MJ the Musical: Michael Jackson’s legacy is too complex to outright cancel

The two cousins flew into Sydney from regional Victoria the day before. Their tickets for MJ the Musical stage production were for the fourth row, and had been bought six months ago. They were pumped.

For the two middle-aged men, Michael Jackson’s legacy is the music. Those allegations of abuse and paedophilia? It’s not that they do or don’t believe them, it’s that they were able to compartmentalise them.

The question of whether you can separate the art from the artist is an ongoing conversation with strident views on both sides, as well as a lot of people in the middle who have complex thoughts and feelings — and what you think and feel often diverge.

Maybe you can intellectualise it and acknowledge the facts — Jackson’s influence on music and culture is unmatched, there are other artists (sound recordists, producers) who worked on those songs — but when “Thriller” is played on the radio, maybe it bumps or you feel a bit icky about it.

It’s not a logical response, it’s an emotional one, and it also works the other way, which anyone who still loves Annie Hall can attest to.

Lauren Rosewarne is a pop culture expert and an associate professor at the University of Melbourne. On a personal as well as an academic level, she understands the conflict anyone might feel. “As a fan of pop culture, I don’t ever want to know too much about the creators because they’ll always have said something.

“Just recently, Nick Cave, who I was a big fan of, said some stuff, and it’s like, ‘No, I’m bigger than this, I can separate art from artists’. Have I played any of his music since? No, because there’s a tainting factor there. It’s the same as some of my favourite Woody Allen films. Have I ever paid to see one since? No.”

But Jackson is a special case, Rosewarne argued.

“Michael Jackson is a little different to other cancelled artists in the sense that his contribution to music is undeniable, and it is very specifically racialised as well. If you look at the history of MTV not initially playing so-called Black music and Jackson’s role in that space, not only to the face of music but to Black music, there is conflict.

“If you take him off air, what are you doing to the history of Black music as well? So, it’s not an easy story to have a view on.

“There are a lot of people who are conflicted about recognising that the person was highly flawed but made an enormous impact on an industry. He’s a game-changing artist that can’t be downplayed, and is there something that does a disservice to the industry, to the discipline of music and to fans by deleting him from that story?”

MJ the Musical is currently in previews at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre. It opened on Broadway in 2021 and went on to tour the US, London and Hamburg. It won four Tony Awards in 2022.

The production is a jukebox musical in that it incorporates songs from Jackson’s catalogue — “Smooth Criminal”, “Stranger in Moscow” and “Black and White” among them — into a narrative set during his preparation for the Dangerous World Tour in 1992.

It’s a high-stakes moment. Jackson has grand ambitions, demanding pyrotechnics, a toaster lift and elaborate costumes. The costs were blowing out and to pay for it, Neverland would need to be mortgaged. He had something to prove.

Outside of the rehearsal room, he’s the fixture of media obsession. Questions about surgery, about his family, about Bubbles the Chimp. The 1992 setting means it can sidestep any abuse allegations, with the first accusations made the year after.

The dancing and staging were engaging, even if the writing and the dialogue were clunky and flat. The audience were electrified.

The production is officially sanctioned by the Estate of Michael Jackson so it has a particular, obsequious perspective on the person it’s presenting — someone who suffered under an imposing father in Joe Jackson, and who just wants to make music and be great, in the face of relentless tabloid intrusion and doubt. That’s certainly one version of the story.

There is also an estate-sanctioned Jackson biopic in post-production, with a budget of $US150 million and directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by Gladiator scribe John Logan. Jaafar Jackson, the son of Jemaine, will play his famous uncle while two-time Oscar nominee Colman Domingo portrays Joe.

Domingo has previously tried to distance himself from any potential backlash to the film. He told Variety late last year, “Anything surrounding those ideas about him never came into play with me. It’s about the character more than anything.”

He added, “Everyone has a story to tell.”

The film is scheduled for release this year but there has been a not-insignificant problem behind the scenes.

Rather than ignoring the paedophilia allegations, Puck reported the film made central to the story the 1993 accusations brought by the parents of 13-year-old Jordan Chandler. The movie, or at least a version of the script Puck’s Matt Belloni had read, was very much of the view that Jackson was the exploited and wronged victim.

According to Belloni, citing two unnamed sources, there’s an signed agreement with the Chandlers that prohibits the estate from dramatising them or their story, which puts the film in an unenviable position.

Apparently, the filmmakers were blindsided and had already wrapped shooting when they discovered the issue after The Financial Times reported in September the estate paid off five would-be accusers who came forward after the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland, which detailed the allegations from Wade Robson and James Safechuck.

There is a follow-up to Leaving Neverland due out in the US and UK later this month, which will follow Robson and Safechuck in their pursuit of justice after the first documentary’s ground-shifting accusations.

The sequel is not being distributed in the US by HBO, who handled the release of 2019 project, after US courts sided with the Jackson estate that HBO had violated a non-disparagement clause in a 1992 contract for a concert special.

The allegations against Jackson had been known for decades when Leaving Neverland aired, and while the singer had been acquitted in a 2005 criminal trial on charges relating to Gavin Arvizo, the documentary, coming out during the MeToo era, really changed the discourse.

There was a renewed reckoning and among other things, Jackson’s songs were pulled from the airwaves and Disney removed his episode of The Simpsons from its streaming platform.

Six years on, the culture has evolved, in part because the feverish pace of cancelling artists and public figures exhausted itself.

There’s also been a temporal distance to the Jackson allegations. This June will mark the 16th anniversary of his death.

“We are now getting to the point where it feels like history with Michael Jackson. It’s not a fresh story, not only because of how long he’s been dead for but the age of those crimes,” Rosewarne said. “Then that puts Michael Jackson (alongside) other historic cases.

“Think about the debate recently around the Picasso exhibition in Melbourne. OK, is this really a contemporary story or are we putting a different, contemporary lens on something, on a story that’s dated?”

Like Jackson, Pablo Picasso is an exceptional case precisely because of his outsized contribution to an art movement. You also have to ask yourself, does Picasso’s poor treatment of women during his life change the anti-war power of his masterpiece, Guernica?

“Unfortunately, that’s the tortured genius cliché, that then is very gendered, that almost gives a, ‘well, producing art of that quality comes at a cost and then they’ll always be victims’.”

Rosewarne said the singular talent of Jackson is different to other cancelled artists or personalities. American news anchor Matt Lauer will probably not nab another prime hosting gig because there are other male news anchors and Kevin Spacey still hasn’t clawed his way back to the A-list because there are other great male actors.

“If they’re in a big pool, no one cares that much. They’re not one-of-a-kind like Jackson was.”

Mix all that together with a heavy dose of nostalgia and the unwillingness of people to cancel their childhood favourites.

“A lot of people can’t let go of an artist that they felt was formative to their youth,” she said. “They will still pay to see positive, nostalgic content as opposed to them stopping and having to ask really hard questions of themselves because that chips away memories and no one wants to do that.”

As much as projects like MJ the Musical is about legacy and myth-making, it’s also about business. The Jackson estate is active and protective, Brian May had a heavy hand in the Bohemian Rhapsody film which he followed with a global Queen tour, and Amy Winehouse’s father was involved in last year’s biopic.

Think of all the music docos that have the approval and often the involvement of the artist, from Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez to The Beatles. Positive sentiment equals a pay day, and that’s not being cynical, that just is.

Rosewarne said something like MJ the Musical is the perfect illustration of capitalism at play in the sense that it’s about letting the market decide. If people are willing to pay, projects will continue to be produced.

As for whether you need to either reconcile or compartmentalise the sticker aspects of your favourite artists, maybe ignorance is the real bliss.

“I don’t want to know about the private lives of any of these people,” Rosewarne said. “Let me have my stuff without it being ruined because no one meets my standards.”