What “Michael” Tries to Show—or Hide

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3:18Go to decagon.ai slash newyorker to get a personalized demo and see what Decagon can do for your team. Check Decagon out at decagon.ai slash newyorker. That's decagon.ai slash newyorker. You got the first lines. Are we doing it now? I mean, you're a critic today, so... You can deliver that shit. This is Critics at Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Kella Fasani. I'm Vincent Cunningham. And I'm Nomi Fry. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Okay, today is a little bit different. We are two-thirds of our usual pod. Our beloved Alex is out this week.

4:02She will be back next week, not to worry. But we have a wonderful gift for you this week. Our fellow staff writer, Califasene, is sitting in for Alex today. Hi, Kay. Yo, all these years of scribbling away as a critic with a small C. And I'm finally today, you know, for this little half hour, hour we've got together, a critic with a big C. Yeah, you are a critic at large. And a big C. With a large C. A critic at large. Man, and you are a gift. She said the exact right thing. It sounds like a hip-hop name or something. Critic at large. You are the critic at large, and you write about a lot of things.

4:40You write about politics, entertainment, tech, boxing, but your big beat, Kay, is pop music. I do love pop music. And that's why we wanted you here with us for this episode, because today we're talking about the king of pop himself, Michael Jackson, who is back at the center of the culture, thanks to a new biopic called simply Michael. I love my family. I just want to do my own thing. Just have all these ideas in my head. Just got to get them out. And do it, Michael. I'm not a little boy anymore.

5:23So this film just came out, already is a huge success. Box office numbers, after opening weekend, off the charts,$217 million worldwide. It's the most ever for a biopic. What does the success of this film tell you about where Michael Jackson sits in the culture? I mean, it tells me that there's a big hunger. People are really excited about getting a chance to go into a movie theater and hear his songs really loud and celebrate that, right? It's partly nostalgia, but it's partly the fact that his music still feels like it's here with us. I think probably younger listeners aren't super familiar necessarily with his life and his career, but they probably know the big hits.

6:11And maybe there hasn't been a time for all sorts of reasons. There hasn't been a time recently where people can go and celebrate that music. And so maybe there was a little bit of a pent-up demand. Yeah. And so today we're going to be discussing Michael, the movie. And we're going to be talking about Michael himself as a person, as an icon. And we should say right up front that Michael Jackson has been accused of sexually abusing children. There are multiple allegations dating back decades that he and the state have denied and the state continues to deny after his death. And yet it seems that his popularity is stronger than ever.

6:53And Vincent, I want to ask you, when we were discussing doing this episode, you have this suggestion of approaching Michael Jackson as a prism through which we could look at a variety of issues. Can you say a little bit more about that? Well, yeah, he's such a megastar, right, that he encompasses all these strains that I guess are still operative today when we think about this kind of mega pop stardom. so we wanted to look at him through a couple of different maybe areas of interest i mean first of all there's the child stardom of it which this film given its ambit in his young life is really important to this film the question that we've had increasingly i guess in our time how do you separate art from the artist and in depicting someone as an art maker how do you i don't know or not thoughts about their persona.

7:47And then also the big thing that pop stars give us often, which is an image, you know, a surface. And how does that surface interact with our notions of authenticity? So, I mean, hopefully through the course of the episode, we'll get to all of these strains and much more. Yeah, absolutely. So today is all about Michael Jackson as a prism, as you say, Vincent, for the big questions our culture has right now about stardom and about power. And also, it's important to know the sheer staying power of his music, which is really considerable. So that's today on Critics at Large. When it comes to Jackson as an icon, is he simply too big to fail?

8:35So, before we dive in, one thing that's worth noting right up top is just how evergreen Michael Jackson and his music really are. You know, I can think actually maybe Madonna. It's hard for me to think of another artist who is as kind of present over the course of my life. Do you guys have early memories of encountering his music or of him as an artist? I mean, I'm sure you do, but does anything come to mind? Yeah, I mean, I was a little kid when Thriller came out, and that was the first, might have been the first cassette I owned. It was, yeah, it was everywhere. where it was like suddenly what everyone was listening to.

9:13And before I even had a sense of what the musical context would be, or I certainly didn't know anything about the Jackson 5, or even really about most of the rest of what was on pop charts. It was just this is the thing that everyone's listening to. You start to freeze And so it looks you right between the eyes You're paralyzed Cause this is dinner

9:42Yeah, I think I was in first grade when Thriller came out. And I remember the show it was on because I was back in Israel. So it wasn't just like on MTV. There was a pop show on TV that showed it. And my parents wouldn't let me stay up late to watch it. And so everyone in school was talking about it. and I could understand that this was like an incredible thing that I had missed. And so I had my hunger for it. But of course, like, it was absolutely everywhere, you know? And we'll talk about Michael. It's like when you hear the music, you just realize how every single note is so familiar to you.

10:24Like, Vincent, what about you? Yeah, I was, I guess I was born a little bit after Thriller, a couple years after Thriller. and therefore, like, Dangerous was the first big Michael Jackson album for me. And for my money, Dangerous is when Michael Jackson was at his coolest. That's interesting. That's when he was wearing the white, just the crisp white shirt open, and the black pants, and, like, just kind of weird bandages and stuff around his arm for no reason, and the loafers and the big socks, and his hair was already kind of, like, you know, crinkly, leaving a little bang coming down the side.

10:56He looked cool still. Dangerous was my first CD. I remember being scared of the album cover because it was just his eyes. Oh, that was, yes. And the menagerie of animals beneath it. Like the eyes, I had to put the CD in my drawer at night just to like, Michael's eyes have to go away. But yeah, he was huge and I loved him. I loved him. I wasn't a glove owner. Did either of you own a sparkly glove or a red leather? No, I wasn't attempting to dress like Michael A. Yeah, I did not have a glove. Lots of people were glove holders. I was not, but I was like, I did really enjoy Michael Jackson and love his music when I was a kid.

11:32So let's turn now to Michael, the movie. Okay. It just came out in theaters this past weekend. It stars Jafar Jackson, who is Michael's nephew, Jermaine's son, as Michael Jackson. And it's directed by Antoine Fuqua. Okay. As the man who recently profiled said, Fuqua, we love to synopsize on this show. Would you like to synopsize the feature film, Michael? Sure. I mean, so Antoine Fuqua, the director, grows up in a working class neighborhood in Pittsburgh. And there's kind of a parallel where a big chunk of this film is about the Jackson family growing up in Gary. And the determination of Joe Jackson, the patriarch, to get this family up out of Gary.

12:22And the idea that he hits upon is that his boys are going to be a singing group. And they're going to be the Jackson Five. and he's a really harsh and stern taskmaster in the film. And the film portrays Michael as, you know, extraordinarily talented and extraordinarily sensitive and kind of kind-hearted in a way that sometimes beggars belief. He's kind of like saintly in the film. Yeah. And, again, reacting to often to Joe's determination. I found Coleman Domingo, who played Joe Jackson, I found that performance to be really interesting. Like, that was the one I was kind of watching. It's like, and just the way his, he's got some facial prostheses, I believe.

13:08But the way his face moves in general, it's kind of like we're seeing that big face and those big eyes through Michael Jackson's eyes. But it should be said that a lot of what the film is, is music. This film was made in collaboration with the Jackson estate so that they would have the licensing rights to use the songs. The producer Graham King, who's really the driving force behind this film, also produced Bohemian Rhapsody, which did a similar thing with Queen, the rock band, and helped turn Queen into, like, one of the biggest rock bands of all time. And so part of the idea of Michael Jackson is, imagine what we could do if we had the rights to the Michael Jackson catalog.

13:53Right. But there was a hitch. There was a hitch. There was a hitch. And maybe, Kay, you can tell us how the movie treats this hitch, what the hitch is and how the movie contends with it. So the hitch really is that there are two halves of Michael Jackson's career. You know, he rises to fame with the Jackson 5. He goes solo. He makes these amazing solo records. And then in 1993, we get the first public accusation that he has sexually assaulted children, boys. And there was a series of allegations later. He was never found guilty of anything in court. There were settlements. And so this kind of comes to dominate the later decades of his life.

14:38And originally, the idea of the film was that it would include that. One of the scenes that was shot for the film was a scene of Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch being raided. And at one point, his body is examined to see if it matches some descriptions that were given by one of the alleged victims. And so all of that was in an early version of the movie. but then it turned out that the estate was bound by an agreement that Michael Jackson had made with one of the accusers in his settlement with this accuser, which basically said, as far as I'm aware, that he's not allowed to depict the events involved in the accusation, and which means his estate isn't allowed to be involved in a film that depicts the events of the accusation, which means that Michael, to the extent that the film is made in cooperation with the estate, also can't depict any of these events involving the accuser and things that happened after it.

15:45So they had to figure out what to do. How do we make a film about Michael Jackson that doesn't depict these things? And basically what they decided to do was go back, shoot some more footage, and end the film in the late 80s. So the film ends with Michael Jackson on top of the world before any of these public allegations surface. I mean, I have some thoughts, Vincent. I'm sure you have some thoughts. And Kay, I also want to hear your thoughts. Let's start with you, Vincent. Okay. Kay is right. It's a lot of music. And on some level, it's like, okay, the logic behind the movie, as I saw it, seemed to be, here's some iconic concerts that we can't miss.

16:28you know Motown 25 the time he gets you know the Pepsi commercial where he gets his hair burnt off etc etc on the other hand it is this chronicle and this is why I totally agree about Coleman Domingo's performance it is really a story about Michael's repeated attempts to break free of his father you know his coming of age is this sort of episodic struggle with Joe every once in a while he's like I gotta fire my father I gotta get away from my father I gotta fire my father. Could you fire my father for me, please? Ronka, fire my father. Everyone's got a Michael Jackson voice. Everyone's got it.

17:07Except me. You're not gonna do it? No, thanks. I'm just doing what the movie did. Yeah, yeah. I thought it kind of exaggerated. Yeah, yeah. It was like a fluty, a very fluty falsetto. I found him, he was more of a countertenor in real life. Anyway, anyway. But, you know, it's weird. yeah it didn't go into the allegations and stuff but it wasn't really i thought everybody said it's avoidant i don't think it's avoidant i think it engaged with it and in these like pre-monitory ways and sort of like your profile case you know you show how the scenes that were cut out were basically like kind of florid defenses you know he's being sort of frisked in his home and all these kind of terrible things we'd be treated like an animal we can't see these things whatever instead it just has all of these scenes of michael being like well here's why he could only be friends with children right um his brothers didn't want to play twister with him his father was a terrible person he was famous too early and so he has this conversation with his mother played by nia long katherine jackson and he says i can't make friends with any of the other i can't make friends with any of the other boys uh i'm they just look at me like i'm you know Because he's already famous.

18:27They just want to ask me questions like I've been on TV, et cetera. So it's just all about it. It seemed more sinister than avoidance. It seemed like the movie was sort of grooming me into believing that Michael Jackson hadn't allegedly done in me the things that he's later been said to do. And so that I resented and thought was kind of like a little bit evil. and I really didn't like that it really gave me the ick I think you're right about I mean I think it's both avoidant and in this avoidance it is a defense because it kind of corrals us sweetly into forgetting right and I felt it working for me sometimes not because it's an especially really good movie.

19:24I mean, I'm putting aside the questions of like, whether it's sinister or not or whatever, the movie is kind of like a wig fest, you know, there's a lot of, it's like Miles Teller is, you know, powerful lawyer, entertainment lawyer, you know, John Branca with like, in the kind of 80s wig, you know, it's a little bit of a TV biopic, you know, it's like, it's a little bit like, certain like, strains of Ryan Murphy. It's like, we're going to kind of get it right, but it still looks a little weird, you know, like the 80s stuff, the 70s stuff. But it did get me, and it did get me with the music. I must admit, you guys, that...

20:03Were you jamming? Well, I was jamming. You were one of those people who was dancing in front of the screen while everyone was just trying to watch the movie? I rushed the screen at the Lincoln Center, AMC, IMAX, and, you know, at 1 p.m. on Friday, and I just jammed. No, but I have to admit, and it's like not really difficult to make me cry. I'll admit I'm like pretty soft hearted. We're going to try during this podcast. But, you know, the Jackson 5 stuff, especially like when ABC came on, you guys, I was like, and I was like, and maybe it was because it was kind of like earlier stuff. He's a child still, you know, it's like he is like, that is undeniable.

20:48that he was a child that whatever happened in Michael Jackson's life, and I can't say with any assurance, you know, what kind of abuse we don't know about, but certainly he was abused, you know, by his father, by the system. He was exploited, taken advantage of. So, of course, it's like the hard goes out kind of unreservedly those moments. It really, it worked. And then I had to kind of like investigate myself and kind of like think to myself, what does this mean? And, you know, and I think Fuqua in the profile case says when you ask him about the allegations and how did he come to make this movie, like how does he feel about making a movie when, of course, it's this embattled figure that has allegedly done terrible things.

21:39He said something to the extent of, I think people do nasty things for money. I said sometimes people do some nasty things for some money. Right. And he was talking about the accusers. It was in that context. In that context. He was saying he doesn't, he was saying, well, I don't know about them specifically, but he was saying, generally speaking, yes. And, you know, I was surprised because of the movie that he made, a movie that ends in the late 80s, he had the opportunity to duck that question if he wanted to. Right? He had the opportunity to be like, look, we're just telling a film about what happens through the 80s.

22:17Like that other stuff, that's not in the film. People will make up their own mind, et cetera. And maybe I was expecting that someone who's had a career like the career that he's had was seeing this as like a money job. And that this is a way to like make a quick buck by doing this Michael Jackson biopic. And what I got instead was someone, at least in how he talked about it to me, that was a lot more earnest about how he talked about Michael Jackson and who talked about Michael Jackson as this really important figure, a really important figure to black music and to black culture. Yeah. And that he seemed earnestly skeptical of the accusations.

23:05He seemed to feel like he had an obligation to tell this story and to tell it in the way that he did and to tell it in a way that was somehow exculpatory. Right. Or at the very least to say maybe there's an idea that we tend to come down harder on black celebrities or that there's less grace for black celebrities. And so, yeah, I was honestly surprised by that because that was not the easy way out of that question. What did you think of the movie? So I watched an early version of it. And I got to say, as a music fan, I'm kind of literal minded about this stuff. I like documentary footage. Well, they did a lot of – there were some anachronisms, speaking of like non-documentary.

23:50Yeah. And so, yes, when the filmmaker of a biopic is like, well, no, we put this here because it made the story better. And they're using the music and the music's got to carry it. But a lot of Michael Jackson's music, especially up to this era, is not that autobiographical in an obvious way. And so then you've got to figure out, like, well, how are we putting Beat It in? And so they kind of they create this thing where Michael Jackson's like brokering a gang truce. Yeah, which seems insane. I think that's broadly true. Like he did. It's just like the thing itself was really overdetermined. One cold-blooded killer is like, Michael, can I teach you how to pop lock?

24:32Yeah. And then another cold-blooded killer is like, and here's the crip walk. And he's like, yeah, guys, that looks great. Let's make a movie about it. What? Excuse me? It was a little overdetermined. Like it was a little much.

24:49In a minute, Michael Jackson, The Prism. Critics Hill Archer and The New Yorker will be right back.

25:09I want us now to proceed and talk about what Vincent suggested was the different prisms that we can look at Michael Jackson through. And I think I want to start with child stardom. I feel like in 2026, we're much more aware than we used to be, certainly more than we were during the time of Michael Jackson's childhood of the toll early fame can take. Like, does Jackson's early life feel like a familiar case of kind of like an exploited child star to you or like a story that couldn't have turned out well because the beginnings were already so determined in a certain direction? In a certain way, at least in my lifetime, it's kind of the ur-case of this.

25:59It was the first time I had in my mind the trope that child star, something's going to go bad, you know. But it's weird, though. As you say, 2026, we're all kind of more aware. We're all kind of more wary of child stardom. But I would also stick a pin in our era as one of the high points of ubiquitous child stardom. If you look at so many people who are big in our culture right now, I've been watching Zendaya act since she was a child because I had a kid who was the right age to watch her Disney stuff. Recently, there was that documentary Quiet on Set about Nickelodeon and all the horrible abuses.

26:42Or, you know, the dark side of kids TV was the subtitle to that. And the Jeanette. The Jeanette McCurdy. The Jeanette McCurdy memoir. I'm glad my mom died, which talked about her career as a young child who was pushed to the brink by her family and also through this Nickelodeon machine. Yeah, it strikes me at least at this grand irony that our wariness has increased. But the prevalence of this thing, child star, I mean, it just seems like it hasn't slowed down. No, and we have other kind of very signal examples of this, you know, the example of Britney Spears, for instance, right? where she was a mouseketeer, you know, pushed to stardom at an early age, sexualized, over-sexualized at a young age by the system that kind of reaped the financial benefits of doing so.

27:38And it all went haywire from there. I'm not sure I agree with any of this. Give it to us. I mean, I think there is something weirdly satisfying for those of us that are fans to imagine that when people are famous and we witness problems that they have, that we as an audience did this to them. There's something that makes us feel like part of their story. Like, oh, Britney's having trouble. That's my fault as a pop music fan. But I'm not sure that that's— I didn't say it was my fault, Kay. Well, no, but like that's the fault of – no, but that's the fault of fame. It's the fault of fame. Of the thing.