On Listening to “Billie Jean” and Other Moral Quagmires

I first heard “Billie Jean” in the winter of 1983 on a jukebox at The Anchor, a popular college dive bar in New Haven. The opening beats, the hypnotic voice, and the loopy, sometimes indecipherable pronunciation held me spellbound.

Michael Jackson would, of course, go on to become a freak show. The King of Pop would be accused of some of the worst crimes imaginable. The Los Angeles police began investigating him in 1993, ten years after I first heard “Billie Jean.”

Despite everything I know about Michael Jackson, hearing “Billie Jean” takes me back to The Anchor and the thrill of discovery. I still like it.

Now, on the heels of the long-running Broadway jukebox musical MJ, a new Jackson “biopic” whitewashes his life. Authorized by the Jackson estate and starring his nephew Jaafar, the film sidesteps Jackson's crimes by focusing on the years before they came to light. Though critically reviled, Michael is a smash hit, debuting with $97 million in ticket sales and earning a 97% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

I have no interest in seeing Michael or in the whitewashing of Jackson. Astonishingly, multiple outlets report that Michael 2-which would have to cover those years-is already in development.

More broadly, some of my other cultural products come from troubled, ethically compromised artists.

A film I once cherished, Annie Hall, gave me hilarious insights into the differences between Jews and Gentiles. These insights came from Woody Allen's mind. We all know about him and Soon-Yi Previn, the adoptive daughter of his longtime partner, Mia Farrow.

Speaking of Farrow: Roman Polanski, the director of her most iconic role in Rosemary’s Baby, another of my favorite films, had to flee the country after being accused of statutory rape.

Pablo Picasso
Portrait of Dora Maar (1937)

And then there is the whole Picasso problem. Recent biographies of the artist have revealed his physical and emotional abuse of women, yet institutional exhibitions rarely acknowledge his misogyny and cruelty. My favorite Picasso painting, Portrait of Dora Maar (1937), is a Surrealist and Cubist interpretation of the lover, muse, and woman he mistreated.

I do not pretend to have a solution to these moral dilemmas. People will always wonder if separating art from the artist is possible.

An April 25 New York Times headline declared, "Michael Jackson's music was too big to be canceled."

Listening to “Billie Jean” today is difficult without acknowledging Jackson’s reprehensible behavior. But I believe people will still be playing his song a hundred years from now.

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