I don't get why people look at the Peter Pan stuff and toys and think "pedophile". What those things say to me is "trying to have a childhood too late because he never had a chance to be a child when he was a child". How in the world does acting like you want to be a child and adopting the traits of a child equal wanting to screw a child? I like screwing women, but have never wished I were a woman or collected things women would be more expected to collect or watched, read, or listened to things with primarily female audiences. (For that matter, many would make the opposite association: that a man who adopts conventionally feminine behaviors is less likely to want to screw women!)
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For that matter, Peter Pan is rather more precise and specific case for "wanting to be a child, not screw one" than most childhood-oriented things. The Peter Pan story itself is explicitly about the transition from childhood to adulthood and whether going through it is necessary, and Neverland is a mishmash of children's things thrown together in a way that looks like a wistful view of the life of children from the outside... created by another man who had lost his chance at childhood and been personally confronted by the idealization of never growing up for different reasons (and who I think was also accused of pedophilia).
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Thank-you. This speaks a lot to my way of thinking about it. MJ never had a real childhood. He dreamed of it, craved it, needed it -but never got it. Later, he had this idea he could create a fantasy world for other kids who he thought were being denied normalcy so they wouldn't go through what he did, and also I suspect he saw it as a way to experience it vicariously.
Many of the people who choose to be foster parents do so for the same reasons. They have this deep desire to provide for someone else's children whatever they didn't have for themselves. A normal life -toys, clothes, school, etc.
But, some of them -and I include MJ in this group- missed out on so much they don't really know what they missed. They read books, and hear stories and watch television 'til they form all kinds of fantastical opinions.
They form an image in their minds of the
pattern on the cloth, but without any real knowledge or understanding of the fibers. They allow or do inappropriate things because they do not have the whole picture.
The fabric they create is lovely on the surface, but the weave is crooked -and in some cases the warp is showing all over the place.
I don't think Jackson intended any wrongdoing at all. I think he had a fantasy image that no one dared tell him wasn't really a good idea, and I think he was genuinely shocked that anyone, anywhere found fault with his efforts.
I also think he was so insulated for so much of his life he really didn't understand the sharks in the water, and how vulnerable he was making himself to their predations by trying to share his fortunes and help those he thought he could do so many good things for.
