Michael Jackson, Misunderstood

Illustration by Heather Han

At the height of his fame, Michael Jackson was the most famous man alive. One of the most prolific entertainers of all time, 'Michael Jackson' is as much myth as he is man. Decades after his death, the public remains divided over what exactly that myth represents. So when Lionsgate attempted to bring Jackson's life to the screen, controversy was inevitable.

But in the rush to debate what the film leaves out, many viewers seem to have missed what it puts centre stage. The biopic is less interested in cross-examining Michael Jackson than it is in understanding him. In doing so, it exposes a wider difficulty in modern celebrity culture: once a person becomes an institution, audiences often struggle to see the human being underneath.

Many viewers watched for an address of the abuse allegations that consumed Michael’s image during the years before his death – it was the most tumultuous period of Jackson’s life. After a 45 year old career and a lessening grip on his status as the ‘king of pop’, Jackson was catapulted into the spotlight again for the sexual abuse of underage boys.

Following the settlement of a 23 million dollar lawsuit in 1994, Jackson’s 2005 acquittal of all charges took the world by storm: 

Did he do it? Where did the evidence point? 

But he was innocent! But what about the boys? 

The fatal identification of the birthmark's phallic location.

Then, in 2006 Jackson dies – a homicide at that. Could the mythos around Michael Jackson be anymore disconcerting? Without closure, the most famous man in the world died with a muddy legacy, a question mark acting as the noose around his neck. 

So when Lionsgate announces the Michael biopic, the world is waiting, finally we will see a reenactment of the turmoil Jackson must have gone through, new information that writers might have procured in their research for this prolific script – but it never comes.

The biopic takes us through his childhood, his domineering father, slaving away since 5 years old, his courage to be independent and how he made his dances. There is no immediate conclusion for bated-breath audiences that were expecting a conclusion on the life and times of Michael Jackson.  

With this in mind, it makes sense that much of the buzz around the film critiques the lack of address to the allegations entirely. In an unusual parallel between art and life, the biopic ends much like Jackson’s untimely death. The movie does not give us reprieve in exploring the period that would come to dominate public perceptions of Jackson. 

However, reality did much the same. Jackson died before any definitive resolution could emerge regarding the allegations that would define the final decades of his public image. Both the film and history leave the public in ambiguity. Critics argue that this aspect of the film gives a dishonest interpretation of Jackson’s life, but I think this conclusion misses the point entirely. 

In fact, I was the one perplexed when I became aware that people read the film as a surface-level retelling of Michael Jackson’s life. The subtext was subtle and masterful: we see the context in which Michael Jackson was made – the film explores the circumstances surrounding abuse through the narrative of Jackson’s life. 

For me the implications were obvious: abusive father, passive mother with no one to protect him, a proclivity for friendship with animals, not being able to relate to other children, being the black sheep amongst his brothers, Sony’s willingness to do anything for Michael if it makes him happy, so long as he makes them money. 

The film focuses on what an anomaly Jackson’s life was; it’s made clear that from a very young age Michael realises he is different. In a scene where he is in conversation with his mother, Michael expresses that ‘[he is] not like the other kids. They don't treat [him] like a real person.’ The film explicitly introduces a problem that never goes away: child Michael wants ordinary relationships – adult Michael occupies a position where ordinary relationships become almost impossible. 

Nothing about Michael changes – all the children still want to be around Michael Jackson, the famous popstar. But now Michael holds power in this dynamic, as an adult he has the power to influence the way other children perceive him – something he was unable to control when they were his peers. In this relationship the children have less agency in the way they receive Michael. Much like the lack of agency he had being exploited as a child star. 

There is this pervasive feeling the whole time that there is something wrong – and it's everything. The film isn’t pointing toward one specific future event. But there is a persistent atmosphere of abnormality:

Child performers working exhausting schedules. Parents treating children as economic assets. Children becoming global commodities. Adults building businesses around a child. Isolation. Fear. Dependency. Enormous wealth.

The film keeps returning to the idea that Michael's life was never normal – that abnormality makes trying to interpret it through ordinary assumptions difficult. As a result, general audiences misunderstand the point of the film’s focus, his life is so abstract that it is incomprehensible. 

Perhaps I just watch too much true crime, but there was an obvious image that was being constructed through the meticulous dissection of Jackson’s family life. The film almost pushes you to observe that Jackson was an individual who went from having so little power being knocked about by a bastion of a Father, to suddenly having a significant quantity of it. As Michael’s fame and financial freedom increases, he disrupts Joe Jackson’s stronghold on authority in the Jackson household. 

Michael’s success indicates a transfer of patronage: when his mother, Katherine finally tells Joe, "You can't do it no more," her confidence feels less like a sudden discovery of courage than the result of a new reality. Michael's success has provided a form of protection that did not previously exist. The scene resembles historical household structures in which authority followed economic power. Joe may remain the patriarch in name, but his ability to command obedience has been fundamentally weakened. The family no longer depends on him in the same way.

The irony is that Michael acquires enough power to protect others from his father while never entirely escaping his father's influence himself. He can’t tell his father face to face that he wants to do a solo album, he tells producer Quincy Jones that he ‘needs [him] to tell [his] father that the solo album was [his] idea’. Quincy replies with a cool, ‘anything we can do to help, Michael.’ 

This scene is where that unsettling facet of horror within Jackson’s life faces the audience; Jafar Jackson emulates Michael’s fear of his father so closely that you can feel the presence of humiliation. There is an understanding in the silence after the conversation ends. As if to say: you can’t stand up to your own father? The shame is tantamount to cardinal sin. 

The biopic does an incredible job of making you go through all these mixed feelings for Michael Jackson: he’s a bit odd and can make one feel uneasy, but there’s also an immense amount of grief when the film forces you to inhabit areas of life that brought dread for Jackson. When Joe Jackson is notified of his dismissal by his son, he makes that fear of having no courage tangible: we are devastated that he ends up being correct. 

Joe complicates power. Most discussions of Michael Jackson focus on his own immense power, but the film keeps showing power as relational rather than absolute:

Michael can force radio stations to play Billie Jean.

Michael can fire his father.

Michael becomes ‘a one-man financial empire.’

Yet in private moments, the emotional dynamic with Joe remains intact. Joe berates his son upon his dismissal:  "Couldn't even be man to man, huh? Joe immediately frames the situation in terms of masculinity. The accusation isn't merely that Michael fired him, it’s that Michael failed to perform a certain version of manhood. That scene only works because both characters understand the history underneath it.

Michael depicts the late pop star as someone who was simultaneously: extraordinarily powerful, extraordinarily influential, highly aware of his influence and yet shaped by defining circumstances in his life. Contemporary viewers appear to struggle with this tension that undercuts the whole movie: it’s full of unresolved questions. Society wants neat, absolute, moral categories because they make the world easier to navigate. Michael Jackson resists those categories.

The mythos of Michael Jackson is constantly held in a state of conflict.  In a harrowing premonition from the film’s Joe Jackson, he warns Michael: ‘Nobody else will understand you outside this place. There you'll be with all the money in the world, surrounded by people who'll say "yes" to everything’.  The film frames this as simultaneously manipulative and prophetic: Joe is trying to retain control. He's also identifying a genuine danger.

The audience knows he's right. The abusive father is not transformed into a wise prophet. Nor is he presented as completely wrong.

The reaction to Michael reveals something larger than Michael Jackson himself. Contemporary audiences increasingly expect meaning to be stated rather than inferred. There is a fundamental collective misunderstanding when it comes to engaging with media: people want the film to answer questions that, in reality, were never conclusively answered either. Faced with ambiguity, many demand clarification; faced with complexity, they seek resolution. But interpretation has always been a fundamental part of engaging with art.

This inability to engage with the information we are consuming everyday becomes more and more apparent in a world where modern life arguably requires inference skills now more than ever. Technological  life requires us to navigate political messaging, advertising, social media narratives, news framing, AI-generated content and endless streams of information competing for our attention. Understanding what is implied, omitted, emphasised, or symbolised is not an abstract academic exercise but a practical necessity.

Despite this, contemporary culture often treats interpretation as optional. Educational and political discourse frequently prioritises vocational skills whilst overlooking the practical value of analysing rhetoric, evaluating arguments and understanding context. The result is a culture increasingly uncomfortable with ambiguity.

The controversy surrounding Michael demonstrates this tendency. Much of the criticism focuses on what the film does not explicitly state, whilst paying less attention to what it repeatedly shows. Audiences search for verdicts where the film offers character and certainty where it offers context. 

So when I say Michael Jackson, misunderstood – I am not establishing a judgment on the life and times of Michael Jackson, but pointing to a growing, broader discomfort with interpretation itself and a penchant for preferring definitive answers where none may exist.