Michael Jackson to celebrate Children's Day

On Three Kings' Day, a day when children are the protagonists and everyone participates in a family ritual, TV3 had the subtle irony to end the day by scheduling a Non-fiction About Michael Jackson. Wonderful! What subtlety. What a great knack for timing. Now that's what it means to conceive of television programming with deep reflection and a sense of service. Nothing could be more fitting to bid farewell to Three Kings' Day than to offer a hagiographic and uncritical documentary celebrating an artist against whom serious accusations of pedophilia have been leveled. It is irrefutable proof of an awareness of the symbolic value of television content. The documentary This is it It compiles Michael Jackson's final rehearsals for a series of concerts that were never performed due to his sudden death in June 2009. As a documentary, it's an interesting work that showcases Jackson's undeniable talent. His death in the midst of the creative process influences our interpretation of what we see. This is it It's a full-fledged tribute. It's an act of veneration of the myth, even with historical intent. It's a demonstration of what could have been but never was, with a retrospective and elegiac character.

The problem is that after having seen other documentaries, such as Leaving Neverland And its sequel, released in 2025, makes it very difficult to view such a biased portrayal of the artist without considering a life filled with sordid episodes, lawsuits, serious accusations, and obscene eccentricities. Michael Jackson's relationship with the creatures is, at the very least, opaque, unsettling, and murky. Jackson is a far more complex figure with very dark shadows that make it even harder to contemplate the preparations for his final, grand show. Without asking further questions. Sixteen years after his death, you also observe the figure of the myth with greater distance, perceiving how the singularities of the character have become normalized. The thesis of separating the work from the author is a theoretical operation, but not a real experience of perception. We cannot erase from our minds the context of what we are looking at. We cannot negate the media's memory or the moral conflicts that this figure represents. Separating the work from the author may be an act of activism, but not a cognitive one. The accusations of pedophilia are yet another interpretive framework that alters the reading we can make of his body, his behavior, and his artistic approaches. This is it It's a flawless narrative. But the viewer has already internalized these flaws. And that's why the documentary provokes a dissociation. It asks you to admire Jackson for his talent, but at the same time, it seeks to invalidate any critical perspective. Celebrating Michael Jackson is already difficult enough, but doing so on a day when childhood is at the cultural epicenter is an almost comical act of audacity. It seems like a spiteful joke from the same network.