{"id":116497,"date":"2026-04-27T04:39:42","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T07:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ubirataonline.com.br\/michael-is-a-highly-selective-version-of-the-singers-life-and-that-suits-more-people-than-you-might-think-nadia-khomami\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T04:39:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T07:39:44","slug":"michael-is-a-highly-selective-version-of-the-singers-life-and-that-suits-more-people-than-you-might-think-nadia-khomami","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ubirataonline.com.br\/en\/michael-is-a-highly-selective-version-of-the-singers-life-and-that-suits-more-people-than-you-might-think-nadia-khomami\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael is a highly selective version of the singer\u2019s life, and that suits more people than you might think | Nadia Khomami"},"content":{"rendered":"


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L<\/span>ike millions of other people, I went to see Michael this week. I knew what I was getting into \u2013 most reviews have been brutal<\/a>. It is a \u201cwhitewash\u201d, \u201cghoulish\u201d, a \u201c127-minute trailer montage\u201d of \u201ccruise-ship entertainment\u201d. And yet the film of Michael Jackson\u2019s rise to global stardom has broken the record<\/a> for the biggest opening in biopic history, and made $217m (\u00a3160m) worldwide on its first weekend of release, with over $900m projected by the end of its run.<\/p>\n

So I found myself thinking: if we know these films are often sanitised pap<\/a>, that the estates and lawyers have excised entire chapters of a musician\u2019s life, why do we still go in droves? There\u2019s the obvious explanation, of course. The biopics give audiences a way to experience a favourite artist at their peak and to dip into their much-loved musical catalogue.<\/p>\n

But another part of it, I suspect, lies in our attitude to genius and our need to try to explain it.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve always struggled to accept that extraordinary talent might simply exist, without a particular set of conditions giving rise to it. Since Plutarch wrote Parallel Lives<\/a> nearly 2,000 years ago, the belief has persisted that if we study a great life closely enough, its secret might be uncovered. It\u2019s what made the Romantics insist you couldn\u2019t understand a poem without understanding the poet\u2019s inner wounds. We cannot accept that talent simply arrives, unbidden, and unaccounted for.<\/p>\n

We want to know where the music and the artistry came from. We want the childhood, the life-changing experiences that produced Thriller or Bohemian Rhapsody or Back to Black. Writing about Shakespeare, whose psychology has confounded observers for centuries, the poet John Keats coined the term \u201cnegative capability\u201d \u2013 the ability to embrace \u201cuncertainties, mysteries, doubts\u201d. The irony is that Keats meant it as a description of why genius resists explanation. And yet it is precisely that resistance that pushes us to keep trying.<\/p>\n

But while the biopic promises to solve the mystery, it surely never does. And in the case of Michael, so much of his life has been left out. The film stops in 1988, blanking altogether the child sexual abuse allegations that overshadowed the last decades of Jackson\u2019s life and haunt his legacy. Jackson died denying the allegations. How can we interrogate a man\u2019s life and his work while leaving out its darkest parts?<\/p>\n

Attorneys for the Jackson estate, which served as a producer, realised there was a clause in a settlement with one of the singer\u2019s accusers that barred the depiction or mention of him in any movie. As a result the third part of the film was scrapped and reshot. What remains is a series of gripping musical sequences, and an uncanny physical performance from Jaafar Jackson, but almost nothing of the man behind them.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the film contained flickers of something more disturbing: Jackson\u2019s obsession with Peter Pan, the architecture of Neverland, the suggestion of a man constructing a fantasy world to survive the real one. But the film offered no sense of his creative process, no confrontation with the contradictions that made him one of the most fascinating and troubling artistic figures of the 20th century. We see his bullying father, Joseph Jackson, as the villain. But what happens when Jackson becomes the moral conundrum? A life cannot be understood in halves.<\/p>\n

Telling a selective version of a musician\u2019s life is no problem for studio execs. For an industry increasingly reliant on pre-existing intellectual property, the music biopic is a near-perfect product: it offers a built-in fanbase, a ready-made soundtrack, easy nostalgia and cross-generational recognition. The turning point was 2018\u2019s Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody<\/a>, which was a commercial triumph \u2013 despite being widely criticised for glossing over the Queen frontman\u2019s sexuality and Aids diagnosis. The lesson Hollywood drew was not that audiences want complexity, but that they will come regardless.<\/p>\n

Since then, we\u2019ve had biopics on Bob Dylan, Elvis, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston, and Robbie Williams. Next comes Sam Mendes\u2019s four separate Beatles films<\/a>. Biopics on Joni Mitchell, Ronnie Spector and Janis Joplin are in the pipeline.<\/p>\n

Musicians\u2019 estates are also comfortable with telling particular parts of stories and not others. When Michael Jackson died in 2009, he was more than $500m in debt<\/a>. Today his estate is worth $2bn, having been rebuilt through royalties, MJ the Musical<\/a>, a Cirque du Soleil collaboration, merchandise, and now this film. This all serves hardcore fans and casual listeners too; many want to continue engaging with Jackson\u2019s legacy untroubled by the allegations that mar it.<\/p>\n

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But when someone\u2019s life is editorialised in this way, <\/strong>we all lose something. In his poem Beasts Bounding Through Time<\/a>, Charles Bukowski reels off a list of damaged titans \u2013 among them Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Sylvia Plath and Fyodor Dostoyevsky \u2013 and calls them \u201cthese punks, these cowards \u2026 these mad dogs of glory moving this little bit of light towards us\u201d. Geniuses are fallible, and more than capable of doing serious wrong.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Michael is a chance to accept what these authorised biopics cannot do. They are like blue plaques \u2013 they tell us someone lived here, but little more. If we want to truly understand what made these artists who they are, we\u2019ll need something messier and much less comfortable. Something that might never get made into a blockbuster movie.<\/p>\n