We’re still failing Janet Jackson

After the 2004 Super Bowl Halftime show, the phrase “wardrobe malfunction” became a preferred punchline for late night talk show hosts and comedians alike. For Janet Jackson, the phrase was emblematic of her career’s untimely interruption. 

To this day, those infamous words — coined in Justin Timerlake’s apology for the Super Bowl incident where he exposed one of Jackson’s breasts on live TV for 9/16th of a second — are still being used in a way that denies Jackson the right to define herself on her own terms.

It’s telling that even a New York Times-produced documentary about the blatant racism and misogyny inflicted upon Jackson after the incident, uses Timberlake’s phrasing in the title. Like the apology, Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson may have good intentions. But by and large, it highlights a mistake we continue to make by letting everyone but Janet Jackson have the final word on how we talk about a life-altering, presumably violating moment that happened to her.

To be clear, Malfunction (directed by celebrated Black filmmaker Jodi Gomes) does mostly hit the right notes. It is rightfully focused less on dissecting any lingering mystery surrounding what happened, and instead looks at the unequal fallout that ensued for Jackson versus Timberlake — and what the controversy says about how Black women are treated in America.

Malfunction shows how Jackson was overwhelmingly blamed, shamed, and unofficially blacklisted out of her skyrocketing career by powerful white male broadcasting and music executives, like CBS’ Les Moonves (who was later ousted in 2018 after multiple allegations of sexual assault). It maligns Timberlake for how he benefited from the privilege of smirking and joking his way through mealy-mouthed apologies only to then, the very same year of the incident, perform and win at the Grammy Awards show that had banned Jackson.

‘Malfunction’ highlights a mistake we continue to make by letting everyone but Janet Jackson have the final word on something that happened to her.

But still, despite its best efforts, Malfunction leaves Jackson’s own perspective on the incident wholly unclear, patching one together through very brief, piecemeal interview clips.

What the documentary lacks in Jackson’s modern-day perspective, it makes up for with other talking heads. Commentators give background on Jackson’s early career to highlight how her body and sexuality as a Black woman was carefully controlled by the white and/or male figures around her. A few Black journalists and a Black-owned media company executive offer important context about her groundbreaking significance, with some giving their own illuminating perspectives on how Jackson’s career and the controversy that derailed it personally impacted them, too. The too often overlooked history of how Black women’s bodies were similarly fetishized and policed in the Antebellum South is passingly mentioned, as well. 

But on the whole, the lion’s share of the documentary’s hour-long runtime is given to various white people who were involved in the incident. They do a lot of telling on themselves, which hopefully the audience picks up on by reading between the lines of their version of events.

Former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue opines over the misogyny of Black rapper’s lyrics, then about how he suffered after his daughter shamed him for the heinous crime of letting Jackson’s nipple be exposed on TV. The white woman at MTV who oversaw wardrobe for the show blames Jackson for not explaining herself after an incident that left her in tears, describes Timberlake as the one who valiantly “stood up” to apologize first, and cries about the painful feelings of betrayal (presumably by Jackson’s team) that she must live with.

Puzzlingly, the documentary even ends with further statements put out by Timberlake and Moonves, letting them have the real final say on the woman they’re accused of mistreating.

Now, the documentary doesn’t necessarily take the side of these people. But it also doesn’t press them very hard on the injustices Jackson has faced, either. Overall, I can’t help but feel like Malfunction righteously points to issues of misogynoir, shakes its head at them, then itself denies a Black woman full autonomy over her own story. But this issue isn’t exclusive to Malfunction, or to FX’s New York Times Presents docu-series, as we already saw with Framing Britney Spears and Controlling Britney Spears.

Just like the Spears documentaries, Malfunction fails to address what should be the most fundamental questions for those seeking to set the record straight on women who were mistreated publicly: How the hell does Janet Jackson feel about this? What about Britney Spears? What kind of say did either of them get over the re-hashing of their traumatic experiences in their lives, and about who gets to tell the narrative on their behalf? Are they OK with a news organization profiting off these re-hashings, even though it also profited off of committing the very harms it’s now rewriting as a mea culpa to do better next time?

In one bafflingly glossed over moment in Malfunction, the documentary acknowledges that the New York Times ran a column in which it criticized 37-year old Jackson’s breast for looking too old. I mean…can we pause to dig into that one a little more? I can’t know if Janet Jackson is OK with Malfunction‘s release, but her absence speaks volumes.

The documentary even ends with further statements put out by Timberlake and Moonves, letting them have the real final say.

In the weeks following the fervor around Framing Britney Spears, the star posted on Instagram to make it unequivocally clear just how much personal pain and harm the documentary’s approach to telling the story caused her, writing that “I’ve always been so judged… insulted… and embarrassed by the media… and I still am till this day !!!!”

Considering the fact that, at the time, Spears was still in a conservatorship that presumably would never allow her to participate in the documentary, there was a bit more gray area to consider regarding her absence. With Jackson, however, it really makes me wonder: Who actually benefits from these re-examinations that allow audiences to walk away feeling better about ourselves? Does directing this newfound righteous indignation at Timberlake, Moonves, or whatever other easy villain put us on the right side of history? The discomfort of these unanswerable questions is something we should all sit with as we consume a re-exposure of Janet Jackson’s most publicly violating moment.

My main issues with Malfunction go beyond the documentary itself, which is often thoughtful and certainly a vital watch for anyone not already familiar with the true cost of that Super Bowl controversy. The huge questions it raises were never going to be answered here, but we need to really think them through before consuming more of real people’s lives for entertainment.