that the banning of him eventually faded, and now we still remember him more for his work than what an awful guy he was.
I think it was inevitable considering how he acted towards minors. If the evidence is solid that he molested then I don’t feel bad about things like his Simpsons episode being taken out of circulation. What’s troubling is that the entertainment industries keep papering over the sins of its performers, many of which are heinous beyond measure. At some point, they need to take responsibility for either enabling such people and/or profiting off of their work while allowing them to continue to do their heinous acts.
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The torrent of this episode will be on The Pirate Bay’s top downloaded list in 5… 4… 3…
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I swear I never knew that was actually Micheal Jackson. Of course I haven’t seen that episode since the early 90s
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Yes I wish I had walked out of this thread at this point.
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It’s a f’ing cartoon.
Nobody will ever notice. Oh, wait.
I’m going to have a traveling carnival tent where you can pay a dollar and watch Fat Albert, House of Cards, The Cosby Show, this episode of the Simpsons, Guardian of the Galaxy Vol. 1, and go to church services.
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For some weird, never-adequately-explained reason Jackson insisted on using a pseudonym in the voice credits even though THE WHOLE EPISODE was about him.
The show even made a joke about that in a later episode when Lisa was raving about the Itchy & Scratchy movie: “You wouldn’t believe the celebrities who did cameos! Dustin Hoffman, Michael Jackson. Of course, they didn’t use their real names, but you could tell it was them.”
(Hoffman was the other famous celebrity who refused to be credited under his real name in “Lisa’s Substitute.”)
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I see you crossed the word profit out on your post and FWIW the director Dan Reed claimed on the Oprah show that the two men are not making any money off the doco.
ETA quote:
“They have no financial interest, let me make that clear straight away, in my documentary. They are not being remunerated in any way and neither are their families.”
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Historian here. First of all, you can, to varying degrees of success, but that’s not what this is. Taking something out of the official merch stream isn’t even remotely “erasing history.” This episode will survive in the collective memory as long as any other Simpsons episode, if not longer (by virtue of being proactively archived by people who feel as you do).
I think (could be wrong) what you mean is that once something–a show, a blog post, a drunken overshare on Facebook, etc.–is out there, it is offensive to the ethos that says “information wants to be free” to try to claw it back out of sight. Again, I don’t think that applies here, since it won’t actually be disappeared at all for practical purposes. But there’s something to be said for the idea that some things can and should be allowed to vanish from the collective memory. Especially things that people who created them have come to be ashamed by.
Not everything–I make a living reading people’s diaries!–but I can’t agree anymore with the maximalist view that says we must always have omniscience of anything that ever once was known.
And you’re right–it is an awesome episode. I don’t think I’d have made this choice, in their shoes. But they’re really not doing much.
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The episode wasn’t “about” him. It was about Bart and Lisa, specifically Bart appreciating Lisa. It was about sibling love.
Also about not wearing a pink shirt to work 
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That’s the really interesting part to me me. On one hand, I feel we’re throwing out the baby with the bath water. To be clear, I’m pretty convinced that MJ was a serial molester. I think he was a deeply broken person, but that doesn’t excuse violating children. That said, I really like his music. And beyond that, he was a cultural force, and I like a lot of things associated with him. Where do we draw the line?
On the other hand, I think it’s kind of poignant that his bad actions have tainted so many things, because that’s exactly what child sexual abuse does. It takes innocence and perverts it. It doesn’t just affect the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator, it casts a shade on all of the relationships the victim has. It ruins their ability to trust. It taints everything it touches.
We don’t get to innocently appreciate MJ, just like his victims don’t get to innocently appreciate much of their experience of the world. He got off easy in his lifetime. His legacy doesn’t deserve to be golden.
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???
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Fatty Arbuckle was an awful guy? The charges were false. Is there other evidence against him?
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I think the scandal is much better known by the average person than Fatty’s work. neither is known terribly well, but I’d wager that there are many who know the scandal without having seen a frame of him films. (Also without knowing he was ultimately cleared.)
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Hahaha!! That’s hilarious.
Until they show proof that this documentary’s profits are going to, say, child abuse centers, I’m just going to roll my eyes at their ‘nonprofit’ claims.
What no Leonard Part 6?
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He was credited under the pseudonym of “John Jay Smith”.
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I think this comes from a vast misunderstanding of what we mean by HISTORY which is not everything in the past, but an interpretation of the past via a study of various (primarily) textual sources. Just because the episode will no longer be in circulation, doesn’t mean that it won’t still be available to future generations (via already sold dvds, for example) and in part through discussions about pulling the episode itself.
We write the history that people of today need, right, through our modern lens? It’s an interpretive frame as much as it is a recounting of the past. Facts matter, but what matters kind of more is what those facts MEAN to us.
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a hung jury isn’t the same as the charges being false – there was enough compelling evidence that they couldn’t be entirely convinced of innocence, either.
It’s interesting to note that many Simpsons episodes have been “banned” or altered in the past for various reasons. This certainly isn’t the first instance. One example that sticks out to me because it’s one of my favorites is The City of New York vs Homer Simpson. It prominently features the WTC and after 9/11 it was pulled from syndication for many years. It eventually came back but with the line, “they stick all the jerks in Tower One” being removed.
In any event on further reflection I think I’m ok with the creators pulling this episode from syndication - it will still be out there in some form for anybody that wants to see it and is willing set aside the unseemliness of MJ’s involvement.
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