Brittany Luce

Also, never underestimate the general public's being desensitized to and dismissive of abuse.

Here's Soraya Nadia McDonald again.

I think part of the reason why we keep seeing this sort of highly curated and aggrandizing memorials of people, whether they be cinematic or otherwise, is because I think we actually live in a very violent country, a country that normalizes abuse to such a large degree that I think confronting that one wound

Because what you see is there are commonalities in the way that we respond to them and rationalize these things.

And I think it really bothers people to try to deal with that because it's deeply upsetting.

And...

Is there room for an ethical examination of MJ through art?

Something that sits somewhere between the exaltation of artistry found in the Jacksons in American Dream and the examination of the downfall in Man in the Mirror?

A dramatization that can truly complicate his image for a hungry audience in a way Leaving Neverland couldn't?

I think so, but it's not going to come out of the Jackson estate.

Take MJ the Musical, which was penned by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage.

It literally dances around the toughest questions concerning Jackson's life.

It's mostly set during rehearsals for his Dangerous World tour in 1992, the year before the first public allegations of sexual abuse.

And as for Michael the movie.

So Matt Bellany, co-founder of Puck News, was one of the first to report in 2024 that a version of the Michael screenplay was

included the 1993 child sex abuse lawsuit against Jackson.

Now, his report said the intention was to paint the Chandler family as money-hungry and Jackson as innocent.

More recently, Bellany and other journalists have published anonymously sourced reports about the movie's production delays.

They say the script was given extensive rewrites after the creators learned from the Jackson estate that they were legally prohibited from dramatizing the Chandler family.

NPR has not independently confirmed these reports, though in an interview with Australian TV, producer Graham King acknowledged there were reshoots because of what he termed a legal issue.