It’s a movie starring his nephew in the lead role, approved by his estate, and by all accounts it just feels like an attempt to whitewash him. This is a man who was accused of being a serial child molester, settled with a family out of court for $25 million just to avoid a trial (Chandler), and openly admitted he slept in the same bed as kids while he was an adult (Bashir interview), among other things. I don’t really see what there is to debate.
Anything pointing this out gets backlash on movie-related subreddits, which I find wild. It makes me wonder, if Epstein could sing and dance, would he have gotten a biopic too? Would people be defending him like this?
I used to base my opinion of MJ on what Macaulay Culkin said. I was not aware of the rest of this. You’ve given me a lot to think about, thank you.
The Culkin defense never made much sense anyway. For a practical, personal example: if one of my dad’s wealthy friends was accused of child molestation by multiple children, me saying, “Oh, but he never did anything to me,” wouldn’t discredit the victims at all. As the child of a friend (and same circles), I would clearly be of a “higher status” and therefore protected.
Culkin was a famous child; predators are often selective with their victims. The argument here is that MJ targeted “lower class” children while treating famous ones well. That way, if accusations ever surfaced, the less privileged kids would be branded as money-hungry liars because the famous ones would publicly insist, “He treated me well.”