“New York Times”
“Nipplegate” scandal: New documentary defends Janet Jackson – but she doesn’t want that
Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake at the 2004 Super Bowl
© Hahn Lionel / ABACA / Picture Alliance
The “New York Times” explains in a new documentary about one of the biggest television scandals of the noughties: the so-called “Nipplegate”. Janet Jackson doesn’t seem to be a fan of the film. Although it turns out to be in their favor.
Sometimes it happens that years later a scandal is viewed with completely different eyes. A prominent example is “Nipplegate”.
When Justin Timberlake bared Janet Jackson’s breast in the Super Bowl halftime show in 2004, it caused an outcry in prudish America, after all, children were watching too. In a country where every “shit” is beeped, the following scandal was hardly surprising.
Documentary about “Nipplegate”
And yet “Nipplegate” is viewed differently today. Because the faux pas mainly had one effect: Janet Jackson. The whole thing passed Justin Timberlake relatively without a trace. The “New York Times” documentary “Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson” gets to the bottom of this imbalance and reveals how Jackson subsequently became a persona non grata.
So actually good for Michael Jackson’s sister. One thinks. But as her former stylist, Wayne Scot Lukas, says, Jackson thinks very differently about the film. “She wants this documentary to go away. She hasn’t asked for a Free Janet documentary. She’s not interested,” he told Page Six. That year the New York Times drew attention to the Free Britney movement with its film “Framing Britney Spears”. Lukas and other participants were probably asked to work on the processing. “She asked us not to do it. She wants to tell her story herself,” he clarified.
Janet Jackson wants to tell her story
That could indicate that Jackson is working on her own documentary or something similar. She would have enough to tell. Because it suffered the greatest damage after “Nipplegate”. Despite being forced into a public video apology stating that it wasn’t planned, she was persona non grata for many industry giants. Various companies, including Viacom (which owns MTV and Paramount), the television station CBS and various broadcasting stations put Jackson and their catalog on a so-called “blacklist”.
The result: Countless television and radio stations stopped playing their music and showing their videos. While the sister of the “King of Pop” was previously considered a superstar, the ban also had a negative impact on their chart positions. At the time, critics noted that Janet Jackson would be punished more heavily for being a black woman. “In the public discourse she stood there like the initiator of the suggestive gesture, like a scheming seductress who manipulated Timberlake in order to be economically successful herself,” wrote Shannon L. Holland in her book “Women’s Studies in Communication” at the time.
In this respect, one can only welcome the fact that the “New York Times” has made the start with their documentary – even if Jackson doesn’t see it that way himself.
source: “Page Six”