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  • From: andrew AT andrewross.com
  • To: chpac-staff AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Chpac-staff] NYTimes.com Article: Frank Rich: My Hero, Janet Jackson
  • Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 17:41:55 -0500 (EST)

This article from NYTimes.com
has been sent to you by andrew AT andrewross.com.


Here's the article that Betsy and a number of us were talking about at our
commission meeting. NY Times from a week ago -- great perspective on free
expression.

andrew AT andrewross.com


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Frank Rich: My Hero, Janet Jackson

February 15, 2004





It may be a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it. Two
weeks after the bustier bust, almost no one has come to the
defense of Janet Jackson. I do so with a full heart. By
baring a single breast in a slam-dunk publicity stunt of
two seconds' duration, this singer also exposed just how
many boobs we have in this country. We owe her thanks for a
genuine public service.

You can argue that Ms. Jackson is the only honest figure in
this Super Bowl of hypocrisy. She was out to accomplish a
naked agenda - the resuscitation of her fading career on
the eve of her new album's release - and so she did. She's
not faking much remorse, either. Last Sunday she refused to
appear on the Grammys rather than accede to CBS's demand
that she perform a disingenuous, misty-eyed ritual
"apology" to the nation for her crime of a week earlier. By
contrast, Justin Timberlake, the wimp who gave the English
language the lasting gift of "wardrobe malfunction," did as
he was told, a would-be pop rebel in a jacket and a tie,
looking like a schoolboy reporting to the principal's
office. Ms. Jackson, one suspects, is laughing all the way
to the bank.

There are plenty of Americans to laugh at, starting with
the public itself. If we are to believe the general outcry,
the nation's families were utterly blindsided by the
Janet-Justin pas de deux while watching an entertainment
akin to "Little Women." As Laura Bush put it, "Parents
wouldn't know to turn their television off before that
happened." They wouldn't? In the two-plus hours "before
that happened," parents saw not only the commercials
featuring a crotch-biting dog, a flatulent horse and a
potty-mouthed child but also the number in which the
crotch-grabbing Nelly successfully commanded a gaggle of
cheerleaders to rip off their skirts. What signal were
these poor, helpless adults waiting for before pulling
their children away from the set? Apparently nothing short
of a simulated rape would do.

Once the deed was done, the audience couldn't stop watching
it. TV viewers with TiVo set an instant-replay record as
they slowed down the offending imagery with a clinical
alacrity heretofore reserved for the Zapruder film. Lycos,
the Internet search engine, reported that the number of
searches for Janet Jackson tied the record set by
9/11-related searches on and just after 9/11.

"That a single breast received as much attention as the
first attack on United States soil in 60 years is beyond
belief," wrote Aaron Schatz, the columnist on the Lycos Top
50 site. (Though not, perhaps, to the fundamentalist
zealots who attacked us.)

For those who still couldn't get enough, the cable news
channels giddily played the video over and over to remind
us of just how deplorable it was. Even though by this point
the networks were blurring the breast with electronic
pasties, there was still an erotic kick to be milked: the
act of a man tearing off a woman's clothes was as thrilling
to the audience as whatever flesh was revealed therein,
perhaps more so. But to say that aloud is to travel down a
road that our moral watchdogs do not want to take. It's the
unwritten rule of our culture that the public is always
right. The "folks," as Bill O'Reilly is fond of
condescending to them, are always the innocent victims of
the big, bad cultural villains. They're never complicit in
the crime. The idea that the folks might have the free will
to tune out tasteless TV programming or do without TV
altogether - or that they might eat up the sleaze, with or
without young 'uns in the room - is almost never stated on
television, for obvious reasons of fiscal self-interest.
You don't insult your customers.

Since the public is blameless for its role in creating a
market for displays like the Super Bowl's, who should be
the scapegoat instead? If you peruse Mr. O'Reilly's
admonitions in his first three programs dealing with the
topic, or the tirades of The Wall Street Journal editorial
page and right-wing direct-mail mills like the Parents
Television Council and Concerned Women for America, you'll
find a revealing pattern: MTV, CBS and their parent
corporation, Viacom, are the exclusive targets of the
invective. The National Football League is barely
mentioned, if at all. To blame the country's highest-rated
sports operation, after all, might risk insulting the
football-watching folks to whom these moral watchdogs
pander for fun and profit.

But the N.F.L. is in the sex business as assiduously as CBS
and MTV, and for the same reason: it wants those prurient
eyeballs. It's now been more than a quarter-century since
Super Bowl X, when the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders first
caught the attention of the nation. "The audience deserves
a little sex with its violence," Chuck Milton, a CBS sports
producer, said back then.

The N.F.L. has since worked tirelessly to fill that need.
This year was not the first MTV halftime show that the
league has ordered to try to expand its aging audience
beyond the Levitra demographic. The first such
collaboration, Super Bowl XXXV three years ago, featured
Britney Spears all but falling out of a halter top and
numbers in which both Mr. Timberlake (then appearing with
'NSync) and Nelly grabbed their crotches. There was, to my
eye, twice as much crotch-grabbing then as there was this
year, but that show generated no outrage whatsoever.

It did, however, attract two million more viewers than the
game itself. The N.F.L. wanted more of the same for 2004,
which is why the league's commissioner, Paul Tagliabue,
released a statement saying, "We're pleased to work again
with MTV" when announcing the encore. Or pleased up to a
point. When MTV proposed that part of the show be devoted
to a performance of the song "An American Prayer" by Bono
to increase awareness of the horrific AIDS epidemic in
Africa, the N.F.L. said no - even though Bono had done the
league the favor of giving the 2002 Super Bowl halftime
show a dignified musical tribute to the victims of the 9/11
attacks.

The mention of a sexually transmitted disease might dampen
the libido of the salacious MTV show that the N.F.L. wanted
this year and wanted so badly that the league remained
silent even when MTV's pregame publicity promised that the
performance would contain "some shocking moments." As one
participant in the production told me, the N.F.L. saw
"every camera angle" at the show's rehearsals and thus was
no less aware of its general tone than CBS and MTV were.
You don't hire Ms. Jackson, who's been steadily exposing
more of her breasts for over a decade on magazine covers,
to sing "Rock Your Body" if you have a G-rated game plan.
Nonetheless, Joe Browne, the league's flak, pleaded total
innocence after the event, releasing a hilarious statement
that the N.F.L., like the public, was the unwitting victim
of a show that it had both commissioned and helped
supervise: "We applaud the F.C.C.'s investigation into the
MTV-produced halftime. We and our fans were embarrassed by
the entire show."

That investigation, piggybacked by last week's
Congressional hearings, is an election-year stunt as full
of hot air as the Bud Light horse flatulence ad. "Like
millions of Americans, my family and I gathered around the
television for a celebration," declared Michael Powell, the
F.C.C. chairman, upon announcing that the entire halftime
would be examined. A celebration of what, exactly? Didn't
Mr. Powell, the nation's chief television regulator, watch
the previous MTV halftime show?

He promises to conduct the investigation himself - a
meaningless gesture, though it may gain him an audience and
perhaps a photo op with Ms. Jackson. Mr. Powell's real
agenda here is to conduct a show trial that might counter
his well-earned reputation as a wholly owned subsidiary of
our media giants. Viacom has been a particularly happy
beneficiary of the deregulatory push of his reign, buying
up every slice of the media pie that's not nailed down.
Should CBS be found guilty of "indecency" by the feds, the
total penalty would amount to some $5 million, roughly the
price of two 30-second Super Bowl commercials. Congress's
new push to increase those fines tenfold is just as
laughable. Viacom took in $26.6 billion last year.

Not for nothing did the company's stock actually go up the
day after the Super Bowl. The halftime show was great
merchandising for both MTV and CBS, the go-to network for
"Victoria's Secret Fashion Show." Not to be left without a
piece of the action, even NBC got into the act. Citing the
Jackson flap, it decreed that two split-second shots of an
80-year-old woman's breast in an emergency room sequence in
"E.R." be excised. But the "E.R." star Noah Wyle then went
on NBC's "Today" show the morning of the broadcast to joke
about the decision, and the network-owned NBC affiliate in
New York used the banned breast as a promo for its
post-"E.R." news broadcast: "What you won't see on
tonight's episode of `E.R.' - at 11!" Thus did NBC
successfully transform its decision not to bare geriatric
flesh into a sexual tease to hype ratings. This is true
marketing genius, American-style.

What's next? Some are predicting that all the tape delays
being injected into TV events to pre-empt future wardrobe
malfunctions will be the death of spontaneous, live TV. But
the moment an awards show takes a ratings hit, this new
electronic prophylactic will be quietly abandoned by the
networks even faster than the N.F.L.'s vague threat not to
collaborate with MTV next year.

Ms. Jackson, the biggest winner in this whole escapade, is
already back on the air. Her official rehabilitation began
right after the Super Bowl, when BET started broadcasting a
10-part series of "special Black History Month" spots in
which she profiles historical luminaries like Harriet
Tubman, Paul Robeson and Sidney Poitier.

"Her tone is serious and focused, with the air and diction
of a seasoned lecturer," says the network's news release,
which also notes that "the spots feature Ms. Jackson clad
in classic black." Wasn't her Super Bowl dominatrix costume
classic black as well? Well, never underestimate the power
of synergy. BET is another wholly owned subsidiary of
Viacom.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/arts/15RICH.html?ex=1078403315&ei=1&en=537420687c577c17


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  • [Chpac-staff] NYTimes.com Article: Frank Rich: My Hero, Janet Jackson, andrew, 02/21/2004

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