Janet Jackson's ‘wardrobe malfunction’ explored on Brighton stage
The incident lasted just nine-sixteenths of a second, but the impact was huge – a real demonstration of “systemic issues of racism, sexism, ageism in the media and of the scrutiny that black women face particularly in the public eye.”
At the 2004 Superbowl as Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake performed, Timberlake very briefly exposed Jackson’s breast – a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ that had a devastating impact on Jackson's career.
Theatre maker Paula Varjack uses the incident now in Nine Sixteenths, an entertainingly fun way to examine how the media treatment of middle-aged women has changed since the turn of the century. It is performed by four 40+ black women.
Dates on the tour include The Old Market Upper Market Street, Hove BN3 1AS on March 17 at 8pm (tickets £18 on https://www.theoldmarket.com).
As she says, Paula likes to use pop culture moments to make sense of the world, and this was a moment which, in its fall-out, told us an awful lot.
Paula doesn't believe that there was anything deliberate about what happened. Justin Timberlake was meant to rip off a leather corset to reveal a satin bralette underneath: “But the way he grabbed it, it took off the leather cup and the satin cup. But both the teams seemed to agree at the time that it was not planned. It wasn't meant to go as far as it did. They never intended to reveal Janet Jackson's breast. Both teams seemed to be in shock and it all happened so quickly.”
But there was a wider context to what happened, the rising visibility of sex and sexuality on television and in parallel a rising, as Paula says, “moral panic from the conservative Christian right.”
“The Parents Television Council was on a tirade against rising indecency.”
As a result Janet Jackson was effectively blacklisted. Her 2004 Grammy Awards invitation was revoked and plans for her to star in a Hollywood film were abandoned. Conversely Timberlake was welcomed at the Grammy’s and suffered little negative backlash.
“The impact on Janet Jackson was huge. Her career really suffered after that. I had the assumption that she had just stopped making music and had moved away from it. But when I saw her live for the first time at Glastonbury in 2019, I was so thrilled that this icon of mine was there in the same year that I was also performing. Watching her perform live for the first time and then on the coach back I thought to myself what had happened to her between 2019 and 2004. She actually hadn't stopped making music and I was just thinking why was she so much less visible during that time. And I discovered that the head of CBS had a vendetta against her and believed that she should have personally apologised to him. He was head of a conglomeration of media organisations and she was totally blacklisted for five years or more. The loss of the American market was also devastating for her internationally.
“Some people think of my work as docutheatre and I'm not really sure about that but I've always been interested in pop culture and what it shows. This piece jumps between the story of me having this revelation of what had happened to her and also my own journey of becoming a performer. It is all the dreams and aspirations that you have as a black female performer And about the challenges that we face as black female performers.
“Janet Jackson was a tremendous icon to me at a time when I had relatively few black female artists to look to. She was a game-changer in so many ways and did it on her terms. After her ‘wardrobe malfunction’ the music industry let her down. The show also looks at why role models matter and the lack of older female role models of colour – against the role that the largely white male media executives play in deciding who thrives in mainstream pop culture.”