Brittany Luce

He's the legendary visual effects artist behind movies like The Terminator.

Now, Jackson plays the maestro, this eccentric man living in a haunted mansion.

He's beloved by the neighborhood kids, but has been deemed a freak by the mayor, this abrasive old white man, who's also played by Jackson in prosthetics.

The mayor very obviously resembles Tom Sneddon.

the district attorney who led both of Jackson's child abuse investigations.

Now, the entire community descends upon the mansion with the intent of having him banished, despite the children's protests.

The video's message is, he's not a monster, just misunderstood.

But let's be real, he also relished much of this attention.

Because apart from the music, he was known for shrewdly courting the tabloids with outrageous stories about himself.

This is Rodney Carmichael, a correspondent for NPR Music.

The movie Man in the Mirror, the Michael Jackson story, paints this side of the singer in a scene between him and his bodyguard Bobby, played by Eugene Clark.

Bobby suggests that Flex Alexander's Michael needs to show his fans he's moved on after the allegations by getting together with Lisa Marie Presley.

Huh?

That's a great idea.

So all of this shrouded the man in mystery and uncertainty.

So much was going on with him that it could be hard to know where the truth ended and the manufactured narratives began.

Throughout his life, Jackson tried to have it both ways, to be perceived as this extraordinary outlier and an artistic genius, and therefore above scrutiny, but also when it suited his narrative to be seen as, you know, just like the rest of us.

Eventually, though, his efforts to walk that tightrope just stopped being as effective.

He remained a source of tabloid fascination in the U.S.

and hugely popular abroad.