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Super Bowl Half Time Show

10:57 / 02.02.04

For those who might not have heard or seen: during the Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson duet for Rock your body, Justin "accidentally" ripped off the cups of Janet Jackson's bustier right after the line, "have you naked by the end of this song."

Now, had I been watching this with friends I think I'd have found it stupid and slightly offensive, if I had thought about it, and moved on. However, I was watching with a room full of adolescencent girls with the knowledge that the majority of students at my school were watching the same thing. In that context I was deeply offended and found it highly inappropriate not because of the nudity, but the context. I get the feeling that it was meant to be cutely shocking, but I still remember the Puerto Rican Day parade of 2000. There was nothing cute or playful in ripping the clothes off of women. Have I lost my sense of humor?

I'm also concerned because it really was the context that brought all the other concerns, which I would have glossed over on my own, to the forefront. However, as a school, we have had several community wide discussions on media and the messages the media puts out and I was appalled by the lack of critical thinking these kids had put into it and how reluctant they were to question their assumptions. This just seemed one more instance that would be the subject of jokes, but not at all the impetus for a much needed discussion.

I've found also found the post event claims that it was accidental implausible and angering. If you're trying to be shocking, I think you at least owe the public enough credit to explain yourself rather than make ridiculous claims that it was an accident.

11:27 / 03.02.04

MTV Europe have been showing it, so I saw it last night. Of course it was staged--vide Janet's taped nipple--for an upcoming album, like the Madonna/Britney kiss last year. It was an incredible confluence of factors that flatters nobody involved. Ms. Jackson didn't mind being pawed for a publicity stunt; otherwise, we'd be hearing from Jackson's lawyers.

To paraphrase Jack "Dragnet" Webb: The Super Bowl was the match, Timberlake was the fuse, and Jackson was da bomb. It happened during the Super Bowl; non-jocks like me live for moments like that. MTV will get the blame for it, which opens a whole new angle. FCC Chairman and Republican stooge, Michael Powell, who never met a megacorp he didn't like, will have to levy a fine so his daddy's boss can satisfy the rightwing screwheads. And the album wil probably still be crap.

Too bad this guy got upstaged, though.

12:02 / 03.02.04

vide Janet's taped nipple

That's some intricate taping. (Not particularly work-safe)

12:10 / 03.02.04

There is to be an inquiry into nipplegate .

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:13 / 03.02.04

bjacques... LOVE that link. One day I'll finally get round to writing my "Behold The Man"- style story about an experimenter with time travel who decides to streak at various important events... the Crucifixion, the fall of Troy, at half-time during that big face-off between David and Goliath, Princess Di's funeral...

Anyway, who's to say it wasn't an accident? I personally wouldn't dream of leaving the house without covering me nips with strange occult symolism JUST IN CASE...

...actually...

12:23 / 03.02.04

Timberlake said it was all a bit of a blur... the decision to "go one further" being taken just seconds before air. Asked how he felt about the fiasco in retrospect, he replied:

"I felt a right tit."

12:31 / 03.02.04

The Barbelith Underground is conducting the inquiry, sleazenation? I'm not sure that's a good idea.

12:50 / 03.02.04

oops look like i screwed the html on that link try this.

13:00 / 03.02.04

whole family's a bunch of bad'uns ask me.

something a bit evil-looking about the jackson family nose....

jan, mick and toya all got the same one

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

14:23 / 03.02.04

I like that CBS is blaming MTV for the whole thing, which kind of ignores the fact that CBS and MTV are both owned by the same company.

And the government is about to get involved, saying that it was bad for the children. I guess it's OK to have ads for boner pills, flaming horse flatulance and ads filled with blantant women hating, but a breast is the fall of civilization. Why do I live in the US, again?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

15:17 / 03.02.04

Well Janet Jackson seems to have been copying her brother again by having her career go down the skids as well, just lacking the dizzying heights Michael achieved. Even that song she did last year with the homophobe got more noticed because it was him rather than her. So flashing her baps is probably the only way she's got left to get noticed. It probably won't do her any harm but won't help out either. Her last good song was 'Scream' after all.

Matthew Fluxington

15:41 / 03.02.04

Forget the nipple stuff, Janet's new single is AMAZING. Pop bliss perfection, I swear. You can download it here.

Matthew Fluxington

15:45 / 03.02.04

Also, Janet's had at least one amazing single between "Scream" and now - have you never heard the So So Def mix of "Someone To Call My Lover"? That's easily one of her best singles, ever.

Cheap. Easy. Cruel.

16:29 / 03.02.04

Of course it was staged--vide Janet's taped nipple...

That nipple is not taped, but is partially covered by what is known as a nipple shield (link is NOT work-safe).

18:25 / 03.02.04

Yawn! Am I the only one who finds it the most boring non-issue on tv today? 'We're going to show you murder, torture and every other bad thing we can think of, on a daily basis...wait! What the hell? A NIPPLE!!! ON TV!!! Oh the inhumanity! Think of the children! WOnt somebody please thingk of the children! We are shocked and ashamed!!!'

18:47 / 03.02.04

Matthew Fluxington-
I'm just giggling because the single so sounds like a Prince remake. I miss Prince.
~sigh~

I'm coming down in the shock camp, but I repeat again that it's not about the nudity. It's about the visual of a woman's clothing being ripped off that's so inappropriate.

I felt strident and little crazy explaining to my students all the reasons why it was't funny and all the various context you'd need for it to be funny. There's a difference between pantsing (sp?) a friend in front of a group of mutual friends and the staged violence of the show and a public audience.

19:17 / 03.02.04

I found all the hubbub to be amusing for about the first day, now I'm officially sick of hearing about it. (Although to be fair, it has upstaged the Howard Dean campaign rant/whoop, which is SO played out.)

I heard a great proposal for a headline about it on the radio today: "Tempest in a C Cup"...

Its a breast: get over it.

Seriously though, why are a women's breasts equated with genitalia?

Men take off their shirts all the time.

NYPD Blue is famous for all its bare ass shots, male and female alike.

Why is everyone so "offended" all of a sudden? I imagine many in Europe are having a good laugh about all the shock and awe this is causing...

Americans: they get offended by a partially-covered breast but they have no problem with their military occupying another country in defiance of international law, or with their government refusing to sign the Kyoto treaty.

I think I'll move to Canada. My country is officially insane.

19:36 / 03.02.04

Oddly enough, even though in Ontario it's legal for women to walk around topless, many papers here are on the 'shocked' viewpoint...

19:37 / 03.02.04

I thought it was funny and I assumed Janet must have a new single out she was promoting. I was actually a bit surprised there was such an uproar. Maybe I'm just jaded...

XXII:X:II = XXX

00:48 / 04.02.04

Referencing back to the original message, I agree that the part of all this that I found most offensive and shocking was not the bare breast itself (and for a while I'd been unaware that what I thought was a pastie was actually a nipple ornament; toMAYto, toMAHto), but that it was a glamorization of rape-like activity, or certainly male-on-female violence. While fantasy and eroticism is all well and good, I personally do not trust the majority of the Superbowl's core audience to be able to distinguish the line between play and reality; after all, they think the Superbowl MATTERS. For me it was just another Sunday, except Simpsons wasn't on because Fox was showing that jingoistic propaganda bullshit Independence Day for about the third time in the space of a year, so instead I watched the recording of the soundtrack of "The Producers" on PBS, which was about five times as entertaining as the game and the Heinlein wet dream put together.

Halving social services to build more nukes to protect against people armed with exacto knives? Not important. Bare titty in the middle of a media circus? LA SCANDALE! Let's have it on the front page for DAYS! If one pervy Jackson distracts the public from relevant matters, just think of what you could do with TWO!

why why why why why why why why why why why why why why... ohhh, my brain...

VJB2

01:42 / 04.02.04

The Jackson/Timberlake event was a hot topic in one of my classes today (I go to a shitty university, what can I say?). Don't laugh, but this was the first I'd heard of it. I wish I had read passer's comment before the class discussion although I'm sure it would have been dismissed as were any other complaints.

One rather smart boy in my class pointed out how most women in the entertainment industry, if they want to succeed, at some point have to bare their bodies. Now, many women my age (I'm 24, so we'll say 18-30) feel that they can show a lot of skin and have it be an act of empowerment and not objectification. A friend of mine used to insist that the Spice Girls were feminists who dressed like sluts because they wanted to, a rather naive assumption I think because it's more likely someone, yes male probably, told them to dress that way. Even if they did choose to sing while scantily clad, and if they claimed they were empowering themselves with that choice, the rest of a society/culture can override that meaning with their own meanings. It becomes about sex, not about any sort of empowerment.

My roommate took the "So what, it's just a BREAST!" tack tonight. Certainly the naked human body shouldn't be so horrifying (the 40+ group is pretty damn horrified here). Women's bodies, especially women of color's bodies, are highly sexualized, and when combined with the violence of having clothes ripped off--yeah, that's horrifying, and I'm glad people are horrified.

02:35 / 04.02.04

i'm shocked by it, but not cos it's a, omg, BREAST, on tv, but because they planned out this completely blatant illegal act to perform in front of millions. i wish i was famous and didn't have to obey the law.