{"id":15708,"date":"2019-03-14T01:19:57","date_gmt":"2019-03-14T01:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=15708"},"modified":"2019-03-15T22:09:28","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T22:09:28","slug":"what-will-happen-to-michael-jacksons-legacy-a-famed-writers-fall-could-offer-clues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/what-will-happen-to-michael-jacksons-legacy-a-famed-writers-fall-could-offer-clues\/","title":{"rendered":"What will happen to Michael Jackson’s legacy? A famed writer’s fall could offer clues"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rachel Hope Cleves<\/a>, University of Victoria<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no question that Michael Jackson changed music history. But how will history remember Michael Jackson?<\/p>\n

Since HBO released the new documentary film \u201cLeaving Neverland<\/a>,\u201d which detailed allegations by two adults who say that they were molested by Jackson as children, the musician\u2019s legacy \u2013 already complicated \u2013 is up in the air.<\/p>\n

Jackson is not the first notable artist to be accused of sexually abusing children. Some, like Roman Polanski<\/a> and Woody Allen<\/a>, are still living and producing art that provokes discussion.<\/p>\n

But there are other alleged child abusers who have died and whose works, once considered great, have faded into obscurity, in no small part because it is almost impossible to memorialize them without creating the impression of condoning their behavior.<\/p>\n

The writer Norman Douglas is a prime example. The subject of a biography I\u2019m working on, Douglas had a reputation for molesting children. After his death, he became an off-limits topic for biographers, and while he had his defenders, he ultimately couldn\u2019t escape historical erasure.<\/p>\n

Rumors do little to dim a budding star<\/h2>\n

During the first half of the 20th century, Norman Douglas was a literary star. Friends with Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley, he was best known for his bestselling 1917 novel \u201cSouth Wind<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Virginia Woolf sang its praises<\/a> in the Times Literary Supplement. Graham Greene recalled<\/a> how his generation \u201cwas brought up on South Wind.\u201d When the hero of Evelyn Waugh\u2019s \u201cBrideshead Revisited<\/a>\u201d arrives at Oxford after World War I, he brings with him only two novels, \u201cSouth Wind\u201d and Compton Mackenzie\u2019s \u201cSinister Street<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

But today Douglas is entirely forgotten.<\/p>\n

The reasons why artists\u2019 works go forgotten vary. In Douglas\u2019 case, it\u2019s fair to say that his erudite writing style went out of fashion.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s more to the story. During his lifetime, Douglas was notorious for his relationships with children<\/a>. In 1912, he lived with a 14-year-old boy in London while he was working at The English Review. Four years later, he was arrested in London for acts of gross indecency with a 16-year-old. After his release on bail, Douglas fled to Italy, where laws regulating sex between men and boys were more lax. He settled in Florence, where his celebrity only grew.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Norman Douglas plays with an Italian boy named Marcello, who was likely one of his lovers.<\/span>
\nPino Orioli, ‘Moving Along’ (London: Chatto & Windus, 1934).<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Visitors to the city, like Huxley and Lawrence, would seek him out in the city\u2019s caf\u00e9s. The radical journalist and heiress Nancy Cunard, who met Douglas in Florence in 1923 and became a close friend, recalled<\/a> the \u201caureole of legend\u201d that surrounded him.<\/p>\n

Douglas was always attended to by Italian boys who worked for him as messengers or cooks, and endless rumors circulated about Douglas\u2019 relationships with these boys. A diary entry written by a friend of Douglas\u2019 described how Douglas performed fellatio on a boy named Marcello. Brothers Sacheverell and Osbert Sitwell warned Cunard<\/a> that Douglas was dangerous. D.H. Lawrence\u2019s widow, Frieda, told her friend<\/a> Dudley Nichols that Douglas was \u201cthe only wicked man I have known, in a medieval sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scrutiny grows<\/h2>\n

Britain\u2019s strict libel laws, the norms of politeness and the power of Douglas\u2019 celebrity seemed to prevent people from writing publicly about his sexual relationships with boys while he was alive.<\/p>\n

But you can\u2019t libel the dead.<\/p>\n

When Douglas died in 1952, debate about his memory erupted in the press. The first signs of the battle to come appeared in the obituaries. British diplomat Harold Nicolson noted Douglas\u2019 shocking \u201cindulgences\u201d in a death notice<\/a> for The Spectator.<\/p>\n

Nicolson\u2019s article prompted 50 or 60 letters of protest from Douglas\u2019 friends, but there was no holding back the tide. In 1954, Douglas\u2019
\nformer friend Richard Aldington published a book of vicious recollections about the writer titled \u201cPinorman<\/a>,\u201d a portmanteau of Norman and his friend Pino Orioli<\/a>. Aldington didn\u2019t mince words. He called Douglas a pederast<\/a> whose path in life was \u201cstrewn with broken boys and empty bottles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Author Graham Greene was a staunch defender of Douglas and feverishly worked to protect his reputation.<\/span>
\nWikimedia Commons<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Douglas\u2019 friends were outraged. Cunard wrote to Aldington\u2019s publisher accusing him of libel and threatening to wage a \u201ccollective protest.\u201d She rallied Douglas\u2019 friends to lambaste the book in reviews. Her own review for the periodical Time and Tide was titled \u201cBonbons of Gall.\u201d Graham Greene wrote to a friend that he intended to \u201ckill\u201d Aldington\u2019s book, and he penned a review for The London Magazine that was so incendiary it could not be published for fear of libel charges from Aldington, who was very much alive.<\/p>\n

Greene maliciously sent Aldington the review and asked for permission to publish it. Naturally, Aldington refused and reached out to friends for help putting together a pamphlet attacking Douglas\u2019 defenders. Frieda Lawrence contributed a story about how Douglas once casually offered her a boy of 14, saying that he preferred them younger. But the pamphlet was so intemperate that a lawyer said it would run afoul of the libel laws and could not be published.<\/p>\n

The danger of choosing to forget?<\/h2>\n

Aldington was forced to retreat. With \u201cPinorman\u201d disparaged by its reviewers, Aldington was discredited. It seemed that Douglas\u2019 friends had won the battle.<\/p>\n

But Aldington won the war. The truth was out there, and Douglas\u2019 reputation was permanently injured.<\/p>\n

In the decades that followed many would-be biographers tried their hand at writing Douglas\u2019 story; time and again they failed. Douglas simply could not be remembered as a great writer in the face of the allegations against him. Only one comprehensive biography, titled \u201cNorman Douglas<\/a>,\u201d has ever been published about him. It came out in 1976, during a rare moment of sexual openness; even so, the publisher almost nixed the manuscript after 10 years of work by its author, Mark Holloway.<\/p>\n

Today Douglas is a forgotten writer. When the truth about his sexual relations with children was fully exposed after his death he became an impossible figure to memorialize.<\/p>\n

Over time, it\u2019s likely that Michael Jackson\u2019s memory will be similarly eroded. The television show \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d has already pulled its 1991 episode<\/a> featuring Jackson. His name will likely be taken down from public monuments. People will be hesitant to produce new versions of his music. His influence will live on, but it will be difficult to commemorate his work.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that is for the best. But maybe it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Reluctance to preserve the memory of the extensive history of sex between adults and children leaves society ill-equipped to recognize and handle child sexual abuse today. A culture that is caught up in narratives that identify pedophiles as monsters has a hard time recognizing when beloved figures, like Michael Jackson, are molesting children right before its eyes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is need for history to remember abusers and to remember them in all their complexity. If Jackson\u2019s memory is preserved, maybe it will be easier to see the present more clearly.\"The<\/p>\n

Rachel Hope Cleves<\/a>, Professor of History, University of Victoria<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rachel Hope Cleves, University of Victoria There\u2019s no question that Michael Jackson changed music history. But how will history remember Michael Jackson? Since HBO released the new documentary film \u201cLeaving Neverland,\u201d which detailed allegations by two adults who say that they were molested by Jackson as children, the musician\u2019s legacy \u2013 already complicated \u2013 is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":15704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[3296,4221,6023,2619,5875,3552,3681],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15708"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15708"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15714,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15708\/revisions\/15714"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}