Human Nature

I had a chance to see Michael last weekend with the family, and as a lifelong fan, it didn’t disappoint. Now, it was already openly stated that the movie was a ‘love letter to the fans’ rather than a definitive account of a very complicated person.

Fair enough.

It still opened to $217M worldwide in a single weekend anyway, the biggest opening in the history of music biopics.

And if you haven’t been down the TikTok rabbit hole yet, it’s worth a look. Fans of all ages, dressing up like Jackson just to go see the movie.

GenZ and even some Gen Alphas are filming themselves dancing to Beat It choreography, crying to Earth Song, and overall just losing their minds over someone who died before a lot of them were born.

I scroll through the videos and feel conflicting emotions. Pure joy at watching new generations react the same way I did as a child. But also, a bit unsettled since there was always a duality there.

Which takes me back nearly forty-five years.

My earliest memory of Michael Jackson was my mother’s copy of Thriller. I’d sit on the floor by the record player, taking in that iconic image of him in that white suit, listening to the entire album over and over, memorizing every word and melodic nuance.

I was seven years old and had absolutely no idea what I was holding in my hands, no idea the album I memorized would soon be the best-selling album in history.

I just knew the songs felt like something you couldn’t explain – until the night Motown 25 aired.

I still remember catching it on a little television perched on a yellow stool in the kitchen (I think my mother was painting the walls in there or something), but I happened to be right there in front of that little TV when he did his solo act.

I was transfixed. And when he did the moonwalk…oh boy.

We were all trying to moonwalk in school the next day.

What made Michael Jackson stand out at the time was that he made iconic music, but he made them into events. People talked about Motown 25 for weeks.

When the Thriller video came out, it was a full-on production. It was such a spectacle that I still remember the disclaimer he added at the last minute that he wasn’t endorsing beliefs in the occult.

That tells you everything about our cultural temperature at the time, yet we ate it up anyway because he had essentially reinvented music videos as an art form.

Whenever something new came out, you stopped everything to watch it. And no matter the song, he could make you feel like the coolest person in the room or break your heart.

Billie Jean made you want to groove. Man in the Mirror made you want to be a better person. Stranger in Moscow made you feel so alone in the best ways.

That range alone is almost unreasonable for one person to have, and yet, the man behind it was a mess in ways that went beyond the eventual accusations.

Neverland Ranch hemorrhaging money, odd choices, and stranger relationships, and his eventual financial implosion points to a man plagued by his own fame in a way most of us couldn't come close to understanding.

The years passed, and with them came more hits; by high school, I was a huge Jackson fan, rewatching his concert in Bucharest at least a dozen or so times.

With those years came more tabloid theatrics (remember ‘Wacko Jacko’?), and controversies. I’ll be honest, I never believed the accusations.

BUT.

I also won’t sit here and pretend those sleepovers weren’t deeply disturbing. They were. And investigations went on for years, with nothing ever really settling it one way or the other.

So what do we do with that? How do we justify loving the art while overlooking the artist?

Caravaggio was a murderer, yet his paintings hang in churches to this day. Chris Brown put Rihanna in the hospital, but his concerts always sell out.

Are we truly separating the art from the artists, or just deciding on a case-by-case basis what we're willing to tolerate based on how much we like what they give us?

There are damaged, struggling, sometimes even dangerous people who happen to possess a rare talent that gives us something we don't want to lose.

Myself included, it seems.

I look back at my seven-year-old self and see someone who had no idea that Michael Jackson was already a deeply unwell human being long before the accusations came to light.

What Joe Jackson did to his children in the name of creating a dynasty left wounds that can likely never heal.

Michael was robbed of anything resembling a normal childhood or adolescence and went on to achieve a level of superstardom that had no real precedent.

It still doesn’t excuse anything; it just makes it more complicated. And the long and short of it is, we all have reasons for the things we justify.

At the end of it all, I want to believe Michael Jackson was a fundamentally well-meaning person, warped by a lost childhood. Maybe I'm being generous, or maybe it just makes me feel better to frame it like that.

Some things we simply keep in our repertoire and hope no one asks too many questions about our choices.

I’m pretty sure that makes me a hypocrite, but it also means I’m only human.

Just like everyone else.

The kids on TikTok don't seem to know or care about much of that. They're just immersed in the music.

Just like we once were.

Heather Papovich is the voice behind Unfinished Business. She's seen some things. She'll tell you about them.