Michael Jackson is "evil"

people seem to be down on baby hitler though

you gotta step up, man

baby hitler do do do do do

and yeah I have no clue what this is going to do for MJ's legacy. it's certainly going to hurt to some degree, his music is gonna get pulled from some stations and studios are gonna think twice about licensing any of it right now. but there are definitely a few key differences between MJ and say, R. Kelly, Louie CK, Woody Allen, or Bill Cosby - obviously, MJ was a much bigger celebrity than any of those guys, and he's dead now so there will be no trial, no 'discovery' process or anything. more than that I think MJ is a lot easier to separate from his actions, because his songs were so much more ubiquitous and woven into the DNA of pop music today, and I think it's possible to listen to them without necessarily being reminded of it. Like - it's impossible to get into the work of R. Kelly, Louie CK, and Woody Allen without being reminded of what they did, and I can't imagine watching The Cosby Show without thinking of how he used that persona to take advantage of women. They were all doing it at the time. With MJ, it's like...when did this start? Was it around the time of Bad, when things really started going haywire? Like, I can't hear Jackson 5 stuff or "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" and think, this dude's evil. Late 80s and beyond, sure, but the classic stuff.... :/

Mad respect to you frogbs but I have a tough time relating to what you have written. I am no closer to solving the "can you love the art while repudiating the artist" question than anyone here.

But! I am pretty sure the answer is not to decide at which album the person became "Bad" (pun intended) and then only liking the albums before that point.

Would anyone suggest that type of divide about another criminal/villain/badguy? "Yeah Vader blew up that defenseless planet, sure, but his early folk-punk singles were seminal. So I just won't listen to his later work."

different people process art differently, there's never going to be a transferrable standard of how to keep checking a #cancelled person's work

or: just edit yr ID3 tags to say Rod Temperton & Quincy Jones & carry on

different people process art differently, there's never going to be a transferrable standard of how to keep checking a #cancelled person's work

this is a good point that bears repeating here and elsewhere

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/arts/music/michael-jackson-leaving-neverland-fans.html

“If you’ve been a fan for a long time, you’ve seen this over and over again,” said Casey Rain, 30, a musician and YouTuber living in Birmingham, England. He called “Leaving Neverland” a “sick attempt at hijacking the Me-Too moment.”

“There’s nothing about Michael that the fan community doesn’t know,” said Rain, whose blog post about “Leaving Neverland” became a go-to text even before the documentary aired. “I really don’t think that we lack objectivity on him.” (Rain and others who had not yet seen the film said their information came from a few Jackson fans who attended the Sundance premiere and took “very, very detailed notes.”)

michael jackson diehards are some of the worst people and have always been some of the worst people.

unfathomable that there's any michael jackson diehards my age, I think my only natural exposure to the music of michael jackson was people in middle school doing the billie jean dance for talent shows

granted someone must have exposed them to michael jackson, but like ???

oh I realize it's different for everybody and I think it's hard to "figure out" because there's sort of a gut reaction to it. For example I wouldn't willingly listen to R. Kelly anymore because the knowledge that he's singing about stuff he's literally doing to the underage girls in his dungeon overrides everything, I can't separate it out, and when they come up on the playlists I have I skip them immediately. But I can see still maybe liking "I Believe I Can Fly", the one song of his that isn't totally gross, because personally I don't really think of R. Kelly with that song, I think about Space Jam. At least, I don't have the same visceral reaction to it.

When it comes to Michael Jackson there was definitely a point where his music suddenly got a lot more aggressive and paranoid, where every other song was about the rumors about him and wanting to be left alone, and to me that stuff is pretty inexorable from his "Wacko Jacko" persona, for which these accusations played a major part. Anyway, I'm not trying to say that "This stuff is okay, this stuff isn't", just that this is the reaction I personally have to it.

"i believe i can fly" was always kind of gross to me, b/c
1) allegations about r. kelly were already out there (not least his marriage to a teenage aaliyah)
2) the self-empowerment clichés in that song always struck me as kind of ridiculous and gross (even if, yes i know, many people find them inspirational)
3) the contradiction between (1) and (2) was always a bit too much for me. here's a predatory asshole telling me to just believe in myself and i can be like him? fuck off.
4) the lyrics are dead terrible.

that said, the song is now stuck in my head, so... thanks?

"it's impossible to get into the work of R. Kelly, Louie CK, and Woody Allen without being reminded of what they did"

I dunno, I still enjoy Allen's earlier movies. Polanski too. Sure they became terrible people later (maybe Polanski even then) but it's hard for me to write those off. I'm still going to enjoy MJ through Thriller (which I do think predated his worst proclivities); shit he did after that wasn't nearly as good anyway so go ahead, erase Dangerous from musical history, it matters not to me.

unfathomable that there's any michael jackson diehards my age, I think my only natural exposure to the music of michael jackson was people in middle school doing the billie jean dance for talent shows

― moose; squirrel (silby), Tuesday, March 5, 2019 3:22 PM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

granted someone must have exposed them to michael jackson, but like ???

― moose; squirrel (silby), Tuesday, March 5, 2019 3:22 PM

what year?

Would’ve been 2003 that I saw a 14-year-old did Billie Jean in the 8th grade lock-in talent show.

my friend's 11 year old has been a huge MJ fan for years.

I should note that I was exposed to essentially no popular music of any era by my boomer parents so I may just be weird.

Or, alternately, they are.

I've had a 7yo and 12yo ask to learn to play MJ songs in the last few months.

Probably not diehards tbf

someone must have exposed them to michael jackson

phrasing

"I should note that I was exposed to essentially no popular music of any era by my boomer parents so I may just be weird"

wait, how old are you? I'm 47 and had boomer parents. MJ was completely ubiquitous in my childhood in the 80's.

I’m 30

(I'm all for separating Nirvana's music from Kurt Cobain as a person btw.)

you may be misclassifying the generation of your parents (unless they were very old when they had you)

Or at the least don't favour conflating them.xp

I mean my parents were born in 1950 and 1951, they are canonically baby boomers

38 isn’t very old

I was born in '81, the only MJ songs I remember hearing as a kid were "Thriller" and "Billie Jean" on the radio every so often. By the time I was 10-11 he seemed like an uncool weirdo, no one at school cared, I didn't care.

michael jackson was popular

in your opinion

my grandpappy never heard of him

I wonder if this conflating with artist and his/her art is more of an issue in music than in other art forms. I mean you don't hear people saying that they'll never read Knut Hamsun's Hunger because the guy turned out to be a Nazi. In fact, so many writers I like had very nasty streaks, but it never occurs to me to avoid their works because of it.

MJ not really a problem for me as I was never invested in him. Don't Stop Til You Get Enough is sublime, as is some of the Jackson 5 stuff, but 80s and 90s Jackson really isn't my cup of tea.

I mean you don't hear people saying that they'll never read Knut Hamsun's Hunger because the guy turned out to be a Nazi.

Maybe people have more of a problem with paedophiles than Nazis?

I dunno, I still enjoy Allen's earlier movies.

I assume this is literally the early funny stuff, as soon as he starts making serious films, things turn pretty icky pretty quickly.

maybe nobody ever heard of knut hamsun

gogol was just as much an anti-Semite, albeit the 19th century model of one, but hamsun was an unapologetic hitler apologist - which makes him as beyond the pale as gary glitter. rules are rules!

The only MJ song I really rate is "Dirty Diana" but surely we can all agree on one thing: pederasty is bad (as it were)

I read Hamsun, listen to Gary Glitter and, worst of all, voted for Jeremy Corbyn in the last General Election. I Am Monster.

as long as you don't listen to gary glinner - you'll get away with it!

My general rules are
1. If the abuser / bad guy is alive then giving financial and moral support to their work isn't on
2. If they are dead then much of their work (like MJ's weird raunchy stuff in the 90s) may become tainted, your choice to consume or not but there's a red flag about sharing with people.
3. If the work isn't tainted ('Hunger' is a work of genius without a hint of hitler, 'Take The Money & Run'* is still one of the funniest things I've ever seen, have you heard the demo version of 'Don't Stop Til You Get Enough'?) then it's your choice if you want to watch/listen/read & nobody should be judged for choosing to/not to.
*I know he isn't dead, but anyway

I can't imagine someone really loving Woody Allen's films without finding the "Woody Allen" character/persona likeable/charming to some extent, given that he's the centre-point of almost all those films, a thinly-veiled Woody analogue if not Woody himself (cf that joke from the simpsons - "I like Woody Allen movies, except for that nervous fella who's always in 'em") (maybe the pre-Annie Hall stuff just in terms of the number of quick-fire gags?) I guess it's possible to separate the "Woody Allen" character from Woody Allen the actual real-world human being, but it seems like it would be difficult

I play disco on vinyl every Friday night at the bar up the road, to a crowd whose regulars range (rather wonderfully) from late teens to mid-sixties; the small dancefloor mostly skews to early twenties. Since the first night, just over a year ago, most sets have featured at least one MJ vocal: solo or with his brothers, mostly from 1978 to 1981, but with the occasional Thriller track too. Three weeks ago, it was "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough". Two weeks ago, it was "Walk Right Now", with that fantastic instrumental section towards the end that lifts the whole track; I was planning to playlist it more regularly. Last week, I held off, but kept the records in my boxes. This week, I suppose I might as well remove them altogether.

I'll miss the Thriller tracks the least; they've never fully fitted the remit of the night, but you get the odd request. This now seems a lot less likely. But, oh God, "Rock With You", a transcendentally beautiful piece of music, which I've loved for nearly forty years; can it never work its magic again in a public space? That thought hasn't yet fully landed.

But then, there are still three Rick James records in my boxes. I've been hammering "Big Time" for weeks. Hmmm.

assume this is literally the early funny stuff, as soon as he starts making serious films, things turn pretty icky pretty quickly.

Father Andre: I have lived for 87 years, and the best thing in the World is... Blonde 12 year-old girls!

Sonja: Father!

Father Andre: Two of them, whenever possible.

I'm finding the trickiest thing to deal with is all the classic rock from the '60s and '70s. There hasn't been a high-profile documentary about rock groups making their way through classrooms of 14yo groupies, but that happened, a lot. So does my ignorance of the details allow my conscience to allow me to still listen to Zepplin without feeling vommy? Do I have a duty to inform myself of the details?

Or is it (as WA quote above demonstrates, and I can recall a similar joke in Annie Hall) that actually, awful patriarchy was more of a thing over 20 years ago, and cultural items, outside of the context they were made, shouldn't really be parsed in the same way?

so you're saying..... don't stop?

I mean, there is Allen's standup and writing, which is some of the funniest stuff I've ever seen/read, and there is "I will make a serious film about a 42-year-old man fucking a 17-year-old, drawing on my life experience as a 41-year-old man fucking a 16-year-old" - there seems to be a pretty clear line there, the vast majority of his films from then on are either "Allen stand-in scores younger girls", "Allen stand-in is creatively frustrated and then some stuff happens and he can create again, and that's what's important" pre-defences, or both.

xp yeah there are creepy jokes, but they don't seem the point in the same way as afterward

Getting into the work of Mexican director Emilio Fernandez, found a book chapter on him filled with screenshots, and they are so amazingly good looking, and then I get to the story of his decline, and the guy straight up murdered two people as he turned into an angry alcoholic.