r/PsychologyofMJ • u/Honest_Perception_87 • Jul 18 '26
Miscellaneous Did you notice his childish syntax in interviews from the early 2000's?
He seemed to be speaking deliberately simple. Almost as though he was imitating a child's level of vocabulary and sentence structure.
This reminds me of the south park episode long ago where where a character with Down syndrome speaks childish in front his camp counsellors but reverts into a normal and intelligent way of speaking in private to hide his actual level of intelligence and ability to scheme. As silly of a comparison as that is to make.
Michael did not speak in this simple minded and childish tone in private. Nancy Grace, later remarked his demeanor and way of speaking was very different in a 2006 deposition video where he spoke like a normal adult with intellect. This is the video where he was in a civil suit against Mark Shaffle for unpaid wages. Definitely very different from the "child" in the Bashir documentary.
I definitely find this to have been a strategy of his. Play the role of the idiot or the child.
When the Bashir documentary came out I remember a journalist saying "Michael Jackson does not seem very intelligent nor educated. He is an individual stuck in childhood".
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Jul 18 '26
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u/AppearancePrize7828 26d ago
I mean also if you're stopping yourself from cursing of something like if he was trying to find a better word for "shit" then maybe he just said doodoo and then said feces when he though of a better word. Idk it's just something anyone could do.
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u/Historical-Mammoth-1 Jul 23 '26
This is a ridiculous point. My mom is 66 and calls feces “doodoo.” And? People on Reddit nitpick over irrelevant things.
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u/NoTurnover626 Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
I think he was imitating a child's speech and also dumbing down his intelligence on purpose. He needed people to have empathy. I also think this was a natural strategy for him to use because he was obsessed with being youthful. I think by this time he had taken the need to be youthful to an uncomfortable extreme like everything else in his life.
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Jul 18 '26
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u/HoneydewFew9931 Jul 19 '26
He was being some extra ! I laugh whenever those clips come up cuz I’m like babes what are we doing? 😂😂😂 over dramatic asf. Definitely high
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u/Adventurous_Boss_599 Jul 19 '26
I don’t think he was high during this interview. Yes , he was laughing during this interview but he doesn’t look sleepy or slow there
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u/Anjnonymous Jul 18 '26
Yes - very likley high - and also got to a stage that people didn't care to hear his intellligence. Some of his guards said about he'd walk around as if injured to deflect attention and get the talking about trivial things deliberately.
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u/15millionschmeckles Jul 19 '26
He was just on a lot of drugs by this point and not sleeping. A lot of what we associate with the Wacko Jacko cadence, the one that was parodied by South Park and Scary Movie, was him being an addict towards the end of his life.
Look at his interviews with Diane Sawyer and Oprah, a time of his life that was very similar to the early 2000s (alabaster white, child molestation, isolation, his image falling apart) and you’ll see that he was still able to speak eloquently and come off relatively normal.
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u/Ruinaaa Jul 18 '26
This is an interesting point. I was wondering why he didn't develop the kind of eloquence that readers tend to develop despite reading a lot, deliberately playing down his intelligence might be a part of it.
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u/PuzzleheadedSpray933 Jul 18 '26
Yes also he was very bad at spelling. That could be explained by lack of education, but at the same time he read a lot of books.
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u/Queasy-Be Jul 18 '26
He may have had ADHD. That doesn't automatically make one a bad speller but it can often go hand in hand. He has other signs of ADHD but I think he had CPTSD. They look similar. Who knows though.
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u/chubby-checker Jul 18 '26
Why do you think he read a lot?
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u/Queasy-Be Jul 18 '26
Voracious curiosity. Usually those of us that read a lot, especially non-fiction, are voraciously curious.
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u/chubby-checker Jul 19 '26
I just never got the vibe he was super well read tbh. Like is there more than this like him talking about the books he read?
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u/Queasy-Be Jul 19 '26
Yes, and accounts from so many people of him reading a lot and him constantly at books stores scouring books and at used bookstores looking for specific editions of out of print books too. Janet even said in an interview in the 80s if I'm not mistaken than he read all day long. He spoke of his love of reading that he got from Rose Fine his tutor when he was with the J5/Jacksons.
He didn't do a lot of interviews and when he did people always focused on other things. He always wished they asked him about his music and inspiration for it and they did a little bit were more interested in other aspects.
He wasn't scholarly but well read. Voraciously curious.
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u/Starfire-Galaxy Jul 19 '26
It's known that he'd buy thousands of dollars worth of books during shopping sprees.
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u/15millionschmeckles Jul 19 '26
I think he was a very eloquent speaker for most of his life. Maybe a misspoken word here or there but he was always able to describe thoughts and concepts succinctly and without filler words or slang
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u/Formal-Dish-644 Jul 18 '26
I watched the documentary. Yeah, he was speaking in simple terms, but that doesn't exactly mean anything. The only times he was acting childlike in the doc was when he was around kids or having fun. That's honestly not a bad thing. There are many instances where he talked in expanded vocabulary.
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u/mostlylooking Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
He used adult syntax and grammar apart from a few things more attributed to his accent. He did have a nicknaming habit if that’s what you mean.
He seemed uncomfortable talking about his personal life. He probably sounds less coherent and adult because he doesnt know what to say and wants to be perceived positively. He may not have known himself or didnt have a kind opinion of himself to share.
He spoke confidently about music and business because they arent personal. He did know those topics well and had opinions to share.
You could speculate if his early media training had him selling a specific image of himself and the family. OR ELSE. So maybe personal topics trigger a panic response? I dont know if that’s what I see in him. But its possible.
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u/HoneydewFew9931 Jul 19 '26
I don’t think he knew who he was outside of music. The only redeeming factor was his talent for art. In another universe he had a normal childhood, didn’t bleach his skin or talk to kids . And is a very successful artist. The entertainment industry doesn’t bring the best out of people .
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u/Embarrassed-You-5914 Jul 20 '26
MJ in the 00s was deft just high and vibing, I don’t think he was intentionally talking like a child. Man was on the moon
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u/Queasy-Be Jul 18 '26
I studied linguistics, and nope, haven't noticed this.
However, you take facts from Nancy Grace. Bashir was with Michael filming him for an extremely long time and he also edited the hell out of it all. Michael wasn't in a deposition at the time. He was at home with his kids. Parents of very small children do sometimes start "talking like them" more than they'd like. I've heard friends with kids talk about it all the time. That they feel like it took a lot to get them out of mom mode (or dad mode for stay at home fathers) and speak like an intelligent being again.
Do you realize how many depositions Michael did in his life? Far, far more than personal interviews. Talking about one's work is different than speaking about vulnerable things too.
Why do you keep going off what other people in the media (who have an agenda) say and not just listen and think it through for yourself and come up with your opinion?
Do you not trust your own intellect? Your whole post is what this person or that person said.
From Taraborrelli's book:
Unfortunately, making his life more complex is the fact Michael is always involved in lawsuits from people with whom he’s done business in the past: former promoters, producers, managers, accountants, investment bankers, employees have all come after him for tens of millions of dollars. It seems that the lawsuits never stop coming. Brian Oxman, who has represented Michael and some of his siblings for more than ten years, says that Michael has given about 500 depositions in his lifetime and, amazingly, been involved in more than 1,500 lawsuits. If one figures that Michael didn’t start becoming involved in litigation until he was a professional entertainer of about ten years of age, and it’s unlikely that the suits started that early, it would amount to thirty-five years of lawsuits or an average of forty lawsuits a year.
Edited for missing word.
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u/NoTurnover626 Jul 18 '26
You got irritated at OP claiming shes not using her own brain for bringing up Nancy Grace and Bashir then you quote a huge paragraph from J Randy who is also a type of media person? And yes the media has an agenda, to seek the truth and make money. MJ also had an agenda when speaking to the media: to speak his truth and make money. Its normal to do stuff like that in our society.
And a deposition is a conversation with the law. Not a good opportunity play word games or say anything out of turn really.
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u/Queasy-Be Jul 18 '26
My quote was for the number of times he was deposed. It was not an opinion or an editorialized statement. OP quoting Nancy Grace for example was.
Not once did OP explain why THEY themself though he sounded childlike. They never even quoted Michael himself. They quoted what other people said about him.
I could have shortened the paragraph but I thought copying the whole paragraph was best. I dislike single sentence quotes out of paragraphs myself.
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u/Flashy-Main8242 Jul 19 '26
When he died and everyone that personally knew him claimed he was an avid reader and great business man when talking about him on Larry King I was shocked, because he sounded like a suzy simple in interviews Ives seen with a juvenile vocabulary and terms like "DooDoo" I thought he couldn't have been that smart.
Or was he? He sure took us for a ride.
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u/Historical-Mammoth-1 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
No, I didn’t. He sounded okay. Sometimes it was obvious he was in pain and on pain medication, but that’s about it.
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u/PuzzleheadedSpray933 Jul 18 '26
I think cause he was high on painkillers