Lessons from the Boob Tube

Nearly two full weeks have passed since Justin Timberlake “accidentally” ripped off part of Janet Jackson’s top and exposed her right breast during the Super Bowl halftime show. Despite the hysterical media coverage that ensued, the event itself was not much of a spectacle—among other things, the considerable distance between TV camera and breast prevented even the most attentive of viewers from glimpsing anything much of interest. For a stunt that supposedly degraded a nation and marked the first step in the collapse of western civilization, there really wasn’t a whole lot to see.

This as much as anything explains why the momentary mammary display immediately became the most TiVo’d event in television history—you had to watch it and re-watch it just to see what had actually happened. Yet even more frustrating than the limited visibility was the subsequent failure of TV executives and conservative critics to identify the most disturbing element of the performance: its presentation, as entertainment, of an act of sexual violence. Ripping off Jackson’s bra was ultimately the decision of just one person—Timberlake—and the public shaming of Jackson that followed was misguided, sexist and undoubtedly the single most regrettable aspect of the entire fiasco.

The actual performance, which combined two of Jackson’s biggest hits and one of Timberlake’s most recent, could have been groundbreaking. Barely a generation has passed since the white singer Petula Clarke insisted on touching the arm of black musician Harry Belafonte during a duet on her 1968 NBC special. Despite pressure to cut the segment in “deference” to (racist) Southern viewers, NBC exercised the good judgment to leave the duet in.

In its own way, the Jackson-Timberlake performance might have continued this tradition as a confident interracial performance, and one that further tweaked pop cultural norms by asking its audience to accept the pairing of a younger man with a significantly older woman. At last year’s MTV Video Music Awards, Chris Rock justifiably mocked Timberlake’s use of “black” fashion and speech to build musical credibility; in a twist, now it was the 37-year-old Jackson who was using her performance with the 22 year old to make herself cool by association. And unlike Madonna, who dressed as a man and handed over her signature song to Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera at last year’s MTV Awards, Jackson was still insisting, even in her late 30s, that she be taken seriously as a sex symbol, worthy of the attention of men young enough to be in college.

The Great Breast Debacle immediately evaporated any potential interest in this aspect of the performance. Viewers and TV executives were offended by the flashing, but their obsessive focus on Jackson’s sun-shaped “nipple shield” completely missed—forgive me, please—the point. More problematic than the distant, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it exposure was the action which caused it: Timberlake’s violent ripping-away of Jackson’s clothing. Whether or not he meant to leave behind Jackson’s bright red bustier, as he later claimed, is not important. What matters is that the lingering image of the performance—indeed, the entire halftime show—was supposed to be that of a man committing a sexually transgression against a woman.

The subsequent outcry against Jackson compounded the misogynistic nature of the incident, with Jackson disproportionately blamed even as Timberlake was allowed to move on almost immediately. Public opinion deemed Timberlake’s cursory initial apology sufficient; Jackson was forced to issue repeated statements of regret, first in print and later in a plaintive televised version. She was barred from last Sunday’s Grammy Awards; he performed with jazz legend Arturo Sandoval. “Saturday Night Live” compared Jackson to her brother Michael, an accused pedophile; Timberlake, who tore off her clothing, was portrayed in the skit as the naive victim.

Such a response could happen only in a society even less progressive on matters of sexuality than it is on matters of race. Popular entertainment has served literally and figuratively as a key theater of the American culture wars, and live musical performances remain at least as politically significant as they were in 1968. More ink was spilled covering last summer’s Spears-Madonna kiss than the entire Democratic presidential race up to that point. This was, in many ways, perfectly understandable: despite Madonna’s false conflation of middle age and the loss of femininity, the performance was a clever and timely send-up of the outdated “something borrowed, something blue” wedding clichés that even the Democratic nominees have been too cowardly to dismiss as part of a repressed, discriminatory past.

Whether legally sanctioned TV toplessness like Jackson’s comes before or after universal marriage rights is a matter for the networks and Congress to decide. The political necessity of the latter far outweighs the former, as the Massachusetts Supreme Court presciently ruled last week (but as Gov. W. Mitt Romney foolishly failed to recognize this week). Thank heavens the court isn’t comprised of CBS executives and conservative culture critics, whose regressive politics blame the woman and exonerate the man after the most widely watched sexual assault reenactment in the history of mass entertainment.