Michael Jackson's shadow of doubt

As Michael Jackson: The Verdict , a docuseries on the late artist's 2005 abuse trial, arrives on Netflix this week, his music continues to climb the charts following renewed interest from his biopic. Carlo Allegri/Getty Images/Getty Images North America hide caption

"Remember guys Michael Jackson has fans that aren't even born yet."

It's a pretty innocuous prediction. Or a deeply disturbing one, depending on how you read it. The comment, recently posted under the music video for "Billie Jean," jumped out at me after watching it on YouTube, where it's amassed two billion-plus views, including mine, since it was uploaded 16 years ago. Like a lot of metrics, it's proof that we're still spellbound by Michael Jackson 's tragic magic.

Since its April 24 release, the feature film Michael has grossed more than $850 million worldwide, fast on its way to becoming the highest grossing music biopic of all time. The critical panning might be near-universal , but so is the renewed interest in MJ's discography. Decades after topping the charts around the globe, "Billie Jean" once again stood as "the biggest song in the world," by Billboard 's count, when it reached No. 1 on the Global 200 last month. Domestically, it rose back inside the top 20 of the Hot 100 this week. Meanwhile, Thriller and his greatest hits album, Number Ones , have spent the last three weeks in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart, while the former has also reached No. 1 on its Top Hip-Hop/R&B albums chart.

The real feat isn't that any of this comes 43 years after Thriller 's debut. It's that we're still entertained. In time, sins can either be forgiven or forgotten. Rarely both. Unless there's enough distance and emotional disconnection to bury the offense. Having a calculated piece of Hollywood propaganda to break the box office wide open helps, too. Michael must have the holy trinity. Because three decades after he paid an estimated $20 million to settle a child sex abuse civil suit (despite denying culpability), and two decades after a jury had to deliberate for seven days before acquitting him in one of the biggest celebrity trials of the century, and nearly a decade after Leaving Neverland featured two of his alleged victims recounting as adults what they say it was like to "have sex" with Michael when they were minors, the whole world is seemingly ready to forgive. Or forget. Maybe both.

"I don't believe these m************. I do not believe them." — Dave Chappelle, on Michael Jackson's Leaving Neverland accusers ( Sticks and Stones , 2019).

Nothing about Michael Jackson's rise has ever been believable on its face.

Not the idea that a Black, struggling-class family from the industrial ghetto of Gary, Indiana, could produce the biggest global pop-star of the 20th century. Not the irony of having a skin-lightening condition (or predilection) while singlehandedly Blackening up the portals of pop music by integrating a music video network that upheld America's racist standard of (in)visibility. And certainly not the fact that this same pop idol, self-consecrated in the image of Peter Pan, would one day be accused of being a villain in deep disguise.