Michael Jackson and the Elephant Man: The Circus He Couldn't Escape

In the Leave Me Alone video, Michael Jackson dances with an animated representation of the Elephant Man's skeleton before tearing apart an amusement park built upon his own body. The short film appeared in Moonwalker before its standalone release in 1989. It looked like an attack on the tabloids. But the story behind it raises a more complicated question: had Jackson become a prisoner of a spectacle he helped create? Release context

There is a moment towards the end of Michael Jackson's Leave Me Alone video that I've always found strangely unsettling.

After several minutes travelling through a surreal amusement park filled with tabloid headlines, bizarre attractions and caricatures of his public life, the camera pulls back.

We discover that the entire park has been built on Jackson himself.

He's enormous, lying helplessly beneath it, tied down while rollercoasters, buildings and fairground attractions operate around him.

Then he begins to move.

He breaks free, rises to his feet and destroys the spectacle that has been constructed upon his body.

It's an extraordinary image, particularly for a music video from the late 1980s.

The obvious interpretation is that Jackson is attacking the media. His private life has become an amusement park, his every eccentricity an attraction, his humanity almost incidental to the entertainment he provides.

But there's another scene earlier in the video that makes me wonder whether something more personal is happening.

Jackson dances alongside an animated skeleton representing Joseph Merrick, better known as the Elephant Man. The official video

And once you understand what Merrick meant to Jackson, the video begins to look rather different.

Two men, one uncomfortable connection

Joseph Merrick was born in Leicester in 1862. He lived with severe physical differences that made him an object of extraordinary public curiosity in Victorian England.

For a period, he earned money exhibiting himself as the Elephant Man. Later, he lived at the London Hospital, where he received care but continued to attract curious visitors, including members of high society.

His circumstances were complicated. Exhibition offered him a livelihood and some independence, yet it also meant that his appearance became something other people paid to inspect.

Even in the hospital, where he found greater security, he couldn't entirely escape being looked at.

The London Museum's account of Merrick presents this contradiction with considerable sensitivity.

And after Merrick died in 1890, his skeleton remained in a medical collection.

The man who had spent much of his life being exhibited continued, in another form, to be an object of study after his death.

Almost a century later, Michael Jackson became fascinated by his story.

In a 1987 interview with Ebony/Jet, Jackson revealed that he had visited Merrick's remains in London twice. He described feeling a closeness to him and spoke enthusiastically about David Lynch's film The Elephant Man, starring John Hurt.

The interviewer, Darryl Dennard, then recalled the film's railway-station scene, in which Merrick is surrounded by a hostile crowd and desperately asserts his humanity.

Jackson immediately responded:

“Leave me alone.”

Dennard continued recalling the scene, and Jackson supplied another part of its famous declaration:

“I'm a human being.”

You can read a fan-hosted transcript of the 1987 interview here.

It's a remarkable exchange.

The title of Jackson's song was already part of his vocabulary for discussing a character who was desperately trying to be seen as human rather than as something to stare at.

That doesn't establish where the song's title originated. In fact, the song had already been recorded for Bad by the time of the interview. Interview context, album context, official CD track listing

And in his 1988 autobiography Moonwalk, as quoted by Kerry Hennigan, Jackson explained that Leave Me Alone was ostensibly about a romantic relationship, while also expressing what he wanted to say to people who bothered him. Hennigan's account

So claiming that the song was specifically written about Merrick would be going too far.

But the connection clearly existed in Jackson's mind.

He made that even clearer six years later.

“I saw myself in the story”

During his famous 1993 television interview with Oprah Winfrey, Jackson was asked whether he had tried to buy the Elephant Man's bones.

He denied it.

But then he said something considerably more revealing.

Speaking about Merrick, Jackson explained:

“I saw myself in the story.”

He said the film had made him cry because he could relate to it.

A fan-hosted transcript of the full 1993 interview preserves this exchange.

This is crucial because it removes much of the guesswork about Jackson's personal identification with Merrick.

He wasn't simply interested in a Victorian medical curiosity.

He recognised something of himself in the story.

We can only interpret precisely what that meant to him. But the parallels seem fairly obvious.

Both attracted intense curiosity about their physical appearance. Both experienced a form of public attention that could overwhelm their ability to move about freely. Both were frequently discussed as curiosities rather than as complete human beings.

Yet their circumstances were very different.

Merrick experienced disability, poverty and institutional dependence. Jackson was one of the wealthiest and most successful entertainers on Earth, with substantial influence over how he presented himself.

Those differences matter.

It would be absurd to suggest they lived equivalent lives.

But perhaps Jackson wasn't comparing their circumstances.

Perhaps he recognised the feeling of having other people decide what you represented, regardless of who you actually were.

That brings us to the most uncomfortable part of this story.

The rumour that wasn't quite a rumour

One of the strangest stories surrounding Jackson in the 1980s was that he wanted to purchase Merrick's skeletal remains.

For years, the tale has been treated as an example of the absurd inventions of the tabloid press.

And in 1993, Jackson himself emphatically dismissed it.

But contemporary reporting complicates that explanation.

On 30 May 1987, the Los Angeles Times published an article titled Jackson Bids for Elephant Man Remains.

The article wasn't simply repeating an anonymous tabloid allegation.

It quoted Jackson's manager, Frank DiLeo, explaining that an offer had been made and describing Jackson's respect for Merrick.

Reuters later reported a rejected $1 million bid; Jackson's agent denied a commercial motive. Report

Fast-forward to 1993, and Jackson was telling Oprah that the entire story was ridiculous.

So what happened?

There are several possibilities.

Jackson may have genuinely wanted the remains at one point and subsequently changed his mind. His manager may have acted without fully representing Jackson's wishes. Or the publicised offers may have been a deliberate publicity exercise that later became embarrassing.

We don't have enough evidence to choose conclusively between them.

But one thing is difficult to dismiss: Jackson's own management helped turn the story into international news.

And that's where the distinction between a manufactured image and a media invention becomes important.

What if the circus was partly self-created?

Jackson's mother, Katherine, addressed this issue in her 1990 autobiography, My Family, the Jacksons, according to passages quoted in Kerry Hennigan's examination of the Elephant Man connection.

In those passages, she wrote that people working for Michael had helped spread stories about both the Elephant Man's bones and the hyperbaric oxygen chamber.

Crucially, she acknowledged that she did not know what role Michael personally had in circulating them.

She described watching DiLeo encourage the coverage and suggested that any attempt to buy Merrick's remains may have been made in jest.

This is a very different picture from that of a completely helpless celebrity surrounded by journalists fabricating stories without encouragement.

It suggests that at least some people around Jackson recognised the commercial value of making him seem extraordinary.

After all, being unusual generates attention.

Attention sells records, concert tickets and merchandise.

The boundary between promoting an eccentric image and being trapped by it can become surprisingly thin.

And there is something particularly revealing about the video itself.

A retrospective published by Michael Jackson World Network quotes director Jim Blashfield recalling that Jackson and producer Jerry Kramer wanted to acknowledge Jackson's unusual public reputation and have fun with it. The reported recollection

In other words, Leave Me Alone was not conceived solely as an angry denunciation of the press.

It was also an exercise in self-aware publicity.

Jackson was taking the stories that made him seem strange and transforming them into another hugely entertaining product.

The video would go on to win a Grammy in 1990. Recording Academy

He had successfully taken control of the circus — at least creatively.

But had he escaped it?

Dancing with a dead man

The scene featuring Merrick's skeleton is worth examining closely.

Jackson appears in an old-fashioned theatrical setting. He dances with a ball and chain around his ankle, accompanied by an animated skeleton representing Merrick.

They perform alongside one another.

The visual joke is obvious. Jackson is mocking the notorious story about buying the bones.

But there is an unsettling second interpretation.

Here are two figures placed on display for our entertainment.

One is a living superstar whose appearance and behaviour have become public obsessions.

The other represents a man whose physical differences made him a spectacle during his lifetime.

And now, even in death, Merrick is dancing for an audience.

Jackson, meanwhile, is shackled.

Despite his fame, wealth and extraordinary ability to command attention, he is depicted as a prisoner.

Neither figure is permitted simply to exist.

They must entertain us.

This interpretation isn't entirely new. Writers at Dancing with the Elephant explored the parallels in 2012, and Raphael Raphael examined the Elephant Man connection in the academic collection Michael Jackson: Grasping the Spectacle.

But I think an additional contradiction deserves attention.

If we take the 1987 bids seriously, or even as a publicity exercise, then Jackson's representatives were treating Merrick's physical remains as something that might be acquired.

Something rare. Something extraordinary. Something collectible.

That sits uneasily alongside Jackson's identification with Merrick as someone whose humanity had been overshadowed by public curiosity.

It doesn't mean Jackson intended to disrespect him. His manager explicitly described his interest as respectful, and Jackson's later comments suggest genuine emotional identification.

Still, the contradiction is striking.

A man who saw himself in someone objectified by society became associated with an attempt to possess that person's remains.

There is almost something tragic about the possibility that even an act motivated by fascination or admiration could reproduce the very objectification Jackson appeared to understand.

The amusement park built on a human being

The final sequence of Leave Me Alone might be the most effective representation of celebrity I've ever seen in a music video.

Jackson doesn't merely find himself imprisoned inside an amusement park.

He is the amusement park.

His body provides the foundation for the attractions. His public image is the entertainment. The surrounding world exists because people want to look at him.

Consider what that says about fame.

The more extraordinary Jackson became, the more the public wanted access to him.

The more inaccessible he became, the more desperate the media became to explain him.

And the stranger the stories grew, the harder it became for him to appear ordinary.

It's a feedback loop.

There is another layer to the imagery.

Jackson genuinely loved amusement parks. In his Oprah interview, he associated them with the childhood experiences he felt he had missed while growing up as a working performer. The interview

The amusement park represented something joyful to him: play, escape, a childhood he could never fully experience.

Yet in Leave Me Alone, the amusement park becomes a prison.

A place normally associated with freedom and entertainment has been built on top of a human being who cannot move.

Perhaps that contradiction is accidental.

Or perhaps the image works so well because it contains both sides of Jackson's relationship with fame.

He loved performing. He loved entertaining people. He helped create some of the most spectacular performances in modern popular culture.

But being extraordinary came at a cost.

Eventually, even the person beneath the spectacle could become difficult to recognise.

The problem with being misunderstood

It would be easy to turn all of this into a straightforward defence of Jackson.

The innocent entertainer, misunderstood by the public, begging to be left alone.

But that interpretation ignores his considerable agency.

Jackson was not merely a passive participant in his public image. He was an exceptionally sophisticated performer who understood the power of mystery, theatricality and spectacle.

His films, costumes, appearances and highly controlled public presentations helped establish him as something far beyond a conventional pop star.

Some of that was artistic ambition.

Some was commercial strategy.

And some may have had unintended consequences.

But none of this means the scrutiny he experienced was harmless or that every subsequent story about him was justified.

Both things can be true.

A celebrity can encourage public fascination and later find that fascination unbearable.

An entertainer can build a mythology without appreciating how permanently it might alter the public's perception of them.

And someone can benefit enormously from attention while still desperately wanting periods of privacy.

The problem is that once an audience becomes accustomed to a particular character, it may resist allowing the person behind it to change.

Especially when the character is more interesting than an ordinary human being.

The final escape

At the end of the video, Jackson rises.

The restraints break. The structures collapse. The attractions are destroyed.

The spectacle can no longer contain him.

It's a triumphant image.

But I wonder whether we're watching freedom or simply another performance of freedom.

Because the escape itself is spectacular.

Jackson's act of rebellion becomes the climax of an elaborate piece of entertainment, designed for millions of people to watch.

The very audience from which he is asking to be left alone gets another extraordinary Michael Jackson performance.

And that might be the most revealing contradiction of all.

He can only communicate his desire to stop being a spectacle by creating another spectacle.

There's no way to know whether Jackson consciously intended every layer of this interpretation.

The parallels with Merrick are documented. The reported bids are documented. The involvement of his management is documented. His later denial is documented.

What those facts reveal about his private intentions remains unresolved.

But taken together, they make Leave Me Alone considerably more interesting than a simple attack on tabloid journalism.

It's a work about public identity, personal autonomy and the strange process by which a person can gradually become indistinguishable from the character the world has created around them.

And when Jackson dances with Merrick's skeleton, I don't think the question worth asking is merely whether he was making fun of a newspaper story.

It's whether he recognised that both men had become attractions in other people's worlds.

Joseph Merrick spent much of his short life trying to be treated as an ordinary human being.

Michael Jackson spent much of his extraordinary career convincing the world that he was anything but ordinary.

Yet perhaps, beneath all the differences, there was a similar desire.

Not to be analysed, collected, exhibited or turned into a story.

Just to be seen as a person.

And perhaps the most uncomfortable question isn't whether Michael Jackson helped create his own circus.

It's whether, by the time he wanted to escape, anybody would have recognised him without it.

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Open Tangents explores the ideas and contradictions hiding inside familiar stories. This essay is an interpretation, not a claim to have established Jackson's private intentions. The Elephant Man connection has previously been discussed by writers and scholars; the focus here is the tension between public fascination, celebrity self-promotion and the desire to escape both.

References

1. London Museum — Joseph Merrick: ‘The Elephant Man’Accessed 11 October 2026
2. MJJJusticeProject — Fan-hosted transcript of the 1987 Ebony/Jet interviewAccessed 11 October 2026
3. MJ Memories — Fan-hosted transcript of the 10 February 1993 Oprah interviewAccessed 11 October 2026
4. Los Angeles Times — Jackson Bids for Elephant Man RemainsAccessed 11 October 2026
5. Reuters — Revised bidAccessed 11 October 2026
6. Kerry Hennigan — Leave Me Alone: Michael Jackson and the Elephant Man’s BonesAccessed 11 October 2026
7. Michael Jackson World Network — Michael’s Moonwalker at 25, including Blashfield’s reported recollectionAccessed 11 October 2026
8. Recording Academy — 32nd Annual Grammy Awards, 1990Accessed 11 October 2026
9. Dancing with the Elephant — Celebrating Bad: Leave Me AloneAccessed 11 October 2026
10. Routledge — Michael Jackson: Grasping the Spectacle, including Raphael Raphael’s chapterAccessed 11 October 2026
11. MichaelJackson.com — Leave Me Alone, official video pageAccessed 11 October 2026
12. Los Angeles Times — First Off, contemporary Moonwalker release reportAccessed 11 October 2026
13. Official Michael Jackson ANZ store — Bad CD: release year and track listingAccessed 11 October 2026