Never has the expression “kill your idols” been more appropriate and timely than after the release of HBO’s 2-part documentary Leaving Neverland (2019). Dan Reed’s searing account of Michael Jackson’s perennial grooming of not one, but two male adolescent admirers —which later coalesced into sexually abusive relationships (which involved their families and lasted for years)— is difficult to reject for many reasons: one, Michael Jackson grew up in the eyes of America’s boomer-cultural zeitgeist, first as a prodigy frontman/ singer for The Jackson 5, before later transforming into a one-man pop mega-star, singing and dancing his way into the hearts and minds of millions the world over.
There was simply no denying his raw, animal magnetism or genderless allure, which registered among men as much as it did women; and yet for this reason MJ was also treated with, pardon the pun, glittery “kid gloves.” There was rarely, if ever, any media speculation as to why he had so many young boys around him at all times, or why he had built an entire kid-themed ranch dedicated to his youngest and most ardent worshipers.
Did we believe he was too innocent (or asexual) to be guilty of such heinous crimes? Or were we just too afraid to admit what was so nakedly obvious, and out in the open for all of us to see, that in some way we were guilty as well? Neverland ends —and begins— like a horror film, where choreographer Wade Robson and former child actor James Safechuck recounts, in agonizing detail, the ways in which Michael performed and received sexual acts from them, ages 7-14.
The fact that there are still those willing to defend the tarnished pop icon, even in the face of overwhelming firsthand and witness accounts from (now middle aged) survivors, is a testament to his celeb supremacy. Notably in the dance community, wherein Michael was, and still is, revered as a venerable God —there simply wasn’t a stage performer out there who wouldn’t do anything to get up on stage next to him, incriminating sex tabloids be damned.
One such dancer who nearly made it onto the infamously cut-short This Is It tour was Sofia Boutella, a French model-dancer-actress who made her American debut in 2011’s “Hollywood Tonight” music video, which honored the late entertainer’s memory after he suffered cardiac arrest in 2009. It would be too presumptuous, however, to call out Boutella for embracing the troubled pop star given his myriad predatory crimes —after all, among the international dance community, Michael was apotheosized as the mecca of stage physicality.
More than the music itself, which reached unimaginable heights of commercial successes, the dancing and stage persona made their way into the world’s proverbial living room, and nothing quite like it, save for perhaps four or five fleeting boy bands and a handful of pop stars, barely came close. Even after he was acquitted of child molestation charges in 2005, the goodwill generated by MJ’s spectacle as a kid “savior,” rather than tormentor, temporarily shielded him from a hefty prison sentence, yet a certain uneasiness sullied and permeated his image in the same way other alleged high-profile celebrity pedophiles like Kevin Spacey, R. Kelly, Woody Allen and Roman Polanski eventually succumbed to, but never truly paid a price for.
Boutella, who successfully auditioned for the lead dance role in Jackson’s This Is It tour, ultimately bowed out due to her prior obligations to Madonna (who by all accounts, treats her dancers phenomenally well), and now, in the wake of the HBO premiere of Leaving Neverland, will be re-introduced to American audiences during the U.S. release of Gaspar Noe’s Cannes darling, Climax (2018).
Perhaps un-ironically, the French film follows a similar pattern of luring audiences out from a safe, unencumbered space into a seedy, chaotic underbelly of nightmare dreamscapes —in much the same way children likely experienced while attending sleepovers at Neverland Ranch.
Equal parts Clue and Suspiria, Climax is a shocking house of horrors, couched with some incredible dancing and mind-bending cinematic choreography. It feels as if two worlds are crashing upon each other, visceral, and hypnotic, yet not for the faint of heart (or those easily triggered). It’s a forceful journey into the depths of madness and squirming decay, replete with blood, sweat and many, many tears.
By the film’s final act, a.k.a. “Climax,” it feels as though Noe endeavored to make his dance floor look even filthier and somehow more impenitent than Sodom and Gomorrah, daring viewers to get up out of their seats as the bewildering sounds of shrieks, cries, and guttural bellows (complemented to great effect by music tracks like Daft Punk’s “Rolling & Scratching,” Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker,” and Gary Numan’s delirious version of “Trois Gymnopedies”), threaten each and every imperiled state of mind.
Like any great 10-minute techno ballad, “Climax” stretches on like an unreleased LP one could drop acid to, measured in its craziness by virtue of Noe first teaching us how to watch it —from a seemingly detached bird’s eye view at its outset, before being dropped into a spinning absurdity and made to feel as if we were that same bird’s prey.
In some small progressive fashion, it also forces us as a post-trans society to question whether we really ought to ask whether that’s a “man” or a “woman” up on screen anymore. The lines have been so thoroughly blurred and infiltrated by auteurs like Noe, that perhaps one day, the answer to such a question will be, “who the hell cares?” Men sleeping with men, women sleeping with women, fornicating siblings, group sex, “gang bangs,” urinating on a mobbed dance floor; it’s all fair game for Noe, who at this point, has only the incentive to push boundaries and shatter our professed Western virtues.
There may even come a time when Climax is not so shocking, or at the very least upsetting, but it is intended to be as long as it espouses the limits of castigation, and as long as mega-rich pop stars are allowed to molest young boys unabated, the real terror lies in our flagging the wrong things as the material that will inevitably corrupt, corrode and destroy their futures.
In fact, it is our frank disregard for reality itself, mired by our anomalous desire to care for and safeguard the most innocent from danger, which intrinsically leads them right into the clutches of its worst disciples… Oh, and don’t forget about the Catholic Church.
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Photos: @leavingneverlandofficial and @climaxmovie
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