Purely as a film, “Michael” does not deserve much attention. The plot follows the familiar beats of the music biopic, beginning with the formation of the Jackson 5 and ending with Michael Jackson’s 1988 performance at Wembley Stadium.
Antoine Fuqua’s direction lacks personality. In the film’s titular role, the singer’s real-life nephew Jafaar Jackson doesn’t so much perform as imitate, and given the numerous Michael Jackson impersonations the average viewer has seen, it feels more like an imitation of an impersonation. The standout performance is delivered by Colman Domingo, who is, in equal measure, menacing and pathetic as Joe Jackson. Ultimately, it is only when viewed as a study in the entertainment industry’s commodification of children and parasocial gaslighting that “Michael” has any value.
America has a long history of sacrificing its young to facilitate the accumulation of capital. Dangerous child labor was common until 1938, when the Fair Labor Standards Act all but ended the practice for every industry but one: entertainment. The entertainment industry is guilty of all the historical sins of child labor, including death – an on-set accident during the filming of the 1982 film, “Twilight Zone: The Movie,” killed two child actors, along with actor Vic Morrow.
The entertainment industry’s fixation on youth and the youth market requires the employment of children. Like the mystical process described by Marx, which transforms wood into the transcendent table of commodity fetishism, parents, agents, managers, directors, producers, etc., perform a much darker transmutation of human children into child performer-objects, a commodity to which monetary value can be assigned. A commodity object is not worthy of empathy. A farmer does not mourn the destruction of a wheat crop, only the loss of value that follows. It is partially this objectification and its attendant lack of empathy that ultimately leads so many adults in the industry to turn a blind eye to multiple manifestations of abuse, ranging from labor violations to sexual molestation.
The opening third of the film makes clear that Jackson was a victim of commodification, made to practice incessantly with his siblings by a father who viewed his children as a meal ticket out of Indiana’s auto factories. Like many commodified child objects, physical abuse becomes a valid form of value creation. Jackson is denied a childhood and forced into a grueling schedule of rehearsals and performances. This process is never questioned by industry members; it is encouraged as Jackson’s monetary value quickly becomes evident. While the film attempts to camouflage this process as a celebration of the development of a singularly gifted young performer, this dark reality lurks just below the surface, manifesting as a vague sense of unease.
Once “Michael” transitions to the depiction of Jackson’s adult life, it quickly shifts from an unintended unmasking of the entertainment industry’s commodification of children to a project of parasocial gaslighting. One use of parasocial gaslighting is as a mechanism to prevent a terminal rupture of the relationship between a consumer and their favorite performer after the performer has been accused of an intolerable violation of the social contract. This serves performers, as well as the numerous functionaries necessary to perpetuate their existence, by maintaining their value as objects. It is the exact inverse of traditional gaslighting, in which a victim is made to question their sanity. Here, the victim is instead convinced of their sanity in a situation that would otherwise require extreme delusion. The fan wishes to not know. Wish becomes fact, and fact becomes truth. Instead of truth as clarity, parasocial gaslighting manufactures truth out of ambiguity and opacity. Uncertainty and doubt are the terra firma of the process.
The parasocial gaslighting regarding Michael Jackson began following the initial 1993 child abuse allegations and continued after his 2009 death: Oprah’s 1993 hagiographic interview, Barbara Walter’s complete avoidance of questions regarding the accusations in her 1997 interview, Martin Bashir’s softball questions regarding the accusations in 2003’s “Living With Michael Jackson”, the complete lack of serious investigative journalism regarding the accusations, the extensive news coverage of the celebratory vigil outside the Apollo Theater following news of his death, the numerous obituaries that framed the abuse charges as a challenge that Jackson was attempting to overcome with his final, aborted comeback tour, 60 Minutes Austraila’s decision to dedicate an entire episode in 2019 to an interview with Jackson’s defense attorney. These examples demonstrate an overt refusal by the entertainment industry – and ultimately, Jackson’s legion of fans – to cohere around the concept of Jackson as a pedophile.
“Michael” continues this project primarily by emphasizing Jackson’s supposed Peter Pan fixation. While there is some evidence of Jackson’s obsession with the character, such as the name of Neverland Ranch, much of the discourse connecting Jackson with Peter Pan was written after his death. In the film, a young Jackson is first shown reading a Peter Pan picture book after suffering a beating from his father, an appropriate image of a child escaping through fantasy. But the book’s continued reappearance in the narrative as it moves into Jackson’s adulthood hints at its true purpose.
Many of his fans focus on the trope of Michael Jackson as a child at heart when defending the most well-documented evidence supporting his pedophilia: the numerous sleepovers with young boys. The purpose of this trope is to desexualize the sleepovers. The character of Peter Pan serves this strategy; Jackson, like Pan, was not actually an adult, but a mythical child, never grown old, whose interactions with children were those of a fellow child. The “Michael” production team demonstrates recognition of the limits of parasocial gaslighting by deciding not to address or depict the sleepovers. They clearly understood the image of an adult Jackson sharing a bed with a child would be unpalatable for all but the most truly delusional audience member.
To break through the smokescreen of this particular instance of parasocial gaslighting, it is necessary to recognize that, for all his childlike affectations, Michael Jackson was very much an adult. The journey from childhood to adulthood is largely one of self-individuation in which an adult achieves a sense of self-efficacy. Jackson’s solo career is a clear demonstration of his almost superhuman powers of self-efficacy. A child may fantasize about a place like Neverland Ranch. An adult makes Neverland Ranch a reality.
The question left unanswered is: why? To what purpose are all these resources spent to protect the image of a pedophile? As a performer-object, the purpose cannot be empathy for Michael Jackson. Rather, the answer can be found in the plot of the 1944 film “Gaslight” from which the term derives its name. In the final act, Ingrid Bergman’s character, Paula, realizes that her supposed descent into madness is an elaborate charade perpetrated by her husband, Gregory (Charles Boyer). His motivation is a desire to steal valuable jewelry from Paula, or more simply put, greed. “Michael’s” box office currently stands at $788.05 million, making it the second-largest-grossing music biopic of all time after “Bohemian Rhapsody” ($902.6 million), and all indications point towards “Michael” taking the top spot soon. Beyond the film, as of 2026, Jackson’s estate is estimated to be worth $2 billion dollars. Not bad for a dead pedo.
1 Jolly
