What Michael Jackson’s Revival Says About America

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The early-years Michael Jackson biopic “Michael” continues to fill seats in month two of its theatrical run, and it is on track to overtake “Bohemian Rhapsody” as the highest-grossing musical biopic of all time. Across social media, clips have proliferated of people flocking to the theater and taking in the film like a once-in-a-lifetime concert event — and not just people old enough to remember Jackson, but their children and grandchildren, too. For all the scandals that plagued “Wacko Jacko” in life, it would seem he has been forgiven in death.

Wall Street Journal’s Rob Henderson speculates about why this is, concluding that because Jackson’s scandals are such old news, they predate our new “script” for social cancellation. But he doesn’t fully reckon with the power of the entertainer’s singular status as the King of Pop. It’s one thing to tell people to give up watching Bill Cosby routines or Woody Allen movies. It’s another thing entirely to tell them the soundtrack of their childhood was based on a lie. And more, a soundtrack produced by a man who presented himself as a larger-than-life humanitarian figure — in the concert video for “Man in the Mirror,” sharing the screen with a parade of global icons from Mother Teresa to Martin Luther King Jr. 

That particular music video, which also includes a bipartisan cross-section of popular presidents, encapsulates Jackson’s universal appeal. In it, he embodies a transcendent American optimism that no one music star could bottle up and sell at scale in today’s fractured culture, where Americans no longer collectively buy the same records or watch the same TV shows. To miss peak Jackson is in some sense to miss peak America.

On the Right, that nostalgia has manifested itself in the populist wave that carried Donald Trump to two presidential terms. Barack Obama may have been the first black president, but his remarks on Jackson’s death were noticeably muted in contrast to Trump’s effusively fond memories of the star, and of their many “unbelievable weekends” in Florida. Trump was always among Jackson’s staunchest supporters, and the fact that their fanbases now overlap is not a coincidence. Both are perceived as the embodiment of “peak America.” Both successfully marketed themselves as near-messianic figures, crucified by “the establishment” but defiantly rising again — by the people and for the people. 

Jackson’s reputational resurrection should be understood in this context of reascendant American populism. Today, people are less inclined than ever to trust institutions and their narratives. “Michael Jackson was a devil” is an “approved” narrative, and as such, it will be chucked in the same bin as “Donald Trump is Hitler,” or “Anthony Fauci is a saint.” It doesn’t matter if any particular approved narrative might have better evidence than others. It’s all about the vibes. 

On the furthest fringes of the Right, QAnon-style conspiracists have spun out the theory that Jackson was framed because he was actually “protecting” children at Neverland from Jeffrey Epstein (never mind that no one ever accused Epstein of a prurient interest in prepubescent boys). Anti-semitism, a longtime staple in the rhetoric of black Jackson advocates like Louis Farrakhan, is unsurprisingly in that mix as well, now echoed in white Gen Z voices like Nick Fuentes.

But one needn’t venture to the fringe to find enthusiastic right-leaning takes on this revival. For The Federalist, Eddie Scarry declares that the people have spoken, and now is the moment to “let go” and move on from all the media’s “lies.” Those who disagree are painted as people with an “irrepressible urge to talk about pedophilia.” Meanwhile, National Review’s Armond White praises the biopic as a victorious blow against “dullards and authoritarians.” A follow-up piece compares the “vengeful liberal-media backlash” to Trump Derangement Syndrome and pronounces this “a unified moment in a culture war we can’t afford to lose.”

Whatever culture war White thinks “we” are fighting, blind adulation for Michael Jackson is in no way a precondition for its victory. Even aside from the allegations, conservatives should be repulsed by the way Jackson “acquired” his own three children by surrogate and (it’s claimed, and appears likely) sperm donor. Then, of course, there is the insouciant way he continued to behave inappropriately with a revolving door of attractive young boys in his orbit, even after coming under suspicion. It is beyond dispute that he repeatedly insinuated himself into the homes of starstruck, gullible families, fixated obsessively on their sons, and invited them into his bed while daring the world to object.

If the testimony of some of these boys and (now) men is to be believed, Jackson also carried the values of “free love” to their most sickening conclusion, insisting to his alleged minor victims that only “ignorant” people would deny the purity of their bond. Whole websites and subreddits are dedicated to litigating and re-litigating both sides of these allegations, whose number is still growing as of this year, with newly surfacing public claims from the Cascio family. A jury notoriously didn’t put Jackson’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt for the particular crimes he was accused of in 2005. But it is nigh impossible to study the full picture of the evidence across his career and not conclude there is fire behind all the smoke.

Both Jackson in life and the estate in his death have made it as difficult as possible for the public to see that picture and make its own judgment. In 1994, Jackson hushed up his first and most damning young accuser, Jordan Chandler, with millions of dollars. A heavily biased nod to that allegation had to be cut from the new film on the discovery of a clause in the settlement that prevented the estate from dramatizing it, predicting precisely such an attempt. Vaguely passive-aggressive scenes of young Jackson with children were left in the final cut with no clear dramatic culmination.

Meanwhile, the 2019 documentary “Leaving Neverland,” profiling accusers Wade Robson and James Safechuck, has been driven off of HBO and is not legally available in the U.S. (Their accusations are partially recapitulated here.) Their now decade-old joint lawsuit against the estate for negligence is currently trial-bound, with a date still pending. A follow-up 2025 documentary portrayed the unglamorous process. Both men have felt the concentrated fury of Jackson’s fanbase, including death threats. To believe they’re lying, one would have to believe they are choosing to put their families through this interminable grind for the uncertain hope of winning money at the end of the tunnel — in Robson’s case, also embarrassingly outing himself for alleged perjury in Jackson’s 2005 defense. 

For some of us, given the totality of the evidence against Jackson, the darkest hypothesis appears the simplest: The accusers are not lying now.

But the music. What of the music? The music is as it always was, as any art is when once it is shared with the world — not Jackson’s alone, but the world’s. It remains ours to dance to, as freely as we like. 

Our only mistake would be to assume that because we loved “Man in the Mirror,” we knew the man. We knew precisely what he chose for us to know. 

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Bethel McGrew is a freelance writer based in Michigan. Her work has appeared in First Things, the Wall Street Journal, the Lamp, and more. Follow her on Substack at Further Up.