When I’m driving in my car and not streaming music or podcasts on my phone, I mostly listen to Alice FM (96.9). Alice’s catch phrase is “We Play Anything,” and they’ve adopted the “random play” format (first popularized by Chicago’s Jack FM) in an attempt to compete (or at least emulate) iPods on shuffle. Alice FM first tried this a few years back when they were Bob FM, and returned to the format (along with a new name) in the beginning of 2018. According to their website, in the past hor they’ve played Green Day’s “When I Come Around,” Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up,” and Blondie’s “Call Me.”
Last Thursday, while Morgan and I were on our way to pick up Susan from the airport, they played “Billie Jean,” by Michael Jackson. This, in and of itself, was not notable to me. Multiple songs from Jackson’s [i]Thriller[/i] (released in 1983) still get radio play today. Morgan, on the other hand, was shocked to hear the song on the radio.
“I heard they weren’t going to play Michael Jackson on the radio anymore,” she said.
Later that evening, I found the headline she was referring to. Several radio stations, including “nearly all of New Zealand and much of Canada,” have removed Jackson’s songs from their playlists after the release of [i]Leaving Neverland[/i], a documentary about two men who both claim to have been molested by the late Jackson.
Jackson, who passed away in 2009, obviously cannot respond to these latest accusations — and, regardless of what you believe the truth to be, without a trial and without anything more than circumstantial evidence, no matter how slick or compelling the documentary is those allegations are wrapped up in, that’s all they are: accusations. One of the two men who appear in the film, Wade Robson, testified back in 2004 that Michael Jackson did [i]not[/i] molest him.
When I was a kid, everyone was aware that Michael Jackson was odd. “Wacko Jacko” (as the tabloids often referred to him) had a pet chimpanzee named Bubbles, slept in an oxygen tent, and at one point in time, his nose fell off. Trust me, there was literally no shortage of Michael Jackson rumors and stories. But here’s the difference, and the point I’m building to.
Even though Michael Jackson was weird, we still enjoyed his music.
But over the past few years, something has fundamentally changed in the way we react to accusations and allegations. No longer is the choice to boycott an artist or his or her work being left for consumers to decide; today, it’s being done by the gatekeepers. It is no longer enough for Hollywood to shun entertainers. When someone falls out of grace today, their body of work must be completely wiped from existence.
No longer are we just the judge and jury. Now we’re the executioner, too.
(Last week, The Simpsons announced they removed an episode in which Michael Jackson voiced a character (not himself) from rotation. The episode will no longer appear on television and is no longer available through video on demand.)
I was roughly ten years old when my mom introduced me to the comedy of Bill Cosby through a stack of hand-me-down vinyl records. I didn’t just listen to those albums; I memorized them. I recited the jokes alongside Cosby. I learned the basics of comedic timing from those albums. I learned how to tell a funny story — or, rather, how to tell a story funny — from those albums. For those of us who grew up in the 80s, Cosby’s HBO special Himself was a staple of our childhood. There wasn’t a kid in my school who, having seem Himself, didn’t attempt to use Cosby’s logic to convince their parents to serve them chocolate cake for breakfast.
Five years ago, reruns of The Cosby Show shared the late-night airwaves with other classic sitcoms, but the minute charges were filed against Cosby, the show was unilaterally yanked from television. TV Land was first, followed by Aspire, and BET’s Centric. The last holdout was Bounce TV, who cut the show from its lineup the day Cosby was convicted.
As a kid, the two shows I remember focusing on black families were What’s Happening and Good Times, and while they were good shows, the worlds those people lived in didn’t seem familiar to me. Cosby’s Huxtables, however, did. I could actually relate to many of the issues Theo and Vanessa (the two Huxtable children closest to my own age) encountered. Is it going to far to say that The Cosby Show helped foster race relations? I think it did.
If you search Netflix for “Bill Cosby,” the first five results are comedy specials from Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Murphy, Kevin Hart, Chris Rock, and Dave Chappelle. Cosby himself is nowhere to be found.
Unlike Cosby, Roseanne Barr wasn’t convicted or even charged with a crime last year when her sitcom Roseanne (which had just recently returned to airwaves) was unceremoniously and swiftly cancelled. Three hours after tweeting what appeared to be a racist comment, ABC cancelled her show. (Barr has denied that the tweet was racist, and blamed the confusion on her use of Ambien.) Cancelling her show is one thing — at the end of the day, Barr was an employee of ABC, and they have every right to fire her. But again, that wasn’t enough. The following day, Hulu, CMT, and TV Land all pulled the original sitcom from their lineup.
Lots of celebrities have fallen from grace throughout the years, and it would take an additional 5,000 words to discuss each one of their situations in detail. The list off the top of my head included OJ Simpson, Harvey Weinstein, Pee-wee Herman, Gallagher, Gary Glitter, Jane Fonda, the Dixie Chicks, Michael Richards, and Mel Gibson. Each of those people messed up ina public forum.
But here’s the thing. If a production company drops an actor due to bad PR, well, business is business — I can’t help that. But I don’t need content providers removing movies and television shows for me. Those are decisions I can make on my own. We don’t need to act like these people never existed. We don’t need to send the message that unless a person is perfect, they are not allowed to contribute to collective society.
I believe that we, as people, should be able to separate artists from the art they create.
I also believe that my opinion is in the minority.