fast. by the time i was at uni i had maybe 1 or 2 friends who still liked him, but if you were too overt about you seemed like a weirdo so it was def something you kinda played down.

They dont say the pledge at school anymore fyi. At least, not around here

lol I did not grow up in Oakland. also it's been like 35 years since i did the pledge of allegiance in elementary school so I don't remember these details, but hey I don't want be too much of a dick about our charming running joke about my special snowflake life

I cannot be the only ILXor who had those!

― ebro the letter (Whiney G. Weingarten), Sunday, January 27, 2019

you might be!

They dont say the pledge at school anymore fyi. At least, not around here

― Οὖτις, Sunday, January 27, 2019 5:43 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

despite it being unconstitutional to compel someone to recite it, it is state law here in texas to recite both the US and texas pledge

I mean, although we got to see 'Free to Be You and Me' on Movie Day, where I grew up wasn't very socially accepting of that freedom

I do remember MJ was in Free to Be You and Me modeling non-traditional masculine behavior ... though that's about all I remember about Michael Jackson in relation to my elementary school

I was born in 1971, so "Thriller" was huge right when I started paying attention to popular music. When I was in junior high school his hits were so ubiquitous as to be inescapable; having a critical opinion about him was almost superfluous. It would be like formulating a critical opinion about air.

At that time, his weirdness/brokenness as a person was either unknown or hadn't happened yet. He was presumed to be a fairly normal young superstar, I guess - he was said to have dated a famous model. There was a joke: "where did they find Michael Jackson's other glove?" "Brooke Shields's pants!" I think a decade later the same joke made the rounds, but with Macaulay Culkin instead.

I was born in 1979 and Thriller was the first contemporary popular music I ever got into (in kindergarten, where he was already famous). Tbh, though, some of the biggest fans I've known are second cousins who are ≈ 5 years younger.

xp important middle joke was eddie murphys line about why it wouldve been unacceptable for him to date brooke shields

xp i was born in 1981 i have also heard of michael jackson

Born at the tail end of 1971; heard all of the Thriller singles because I listened to American Top Forty every week when I was 12-13, but didn't actually like any of them; remember watching the premiere of the "Thriller" video at a friend's house; never owned a copy of Thriller; thought the song "Bad" was corny as fuck, never consciously heard anything else from that album; everything after that was "Oh, another Michael Jackson song" then "He's still around? Wow, what the fuck is up with his face?" then "This motherfucker is out of his mind and yeah, he's definitely a child molester."

Control and Rhythm Nation 1814 were way more important to me than anything Michael Jackson ever did.

i remember being into the horror movie narrative and the fact there were zombies in Thriller ... otherwise my experience/feelings were about the same as Phil's

Thriller, along with a J5-oriented greatest hits, was one of the first records I ever had. A few years later, it was my first-grade teacher's go-to album if she felt we needed to put our heads on our desks after lunch. Thriller or No Jacket Required, usually.

Anyway, I knew this was polled on ilx a ways back:~~~the Michael Jackson poll~~~

The MJ other glove variant I heard as a kid was Boy George’s pants. His freakishness/ambiguous sexuality was well in evidence on elementary school playgrounds circa Thriller imo. He had a pet monkey, a nose job, and sang about not getting girls pregnant, we all knew he was weird even if we thought he was awesome.

i remember pledging allegiance to the time; no idea what whiney's thing is

same age as ymp/unperson -- i owned thriller, but MJ was not that big a deal where i grew up. tempted to ascribe that to racism, but otoh prince was huge. i'm not sure i was even aware of bad coming out, but tbf i was probably listening more to classic rock by then

nb i did not have MTV, which might be an important missing link

I was obsessed with MTV starting at age 8, so MJ loomed pretty large!

As I said, I never owned Thriller, but I did own Purple Rain.

Same age as mookie and unperson, never had MTV, Thriller and Bad were huge radio presences. Still don't like Bad, not when George Michael outdid him in surprise and beats.

Bad sucks, he needed Quincy

Bad sounded stiff to me even in 1987. Thriller was my favorite album as a kid though. And MJ was a guy who was briefly unassailably cool and awesome during that peak Thriller era. tbh the nose job shit and lyrical content barely registered to me at the time.

Thriller was the first album I really listened to.my brother got my parents to buy the lp when he was 4 and I was 2.circa 1986.my parents had stopped bothering listening to records at that stage,they kept theirs from the 70s in the attic.i loved it and in a way it really informed a lot of my musical taste (post-disco is still one of my favourite eras of music). was a fan of Jackson's music until dangerous came out - I eagerly watched the UK tv debut of the black or white video - and I found it a bit disappointing. The paedophile accusations fully put me off him completely and when I was old enough to think about it seriously I assumed his guilt.

Bad sucks, he needed Quincy

― valet doberman (Jon not Jon), Sunday, January 27, 2019

Jones produced it too.

Bad is great

https://media.giphy.com/media/k0dx6E0VoQZdC/giphy.gif

Jeez I’m embarrassed now. I got it into my head bad was the first w/o Quincy. Still sucks.

ahahahaha velko

lol

I know this is pretty controversial, but I have to say despite what unperson etc say, imho Michael Jackson was a pretty big deal in the 1980s

Michael Jackson was probably the biggest celebrity of our lifetime!

My being just a few years younger than MJ, he'll always be that kid who was on all those early '70s variety shows with his brothers ("You 40-year-old midget," as Sammy Davis Jr called him in the J5 TV debut).

No way you're younger than MJ

MJ was a boomer.