Lost Youth, Part 2

In “Lost Youth, Part 1,” I discussed the current Netflix documentary The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, about Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince’s 1981 musical Merrily We Roll Along. The doomed original production of Merrily was cast with inexperienced young actors. Each looks back on his or her younger self – and the transformational experience they shared – with wistful awe.     

The same week I watched The Best Worst Thing, I finally got up the nerve to stream the powerful new HBO documentary about Wade Robson and James Safechuck, two men in their 30s who accuse Michael Jackson of repeatedly molesting them as children. Like The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, HBO's Leaving Neverland illustrates hows how the events of our youth cast long shadows.

Celebrated documentary director Dan Reed divided Leaving Neverland into a pair of two-hour segments. Most of the first half consists of excerpts from Reed’s one-on-one interviews with Robson and Safechuck, along with interviews with their mothers and a few other family members. These segments are intercut with contemporaneous news footage of Jackson, as well as archival photos, audio, and video from the families. 

Robson’s family is from Brisbane, Australia. After winning a Michael Jackson dance contest, Robson met his idol and then was invited onstage at a concert. Soon after, Jackson flew Robson to visit him in the States, and eventually sponsored most of the family’s emigration to California.

Safechuck is from suburban Simi Valley, California. With the encouragement of another stage mother, Safechuck began working in commercials. He met Jackson on the set of a Coke ad. Jackson adopted the family, sneaking over to their ranch house for “normal” nights out, and inviting them to his mansion.

Robson and Safechuck calmly relate parallel stories of being groomed for something special. The sexual details are matter-of-fact and chilling. In each case, Jackson slowly seduced the preteen superfan, both emotionally and physically. Meanwhile, Jackson successfully campaigned to alienate the boys from their families, and to make each boy complicit in their lovers' secret. The twisted bond with Jackson became the foundation of each man's successful career in show business, while disabling their capacity for healthy intimate relationships as adults.

The men’s accounts are relentless and cathartic. Yet the documentary's most interesting and troubling portraits are of each mother – juxtaposing the excitement of their brush with fame with each woman’s gradual recognition that she enabled horrifying abuse.

After watching the first half of Leaving Neverland, you are completely drained, absolutely convinced, and wonder what the filmmakers have left to say.

The second half of Leaving Neverland is even more devastating. The documentary’s true purpose is to show how abuse still traumatizes victims and their families many years after the original acts.   

The interviews with Robson and Safechuck turn from the crime to the cover-up, as each boys describes how he lied to protect Jackson from accusations of abuse. They also recount the difficulties they encountered as adults attempting to maintain healthy interpersonal relationships. Video footage from their 20s shows a couple of emotionally stunted adults. Robson and Safechuck tell the interviewer “We’re mentally little kids – we’ve just gotten older… Your putting it on yourself … I had a lot of self hatred, and I didn’t know why.”

As a traumatized gay Mormon who became an LGBT advocate, I’ve been examining the tyranny of the closet for more than three decades. Leaving Neverland resonates with other descriptions of the longterm effects of lies and emotional compartmentalization, such as therapist Alan Downs’ classic book Velvet Rage.

Leaving Neverland documents the collateral impact of abuse and deceit. Robson and Safechuck are not the only victims. For me, the most jaw dropping moment of the documentary was when we learned Robson’s father hanged himself the day after the rest of his family moved from Australia to California to be close to Jackson. 

The second half of Leaving Neverland also introduces the men’s wives. They describe the challenges of connecting with Robson and Safechuck, and the cloud that lifted when their husbands finally confronted their past with Jackson. The documentary shows how having children themselves became the catalyst for both men's transformation. With effective therapy and the support of their families, each began the long process of excavating memories, rebuilding human connections, and telling their stories.

The backlash to Leaving Neverland began immediately after the documentary premiered at Sundance. Diehard Michael Jackson fans refused to credit Robson’s and Safechuck’s allegations, and instead attacked the two accusers. They complained about the filmmakers’ choice to focus on the victims and their families rather than devoting equal time to Jackson’s side of the story. They also criticized the documentary for failing to cross-examine Robson and Safechuck about their motivations and potential inconsistencies in their stories. 

Leaving Neverland does include contemporaneous news footage showing other Jackson accusers and defenders. For example, Macauley Culken describes multiple sleepovers with the singer, and insists nothing untoward occurred. I believe him. However, Culkin already was a movie star when he met Jackson, rather than a starry-eyed groupie. Unlike Robson, Safechuck, and similar Jackson accusers, Culkin doesn’t fit the profile of a vulnerable youth ripe for grooming. Culkin's story is completely consistent with Leaving Neverland’s portrait of Jackson as a cunning sexual predator hiding in plain sight. 

Recognizing the cultural significance of Leaving Neverland, the online magazine Slate recently published a collection of articles examining the impact of the documentary on Jackson’s legacy. That’s what a paradigm shift looks like. Unfortunately, whether it’s Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Les Moonved, or the Catholic and Mormon clergy, someone has to be the penultimate accuser – the last victim no one believes, before the evidence finally becomes overwhelming. Abuse is never obvious until it is.

Michael Jackson died ten years ago. Why can’t we all just move on? 

As Robson observes in Leaving Neverland, “Secrets kill you… I want to speak the truth as loud as I spoke the lie.”

I can relate to Robson’s and Safechuck’s experiences. Three years ago, my former employers gaslighted and tortured me, then illegally discriminated against me based on the disability they triggered. Telling my story was a vital part of my recovery. Meanwhile, not one representative from the Washington Attorney General’s Office has ever apologized, or acknowledged the harm caused by their actions. To the contrary, they reflexively denied any responsibility, and relentlessly attacked me – even when their increasingly preposterous assertions contradicted the undisputed documentary record, and prejudiced their own legal position. 

As long as bullies get away with abuse, victims need to find the courage to tell their stories. Not just for their own mental health, but for sake of other survivors and society. 

Lost Youth, Part 1

In 1981, the year I graduated from high school, the most anticipated Broadway musical was Merrily We Roll Along, from composer Stephen Sondheim and director Hal Prince. These two theatrical gods had collaborated on repeated commercial and artistic triumphs over the previous decade, from Company to Sweeney Todd.

Merrily introduced some of Sondheim’s most enchanting songs, including “Good Thing Going,” “Old Friends,” and “Not a Day Goes By.” The musical’s gimmick, which came directly from the 1934 Kaufman/Hart play it’s based on, is the story unfolds backwards:  starting with the characters as jaded adults, and gradually returning them to idealistic high school graduates two decades before.

Merrily was a disaster. Frank Rich, The New York Times’ longtime drama critic and perhaps Sondheim’s biggest booster, confesses that he still listens to the Original Cast Album with fondness. So do I. Nevertheless, Rich felt entirely justified panning the musical. So did every other reviewer. (“Not since Carrie....”) 

Merrily closed after just 16 performances. It was Sondheim and Prince’s first flop, and ended their partnership. The problem with Merrily is that it leaves audiences feeling not catharsis but disenchantment. 

These days everyone knows the musical is unstageable, unless…. The amazing thing about Merrily We Roll Along is no one can quite give up on it. 

Netflix is currently screening a documentary about the doomed original production of Merrily, called The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened. The film is a labor of love directed by Lonny Price, the actor who played Charley. After Merrily, Price left Broadway and went on to a career as a regional theater director. In addition to recent interviews with the cast and crew, Price benefited from hours of film footage from 1981 that was shot for an unaired ABC documentary, as well as video from a reunion concert fundraiser in 2002. 

Some of Merrily’s young cast, like Jason Alexander and Jim Walton, have enjoyed successful acting careers. Others left the theater long ago. All of them look back at their experience with wistful awe. They made me think of comparably intense experiences from my own youth, such as founding Student Review at BYU, or performing at Palace Playhouse and the Hale Center Theatre. Later scenes in the documentary reminded me of various impromptu reunions of the gang over the years, when we met again as adults but still recognized the profound connections we share.

What I found most fascinating was the portrait of Sondheim and Prince in 1981 as middle-aged artists at a crossroads. Prince is the one who came up with the dubious idea of casting the show with inexperienced youths, because he saw their energy as essential to the show’s themes. As Prince observed years later, young people don’t understand “they’re building something.” Prince sincerely believed his concept would work, right up until the brutal opening night. Meanwhile Sondheim was on fire, composing amazing songs with an ease he hadn’t felt since his own youth. 

The juvenile cast comes across as overwhelmed but enthusiastic, and constantly radiating energy. On one level, Prince and Sondheim are like aging vampires – inviting themselves to a cast member’s member’s birthday party, then staying all night to hang with the perky teens and 20somethings. I wish I had a bootleg recording of Stephen Sondheim playing “Happy Birthday” on the piano in my apartment when I turned 21.

On the other hand, it would be a mistake to cede creativity to young people. Samuel Johnson described second marriages as “the triumph of hope over experience.” That’s also a pretty good definition of a successful life. In the case of Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince, examining the energy of youth gave them a shot of youthful energy right when they needed it.

Your English Major Personality Type

Literature can be overwhelming.

Do you confuse iambic pentameter with dactylic trimeter? Do you wonder whether Christopher Marlowe faked his death so he could write Shakespeare’s plays? Do you have a crush on someone who wears all black and smokes little brown cigarettes?  

I have good news. It turns out there are only three types of English Major:  Textual, Historical, and Theoretical. Pick one, and start faking it.

Being an English Major gives you an excuse to read any book you choose. It’s also a cool way of looking at the world, particularly at “texts.” (A “text” is what grad students call any cultural artifact, especially if it involves words.)

You have three basic choices for English Majoring:

1.     Focus on the text (Textual);

2.     Focus on everything lying around the text (Historical); or

3.     Focus on the glasses (Theoretical). 

Reading is fundamental.

Art majors have to pass drawing classes before they’re allowed to waste paint on garish abstract blobs. Pastry chefs have to master dough before they can torch crème brûlée. P.E. majors have to walk before they run. Similarly, back in the day, before you were allowed to pontificate about Marxism or the glaring omission of disabled women of colour from the Western Canon, first you had to learn how to read closely. 

Whether it’s called “Formalism,” “Textual analysis,” or “Mr. Larsen’s grade eleven English class,” your appreciation of literature is greatly enhanced by familiarity with a few basic building blocks. Such as plot, theme, character, tone, point of view, meter, genre, metaphor, etc. Wikipedia can explain them all to you.

Everyone’s brain is designed to identify patterns and seek coherence. Remember, the “logo” in “logomania” is Greek for “word.” All you really need is your literary toolbox.

In fact, textual purists prefer to operate in a hermetically sealed bubble. They refuse to consider anything outside the Text, except perhaps other texts. As a result, the Textual approach can be ridiculously myopic. Did you really find your copy of Dubliners on a beach, along with all the other masterpieces the tide brought in?

On the other hand, every Text ultimately stands on its own, separate from its Author and Context. A great book is inexhaustible.

Perhaps Texts put you to sleep, or they hurt your eyes. Maybe you can only draw stick figures, and your soufflés always fall. You fear you’re doomed to major in P.E. Not to worry, you can still be an English Major without ever reading any actual Great Books. I for one have never made it to the end of a Russian novel, or Ulysses.

Actually, you probably already know this from personal experience. You used the “Historical” approach in high school or college when you ran out of time to read the assigned book. Instead, you wrote your book report about the Author.

Writers are endlessly fascinating people. Who slept in Shakespeare’s second-best bed? Were Jane Austen and Emily Dickenson secretly lovers? Should Virginia Woolf have stayed on her meds? Sometimes it’s more interesting to figure out why an author wrote, rather than to read the actual text. 

Nowadays, the Historical-biographical approach seems old fashioned. Nevertheless, it has become acutely relevant in this #MeToo moment. Apparently, we're no longer supposed to watch Woody Allen movies. Even the early, funny ones.

Everything else is “Literary Theory.”

I have been wearing neckties for about as long as I’ve been reading literature. Examining the evidence in my closet offers a little perspective. Fads come and go. Both skinny and wide ties will eventually come back into vogue, but probably not at the same time. Some fashion choices are timeless. Others are merely sentimental favorites. Obviously I insisted on green paisley patterns for far too long.

The eyeglasses diagram above described Literary Theory as “a pair of lenses through which you view the text you are reading.” Lenses can help you focus. But they can also act as a mirror instead – something any honest literary critic should be willing to admit.

Freud, neo-colonialism, intersectionality, Lacan, Foucault….  Like neckties, some Theories are more embarrassingly faddish than others. But each offers an interesting perspective in our search for meaning. In particular, Literary Theory can be a useful tool when you want to use a particular Text to riff about something else. Or even just about yourself.

Fortunately, we’ll never run out of Theories until we run out of humanities professors seeking tenure. Or English Majors with enough sense to finish their dissertations rather than go to law school.

So how does each kind of English Major approach a text? Let’s use a recent example, applying all three types of analysis to the movie Love, Simon, as I did in my recent Gay Movie Review.

First, Queer Theory. Last week at chorus rehearsal I was discussing Love, Simon with a friend I’ll call “Emerson.” He agreed the movie accurately portrayed the tyranny of the closet. We also agreed it’s unfair how the filmmakers desexualized gay relationships compared to how similar movies objectify straight teens. Love, Simon simultaneously rejects and exemplifies the tyranny of the closet. That’s deconstruction in action, folks.¹

¹Similarly, the online magazine Slate described Love Simon as “a meta-commentary on rom-coms—and the importance of a gay one.”

Second, Textual Analysis. Movies are texts, with their own component parts and patterns. Like a well-oiled machine, Love, Simon effectively combines the familiar tropes and follows the rhythmic beats² of both the classic John Hughes genre and the archetypal coming out narrative. Emerson and I both were moved to tears at all the right places.

²A “beat” is a discrete segment of a screenplay, like scenes in a play. This blog uses evocative pictures to mark the end of a beat. Love, Simon uses sappy music.

Love, Simon is also a whodunit. Early in the story, Simon makes an online connection with a closeted classmate who uses the pseudonym “Blue.” Over the course of the movie, Simon and the audience try to figure out Blue’s identity. The filmmakers skillfully present each candidate as an equally plausible match – the cool friend, the bohemian, the nebbish. Every plot turn culminates in a brief fantasy sequence where Simon imagines himself connecting with the guy. The textual gears smoothly make each shift.

Finally, the Historical Context. This is where Emerson’s and my cinematic experiences diverged. Love, Simon was directed by openly gay television impresario Greg Berlanti, who created The Flash, Arrow, and other staples of the CW Network. Oliver and I watch The Flash together every week. Meanwhile, poverty, parenthood, and reader’s block have reduced my formerly voluminous magazine subscriptions to Entertainment Weekly. (For the articles.)

I therefore went into the movie theatre with the correct hypothesis about Blue’s identity, based on the actor’s strategic omission from the film’s marketing campaign.

In contrast, Emerson is a fabulously kid-free gay man, with classy tastes. (He probably subscribes to the New Yorker, or Cigar Aficionado.) Love, Simon’s red herrings threw him off the scent, and he found each plot twist convincing and satisfying.

So keep spoilers in mind the next time you’re tempted to peruse Entertainment Weekly at the dentist's office. Unless you’re an English Major who needs to write a book report.