Music is punished

How the Michael Jackson film "Leaving Neverland" works

In 1987, they brought me a cassette with Michael Jackson's Bad album, and I was just stunned. I was a serious girl, I was not fond of pop music, but there was so much freedom, confidence and novelty in it that I somehow didn’t think if it was too frivolous. Then on perestroika television they showed the “Thriller” released a few years earlier and a video where Jackson demonstrates the “moonwalk”. Even through the TV screen, it was full of talent and energy.

In general, I am sure that Michael Jackson is one of the most talented people, “in parallel” with whom I lived. His talent is part of my youth. So I have something to lose.

Of course, it's not that "rumors" about the oddities of Michael Jackson and his possible pedophilia did not reach me. Yes, it’s just that his appearance in recent years has broadcast “I am very strange and I feel very bad!”. It was also known about the accusations and the 2005 court case. But it's one thing when you hear something like that and see short stories on the news, it's another thing when you look into the eyes of the people with whom it happened. Like in the movie Leaving Neverland. In principle, this film is made so that we look them in the eye.

The last phrase may seem pompous, but its meaning is not at all gasp and groan "oh, unfortunate." Because when you look at the main characters of the film - Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck, who were childhood "darlings" of Michael Jackson, and at their relatives, you are not only full of compassion. When you look at their mothers, you think:

"What? Did you let your seven or eight year old kids sleep in the same room with the pop star while he insistently put you in another outbuilding and you keep saying you were sure it was all completely innocent?

To the now fashionable consideration that, they say, the time (the end of the eighties - the beginning of the nineties) was different and then it was considered okay, I want to answer: come on, this is not about the Middle Ages. For example, at that time I was a completely conscious person, and in the early nineties already a mother, and the understanding of what a strange pop idol can do with a child if they are left overnight in the same bed, then it was exactly the same as Now. And when you hear that Jackson gave Safechuck's mother money for the house, and she, upon learning of his death, "danced for joy that he would never harm any child again," but not that she sold this house and handed over money for charity, covers the feeling of discomfort. It's like a person says something embarrassing in front of you, and you can't do anything about it.

But, of course, it's not about the parents. It's about the stories of those grown-up boys. They have the most important thing - reliability. And if before viewing it is possible to talk about the phenomenon of “what was not with me, I remember”, then after - not at all. It's not even about the smallest - and quite pornographic - details that director Dan Reed squeezes out of the interviewees, but about emotional authenticity. For example, in the words

The main childhood trauma for the children was not what Jackson actually did to them, but the fact that he changed them to other boys (and then those to the next).

Wayne Robson says that when Jackson retired with the "new" boy to the bedroom, leaving him to wait in the living room, he dreamed that Michael would take him there and do "this" with him - because this would mean that he is still important to his idol. You can't fake that. And their explanations of the reasons for the long silence and long-standing testimony in defense of Jackson - shame, love, incomplete understanding of what exactly happened to them, up to the time when they themselves had children - all this sounds convincing.

That doesn't mean, of course, that Leaving Neverland doesn't have twists and turns. They are certainly there: from attempts to hang on Jackson all the misfortunes of these families, including psychiatric diagnoses of those who had no relationship with the singer, to the skillful almost-silence of their financial interest (in 2013, Robson filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit for molestation, which was dismissed due to the defendant's death). But the main "evidence" seems (let's say, so as not to generalize, it seems to me) beyond doubt.

These people are telling the truth. This does not mean that they are innocent angels, but they are telling the truth.

And here you want and you can blame a lot and many. The institute of stars, which turned them a couple of decades ago into some kind of gods that are above suspicion. People from Jackson's entourage, who, because of money, were ready to turn a blind eye to many things. The parents of these boys. But I personally have no relationship with all of them. And with Michael Jackson, I have them. And how am I now? Watching him dance in the Bad video and thinking that at this very time he ... Do not think? Not sure this will work. All were punished. Music too.

P.S.

The showing of the film “Leaving Neverland” on Channel One was canceled after Michael Jackson fans threatened to appeal to the Ministry of Culture and Roskomnadzor.