One day I was surfing YouTube and some Michael Jackson conspiracy video (possibly how the Illuminati killed him, or how he predicted 9/11) had a link to the web page for this book, “Michael Jackson Backdoor to Neverland: Exposing the King of Pop’s SECRET Mindsets” and I thought “Ok, I’ll bite.” I found the website to be entertaining, and I figured, why not. I was hoping the book would be terribly amusing, but instead it was just terrible.
Where to even begin? I could point out inaccuracies, or pure idiocy on every page. Let’s start with something that I just found irritating. Mr Gautier claims that Michael Jackson was nicknamed “Bambi”…I’ve been a Jackson fan for over half of my life, and do not remember him ever being called Bambi. But that’s ok, maybe I just missed that along the way, no big deal. But Mr Gautier insists on calling Jackson “Bambi”, “The Thriller”, or just “MJ” throughout the book which is not only disrespectful but completely unprofessional.
As for the content, Mr Gautier bases his arguments about Jackson’s “secret mindsets” on single lines from interviews out of context, information from Jackson’s ghost written auto-biography, and questionable books from supposed associates of Jackson. Not only are his theories about Jackson’s mental state completely “out there” with no evidence, and no basis in real psychology, his facts are sometimes COMPLETELY wrong (see also: page 120, writing about the 2005 criminal trial and describing Janet Arvizo’s testimony regarding how she urged her children to lie in a previous lawsuit, suddenly he claims it’s the Chandler family, which is incorrect).
Really, this book is a joke. I find it hard to believe that Mr Gautier has any formal training in psychology, as claimed. He insists that Jackson thought of himself as an orphan, the son of a king, that he WAS a king, that he was suicidal and murderous, and that he hates his family and worked to ruin their careers (all with zero evidence). He claims Jackson bought the ATV music catalog, which includes The Beatles catalog, and others for ego reasons (it couldn’t possibly have been a good business move) and he married Lisa Marie Presley to symbolically “dethrone” the King.
Lines such as “And with his shortened pants, MJ seems to tell us: My body has grown too fast, but my heart is still that of a child! These shortened pants similarly reflect an asexuality common to fairytales, comics or cartoon characters.” make you think to yourself, “seriously??” And it only gets worse, with the author trying to make a comparison between Jackson and Elvis Presley based on the fact that Elvis had a twin who died, and Jackson had a brother with a twin who died, and comparing Jackson to Aleister Crowley.
I would love to get into more of the insane and idiotic things in this book, but it’s making my head hurt and I don’t want to have to read it again to find the choicest paragraphs to speak about. I can only warn you that the book doesn’t even deserve 1 star. It was in no way amusing or entertaining, definitely not enlightening or educational, and while reading it I just kept thinking, “Really? Seriously? How did this even get published?”
Please don’t waste your time on this garbage.