With the release Sunday of the first episode of HBO’s Michael Jackson documentary “Leaving Neverland,” a controversy emerged: a division between people who are speaking out against the late performer for the first time, people who are standing by Jackson despite the testimonies from his alleged victims, and people who have expressed surprise that the accusations took this long to have an impact.
“He was exonerated of the cases back in 2005… Oprah Winfrey was bringing in some of these young people on her television show, and I was done then,” Rev. Emmett G. Price III said in an interview with Boston Public Radio Monday. During his All Revved Up segment with Rev. Irene Monroe, Price said as a professor of music, he took Jackson’s music out of his curriculum. “It took me probably another 10 to 15 years to have the courage to start really stop listening to his music,” he said. “[Now] I don't listen to it, and I don't teach it. I was a music professor for 15 years. I stopped teaching it.”
According to Monroe, despite the seemingly obvious nature of the documentary, the series was enlightening in some ways. “In his effort to try to regain his innocence, [Jackson] took away the innocence of little boys,” she said. “I really felt that in his way of trying to heal himself as a victim of abuse, he victimized these kids.”
Rev. Emmett G. Price III is a Professor of Worship, Church & Culture and Founding Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of the Black Christian Experience at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Rev. Irene Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist and the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail and a Visiting Researcher in the Religion and Conflict Transformation Program at Boston University School of Theology. To hear the full interview, click on the audio player above.
