About this episode

The episode discusses the new film 'Michael' and its portrayal of Michael Jackson's life, contrasting it with critical assessments of his legacy.

“Michael”—a new film, directed by Antoine Fuqua, charting Michael Jackson’s rise to fame—just had the best opening weekend in the history of bio-pics, proving that audiences are still eager to celebrate the King of Pop. The movie also ends, pointedly, before the first in a series of allegations of child sexual abuse that have tainted Jackson’s reputation ever since. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and their fellow staff writer Kelefa Sanneh consider how the unprecedented highs and horrific lows of Jackson’s life and career have made him a prism for modern ideas about stardom and power. Sanneh’s recent Profile of Fuqua details the Jackson estate’s involvement in the production, which resulted in a sanitized portrait of a deeply complex figure. Other works have assessed Jackson’s legacy more critically: the 2019 documentary “Leaving Neverland” lays out, in granular detail, the claims of two of Jackson’s accusers. “It’s just such a dissonance, seeing these two texts in such close proximity,” Fry says. “The thing with ‘Michael’ is, it doesn’t separate the art from the artist. It separates the artist from the wrongdoing entirely.” Read, watch, and…

People in this episode

Hosts: Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry

Guest: Kelefa Sanneh

Topics covered

• Michael Jackson
• biopic
• celebrity culture
• art vs. artist
• legacy
• power dynamics

Keywords

• Michael Jackson
• biopic
• Antoine Fuqua
• Leaving Neverland
• celebrity
• artistic legacy
• power
• stardom

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Antoine Fuqua, The New Yorker

Books & works: Michael, Leaving Neverland, Thriller, Dangerous

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