There is some precise detail that describes sexual acts over particular photos. The same image looks different when different words describe it. This works to persuade viewers of subtext or hidden meanings, and the overall argument of the documentary, creating self-doubt in the viewer and the feeling that your own perception cannot be trusted. The live footage of him dancing with the young boys (onstage at a concert, and in a promo spot) are shown more than once, to different effect, because of what’s said in the voice-over audio. The film often cuts to imagery of Jackson looking either demonic or unattractive when the sexual assault is detailed, and also to pictures of Jackson in bed.

It feels as though “Leaving Neverland,” like a predator, both grooms and assaults viewers. A variety of perspectives is crucial with allegations of crimes in documentaries. While it’s true that all films persuade through imagery, audio, and editing, documentaries ideally show various perspectives, with a goal to show the truth. Both he and Robson talk about being repeatedly violated sexually by Jackson during the late 1980s and through the early 1990s. Safechuck exchanged marriage vows with Jackson. Robson and Safechuck talk with care and specificity about feelings of love, affection, and friendship with Jackson. Jackson gave them phone calls, faxes, fond nicknames, gifts, hotel stays, travel, and houses.

The boys and their families and Jackson got along. Robson won a dance contest whose prize was meeting Jackson, and Safechuck met the superstar on the set of a Pepsi commercial. It was 1987. An insomniac, Jackson died at age 50 in 2009, close to bankruptcy, and on drugs that may have caused his cardiac arrest.Īccording to the documentary, now on HBO, before meeting Jackson, both boys had creative and artistic interests. The four-hour, two-part documentary, “Leaving Neverland,” directed by Dan Reed, contains detailed interviews with Robson and Safechuck–middle-aged men today who, when they were boys, worked with mega-talented pop superstar, Michael Jackson, the “King of Pop.” Robson was five when he met Jackson, then 28 at the time, and Safechuck was nine. And some of that reaction is, in part, a result of the documentary itself, as much as it is the alleged crimes. I think of lot of us are–as Wade Robson and James Safechuck must have been all these years, as Jackson himself may have also been. After seeing “Leaving Neverland,” I find that I am mourning.

Body language leaving neverland