‘Finding Neverland’

Did you watch “Leaving Neverland,” the HBO documentary about Wade Robeson and James Sawchuck, two of the victims of Michael Jackson’s pedophilia? All four hours? And Oprah’s hour discussion following it? I did. Reluctantly.

Although I was never much of a Jackson fan there was a time in my life, in the years following the release of his “Thriller” album in 1982, when he was the biggest, brightest star in that part of the universe populated by humans. No album, other than the Eagles “Greatest Hits,” has ever sold more copies. Girls swooned and so did boys. So did parents.

My step-daughter, born in 1978, was one of those swooners in her pre-teen years. The only singer ever brighter in her eyes was Madonna at the time of the “Like a Virgin” album, released two years after “Thriller.” But Jackson was a fixed star in her universe for many years. And not just him. James Sawchuck, whose seduction by Jackson began when he was 8 years old, was her first crush. To this day she can remember virtually every frame of Jackson’s 1987 Pepsi commercial in which Sawchuck appeared.

Unless you are in total denial and refuse to believe that Jackson was a pedophile, an adult who gradually seduced Sawchuck and Robson when they were children into being the willing participants in his perverted fantasies, who equally seduced their mothers into voluntarily surrendering their young children to him, you are left to wonder about many things.

A friend reminded me recently that Vladimir Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert employed the same basic technique as Jackson in his 1955 novel, “Lolita”: Humbert romances the mother to gain access to her daughter’s bedroom.

There are many directions in which I could take this column, many questions I could ask while, at the same time, not being able to provide many answers. But questions are important. After all, there are no answers without them.

So, here’s my main question today: Is it possible to separate the actions and/or views of a person from his or her art?

Personally, I find the question as it relates to Michael Jackson easy to answer. What he did to those two boys, those two families, as well as to others, was reprehensible, monstrous even, and is hardly redeemed by his art. After thinking about “Thriller,” might one not even wonder if he really saw himself as the monster he has been revealed to be. It’s okay with me if I never hear another Jackson song. Then, again, I haven’t intentionally listened to one in more than 30 years. So that’s easy for me. But, maybe, not for you.

But let’s take a different example, the poet T.S. Eliot. The first poem I read of his in high school was “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” My English teacher was an Eliot fan and I adopted some of his enthusiasm. All these years later, there is no poem more important to me, more resonant in my life than the “East Corker” section of his “Four Quartets.”

One thing my teacher never mentioned was Eliot’s anti-Semitism, something that is quite obvious in some of his work. Should Eliot’s hatred of me — his dismissal of me as a Jew, his characterization of me as a Jew, impersonal as it may be, unrelated to an actual me — negate, invalidate, the rest of his work? I am sure it should, but it doesn’t. “East Corker,” particularly with the lines that start with “Home is where one starts from…” until it’s concluding line, “In my end is my beginning” remain intensely important to me. I couldn’t forget them or dismiss them if I tried.

Or, how about this: Alice Walker is one of the most respected writers in America. At the end of 2018 she praised a book by a well-known anti-Semite and had, at the very least, flirted with anti-Semitic remarks herself through the years. Does she/should she get a pass because she is Black? I’ve never read one of her novels. I said to a friend of mine, “I guess now I have a good excuse not to.”

This dilemma is not reserved to the arts.

To pick the low hanging fruit, consider the Catholic Church and Catholicism. I am continually astonished at the breadth and depth of the moral corruption of the Church — that is, the institution of the Catholic Church and not the religion. The degree to which examples of pedophilia and sexual abuse committed by priests has been revealed to be far more widespread and common than most anyone thought. But the degree to which it has been knowingly covered up by the Catholic hierarchy, thinking to hide the rot in its midst, and the lack of concern about the victims of its priest, is astonishing. That so many of these people presume to lecture about the morality and responsibility of others when their house is so befouled is hard to fathom.

But then, I’m neither a Catholic or a Christian. I don’t have to decide if my priest can actually speak with any moral authority because I don’t have one. For millions of Catholics, though, this must present a dilemma. Can one truly separate the institution of the Church from the religion, their priest or bishop from the doctrine? The institution has essentially insisted for centuries that they are one and the same thing. Does the religion exist without the Church? No matter what the Church may proclaim, it is ultimately left to the individual believer to decide what he or she makes of the problem and what their relationship to the institution and the religion should be. I don’t envy them; I’ve had my own qualms over the divergence between theory and practice in spiritual matters and organizations and I’m not sure I’ve always made the right choices.

There is no religious institution, Christian or non-Christian, that has not come across these contradictions between the religion and its institutions. There are evangelical Protestant ministers these days who are willing to ignore the moral and ethical sins of our current President because they see some of his policies as embodying their political goals whereas they vehemently castigated a previous President who had different political goals.

These days, the state of Israel seems to find greater affinity with the increasingly overtly anti-Semitic and authoritarian states in Eastern Europe than it does with the democracies of Western Europe. Apparently, in their view — both the evangelical minsters and the ruling Israeli parties — the ends justify the means. I thought that, in fact, was contrary to the ideals of most religions, contrary to what they preach to their parishioners. I thought, in fact, that was contrary not simply to religions but to the very principles upon which our country was founded.

I began this column talking about “Leaving Neverland,” Michael Jackson’s fantasy compound north of L.A. In order to leave, Wade Robson and James Sawchuck had to find it, to be able and willing to look beyond the fantasy into the heart of the darkness. In fact, most of us spend much of our lives in Neverland, a land filled with light and dark, with joy and sorrow, with myth and deception, with truth and lies, with beauty and horror. Ultimately, we are all left to our own devices, our own courage, to look for the truth about our own Neverlands.

Or not.

Michael Saltz is an award-winning, long-time, now-retired Senior Producer for what is now called “PBS NewsHour.” He is a resident of Hillsdale.