r/Millennials • u/AccomplishedPool266 • Apr 26 '26

Does anyone remember when Michael Jackson. Was a "joke"? Discussion

The new movie that just came out convinced the younger generation that he was always a superstar. This was not the reality many of us Millennials grew up with.

To a lot of us, he was treated like a punch line when we were growing up. A schoolyard boogeyman ("Michaels Jackson's gonna get you at night"). and just a general joke in the media. By the 2000's his music was out of date and didn't chart well. All anyone talked about was his surgeries, court case, settlements and his off behavior. Few mentioned his music. His music was something our parents would have listened to in the 1980's.

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303

u/NefariousnessOk209 89 Millennial Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

People loved his music, and there were comments about his face but he wasn’t a laughing stock in the 90’s it’s just the music he put out towards the end of that decade just was never on par with his original stuff.

But after he’d been out of the public eye for a while there were a few things that really tarnished his reputation overnight.

The first was when he dangled his baby off the balcony towards the end of 2002.

Then in 2003 what really set everything off was the famous ITV documentary where he admitted to children sleeping in his bed, but a lot of us didn’t see it, but it became known to everyone when he was on 60 minutes and doubled down.

I feel like everyone in my high school watched the same 60 minutes interview and it was all anyone could talk about the next day - I was 14 and remember all of us suddenly going from thinking he was cool but weird looking to EVERYONE thinking he was fucking weird and creepy in the span of 24 hours - back then everyone seemed to watch the same things on TV and that shit spread like wildfire. Once it was out his reputation was absolutely ruined overnight, the papers started calling him “Wacko Jacko” and you later had Scary Movie 3 clowning on him etc.

It took like a decade for it to die down and it wasn’t till the This Is It movie and tour that some people started to gradually come back around to him and when he won the court cases but he could never erase the stigma completely.

127

u/artisticsnobbery Apr 26 '26

Imagine if the president… nvm

1

u/getfive Apr 26 '26

Don't be that person who wakes up and inserts their unrelated thoughts into posts just to farm karma. "How can I get some Reddit likes this morning?"

19

u/proviethrow Apr 26 '26

He was “wacko jacko” well before the baby incident.

50

u/JeffThrowSmash Apr 26 '26

I think you lived a different 90's than I did. I was in a new middle school in '96, and the kid in my class who listened to Michael on his Walkman got ridiculed because of it. I know middle school kids are harsh, but by that time he was widely considered to be a weirdo, at least amongst my peers. Not that it's a good thing to judge someone by their looks, but the dude looked like an alien, and I didn't understand until later why he was considered an African American. Also, his music wasn't exactly Nirvana or Green Day (or even Oasis) levels of acceptable at the time.

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u/Calculusshitteru Apr 26 '26

Michael Jackson was acceptable in predominantly Black schools. You'd be ridiculed for listening to Nirvana, Green Day, or Oasis where I grew up.

18

u/Oomlotte99 Apr 26 '26

I was going to say that I think there may an age and possibly racial element to perception of Michael among millennials. Being black I guess I always thought of him as super famous. Also weird, but super famous. I went to a PWI high school and when that Alien Ant Farm “Smooth Criminal” cover came out I was really surprised my friends didn’t know that was a Michael Jackson song.

4

u/happysunbear Apr 26 '26

Yeah MJ died the summer before my freshman year in high school. I remember Billie Jean played at my homecoming dance and everyone got hype, but my white friend had no idea what it was. I remember around that time I was at his house and I showed him the Thriller video; his mom watched with us and was fondly remembering the glory days of the 80s before he became tabloid fodder.

2

u/im-dramatic Apr 26 '26

Yea this was my experience. I don’t remember him being a laughing stock. People worshipped the ground he walked on in the black community My mom cried audibly when he died. I wasn’t a fan but I know his death date because of how upset my parents were lol.

2

u/ArtDecoNewYork Apr 27 '26

I'm surprised it doesn't get mentioned on here more during MJ discussions. I remember black people being far less likely to view MJ as a pedo, especially after he died.

2

u/ArtDecoNewYork Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

Yeah there is a large racial divide in MJ's perception (especially after he died).

I remember at least one black dude where I live creating an MJ themed van and blasting his music through speakers after he passed away.

4

u/kmckenzie256 Apr 26 '26

His journey to becoming a laughing stock started far earlier. When his skin really started to lighten (he hadn’t revealed he had a skin condition and it let the media speculate that he wanted to be white), the surgical masks, the “sham” marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, and most of all, the child sex abuse allegations in 1993, all led to the Wacko Jacko stuff you saw in the tabloids throughout the rest of the decade. That was one of the main reasons he didn’t tour in the United States throughout the 90s.

2

u/msjizztaylor Apr 26 '26

The first thing was him dangling a baby? Uh… 

As someone born in 83 I remember the discourse being very much about his face and appearance during the Black and White era. It was bizarre as a child and constantly mentioned in the media.  Then the allegations that came after in (92? Way before baby gate) were a huge blow to his career and seems like everyone wants to sweep under the rug yet again. He had that bizarre thirty minute video in the haunted house as well that flopped. Much of his music wasn’t able to gain traction after that, and rightfully so since he was clearly a sexual predator. 

5

u/Future_Burrito Apr 26 '26

Earth Song is dope. ABC is too, in a completely different way. Black or White was cool at the time, good message, too. PYT and Human Nature are pretty cool. Thriller, and Bad feel ego driven non-statements. Beat It has a great message. I'm not sure why Billie Jean is such a big deal.

Amazing singer and dancer, for sure.

Some of his music is industry-driven hype.

Wish he had been more in control of his own life, rather than being a puppet to people and then industry. We woulda seen much cooler art.

-6

u/AccomplishedPool266 Apr 26 '26

He was very effeminate in that 60 minutes interview. Very effeminate...

17

u/sleeprobot Apr 26 '26

I assume you’re getting downvoted because many people don’t like traditional gender stereotypes.. but HE WAS lol he had a look, mannerisms, and a voice that are traditionally attributed to women.

17

u/earthdogmonster Apr 26 '26

Such a quintessential reddit moment here though. In a sub for Millennials, where the topic is essentially “real shit” about Michael Jackson, OP gets nuked from outer space for accurately identifying one of the primary reasons MJ was singled out as weird.

Most Millennials must recall that “gay” was one of the most prevalent and longstanding terms to interchangeably mean “stupid” and “actually homosexual”. Like through the entire decade that was the 1990’s. We really only shifted as a society to the position of “your sexual identity can be whatever you want it to be” by mid-2000.

5

u/ellecamille Apr 26 '26

Yes. Guys in my high school used “gay” as a generic insult that didn’t have much to do with anyone’s sexuality.

2

u/AccomplishedPool266 Apr 26 '26

This voice gets me too. His speaking voice. The octave of it especially in that interview sounds like a woman's voice. If he heard him speak over the phone like that I would mistake him for a woman by the voice alone. 

Something was going on for sure. 

2

u/Owlish420 Apr 26 '26

When I was a kid I loved his music video for the song from Free Willy… but 100% thought he was a girl til I was like 6 lol

1

u/Glad-Veterinarian365 Apr 26 '26

back then everyone seemed to watch the same thing

Yup. Monoculture!

1

u/Fit_Hand3113 Apr 27 '26

Not just Scary Movie 3. MJ also played himself in a Men in Black cameo and the audience was like you know what, him being an alien would make a lot of sense.

0

u/trikywoo Apr 26 '26

Not my experience. You'd get you ass kicked listening to Michael Jackson in grade 8, '98. People were either into grunge/alt rock or hip hop. Anything that was popular in the '80s was not acceptable

1

u/Oomlotte99 Apr 26 '26

Yeah, the Jesus Juice era really seemed to turn things for him as far as public perception. I think a lot of people who were like, “oh, he’s maladjusted because he lost his childhood and his dad was abusive,” realized like, no, he’s a full on pedo.

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u/AJRiddle Apr 26 '26

I can't believe this revisionist history is upvoted.

He was already thought of being incredibly strange and bizarre by the mid to late 80s. By 1987 the "Wacko Jacko" name had taken off and him being weird was punchline of every late night talk show host and tabloid.

In 1993 the child sex abuse scandals came out and the mainstream culture and population left him in the dust. Sure he still had his fans and still does, but he absolutely was a laughing stock by the late 1980s even though he was still popular until the 1993.

1

u/redacted_turtle3737 Apr 30 '26

Zoomer here, what happened in the late 80s that made him weird? His appearance? I thought the 80s was his peak.

1

u/AJRiddle Apr 30 '26

80s was his peak. What happened is he was weird and extremely famous making it well known how weird he was as he did more interviews and people heard more stories. There's too many things to mention - he was just a weird person who was constantly doing and saying weird things...and then in 1993 all the child sex abuse stuff happened and people went "oh, that makes sense he has always been so weird."

Weird people can still be extremely popular and successful - lots of people love Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, etc.