HBO’s Takedown of Michael Jackson

J. Ken Stuckey

Intro

• Wade Robson and James Safechuck “describe growing up believing that their relationship was romantic and monogamous, and that their first sense of trauma was not the discovery that they were victims of sexual abuse, but, more poignantly, that their importance to Jackson was an illusion designed to gain their cooperation”(47)
• We’ve reached a turning point in the history of sex-crime accusations
• Credible revelations about some of the most powerful members of our society and best-loved vanguards of popular culture
• “The fact that politicians seem to escape justice when entertainers do not is beyond the immediate purview of this article” (47)

“Believe the Victims”

• “...advocates for victims are sensitive to the overwhelming obstacles involved in coming out with such accusations and, as a result, have adopted the slogan ‘believe the victims’” (47
• “‘Believe the accusers’; but the extraordinary problem that poses, aside from the folly of any form of belief in the absence of evidence, is the fact that there is such a thing as false accusation” (47)
• “Historically, the cry of rape from a white accuser toward a black suspect has been menacingly unreliable” (47)

Legacy and Fairness

• Jackson as publicly awkward and bizarre at best
• His whole career built on convincing us to view him through an aspirational lens - breaking all imaginable barriers forcing a racist industry to acknowledge his talent
• “In an era of fallen idols, the history of a people still rides partly on his shoulders” (47)
• “For this reason, the plausibility of the documentary’s accusations needs to be scrutinized” (47)
• “It is undoubtedly tied to the cultural allegiances of its audiences and their historical memory, just as it was with the 1995 O.J. Simpson trial” (47)
• Jackson is no longer alive to defend himself, which “brings us back to the question of the film’s credibility or, more pointedly, its fairness” (47)

Fairness

• The film doesn’t make any effort at fairness, seeking no comment from Jackson’s allies
• Reed claims the film is not about Jackson, but about the victims
• “This rather is like saying that Psycho (1960) is not about Norman Bates but about the victims of his crimes” (48)
• “Reed’s dodge of his ethical responsibilities is frankly a disservice to all of Jackson’s survivors - both the children he raised who seem to remember him as a loving father, and the children he may have assaulted, whose accounts would be more credible if rigorously vetted” (48)

Evidence

• “Sadly, one must leave aside the film’s major sins of omission and consider the evidence that it does present, because the accusers are quite compelling” (48)
• “Far from being a liability, Jackson’s fame appears to have allowed him to hunt for children in plain sight” (48)
• “On this point, it is not necessary to choose between one account of the past and another, because Jackson never disguised his desire to share his bed with unrelated children, although his defense of this practice hinged on the question of whether he slept next to them or at their feet” (48)
• Their parents also acquiesced to this “dangerous” arrangement

“Every significant memory of Robson and Safechuck is supported in the film but never proven - with photographs, limited video footage, correspondence between the boys and Jackson, and extensive eyewitness accounts that, on the point of sexual acts themselves, are always perilously incomplete unless coming from the two men” (48)

Oprah Winfrey’s Interview

• Oprah Winfrey’s hour-long follow-up interview
• Predisposed to “take all accusers at their word”
• Remarkably useful moments of circumspection
• Robson’s habit of “externalizing his narrative by avoiding the first-person pronoun”
• Asks probing questions the documentary avoided
• The men blame their parents for being “dazzled by Jackson and seduced by the lavish trips”

Conclusion

• Documentary is tragic, riveting, and flawed
• Construction documents reveal that “a structure on Jackson’s property where Safechuck claims to have been abused in 1992 was only built in 1994” (48)
• “Perhaps part of giving potential victims a fair hearing should involve a nuanced acknowledgement that memory is porous, and that satellite inconsistencies don’t necessarily impeach the core account” (48)
• “But we appear not to live in a nuanced world; we live in a partisan world. And this documentary has chosen its side” (48)

Links to Ancillary Materials

• Jackson family public statement
• Neverland Firsthand (a response documentary to Leaving Neverland)
• Oprah Winfrey Presents: After Neverland (an hour-long interview with Wade Robson, James Safechuck, and the film’s director Dan Reed)