Toronto Star article, Feb 7, 2004
(This article ftom the Feb 7 Toronto Star has an interesting perspective on the Janet furor).
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The bawdy politic
Not since Elvis's crotch has a body part been so revealing about our neighbour's psyche.
Why is America freaking out?
PETER GODDARD
VISUAL ARTS CRITIC
Forget Mars. The world saw America's final frontier last week — the bare breast.
Days of outrage continue unabated following Sunday's unexpected appearance of Janet Jackson's bejewelled nipple at a Super Bowl whose winners get a ring about the size of the sunburst-shaped breast ornament.
Clearly some sort of line has been crossed.
Not since Elvis's crotch was banned from view during his Ed Sullivan show appearance Sept.9, 1956, has a body part revealed something central to the American psyche — as well as to the psyche of all those who fret that the America psyche is programmed by right-wing nutbars, talk show cranks and a born-again presidency bent on making the world safe for Taco Bell.
Clearly America is jittery enough these days — a Pittsburgh Grade 2 girl was suspended earlier this week for using the world "hell" — without having the psychic pressures ratcheted up on the sexual front.
But this is precisely what's happening as the country hurtles head first into a defining Presidential campaign knowing that the mostly likely Democratic candidate, John Kerry, comes from a state, Massachusetts, which has just granted full rights for gay couples to marry.
What started with the Super Bowl could roar to a climax for the most truly Wagnerian presidential election ever, with the Republican forces of war and death duking it out with the Democratic forces of peace, protest and bare breasts.
The overture has begun, loudly. Already surpassing Sept. 11 proportions as the story that acquired the most "hits" in the history of the Internet, the Jackson-inspired tumult reveals far more than Jackson ever could about how sex remains the great counter-insurgency force in America, feared profoundly by a society wanting things battened down, in control and thoroughly ship-shape.
And remember this chatter is spreading across the Internet, where porn sites outnumber all others.
Basically, the reactions boil down to:
1) What an outrage! (This from older constituents, many Southerners, Republicans, the military, family, religious and conservative organizations, Justin Timberlake's parents, Timberlake's offended squeeze (Cameron Diaz), and, yes, Spike Lee who declared it was "a decline in artistry" — like, as if he'd seen Gypsy Rose Lee in her prime;
2) What outrage? (Everyone else.)
Actually, it's not the sexuality that's so bothersome but sex's ability to be subversive. With sex, things aren't under control — particular if it's really good. Sex signifies anarchy, not a trait appreciated by the culture of football, a sport famous for its control-freaks, flag-waving patriotism and its loved "throw-the-long bomb" military outbursts. What USA Today calls "a beloved annual sporting event seen by millions of families" is in fact stylized warfare with a halftime show. (Or maybe not, anymore.)
In truth, there's nothing really new here when it comes to the sexual aftershocks.
The Victorian moral majority was shocked, shocked, I tell you, by the sexual innuendo coming out the end of Louis Armstrong's up-raised trumpet in the '20s, and by the waggling fannies flaunted by Jazz Age shimmy-shakers, and when Clark Gable stripped to his T-shirt in It Happened One Night where, yes, you could almost see a nipple. (Okay, it's a guy's nipple. But this came out in 1934, remember. The same effect was achieved by Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront.)
The cycle continued. North American society looked to be nicely screwed down tightly following World War II, led by crewcuts ready to fight the Cold War forever until they started taking it off in Playboy, in naughty French movies and in those filthy dirty rock `n' roll lyrics where, a young vixen strutted her stuff in Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen," in her "tight dresses and lipstick."
For her part, an apologetic Jackson claims it was all an accident. This is not real problem. Of all people, she should have been shown more brand awareness. Had the glittery fixture on her bosom borne the logo of the National Football League — and been available on the NFL's Web site instead of eBay where it turned up only hours later in the day — Paul Taglibue might not have demanded that next year's half-time show have entertainment "of a far more appropriate quality."
He's thinking what, here? Dwarf-hurling?
Who can imagine what NFL commissioner has in mind for a sport where vastly over-muscled sweaty men pound each other senseless in an orgy of crotch-grabbing, butt-slapping, spit spewing and face-mask clutching. (And these are only the practices that can be mentioned in a family newspaper.)
For Taglibue — and other offended parties such as advertisers like PepsiCo, CBS, the broadcasters and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the American media regulatory commission — the referees should have given Timberlake 10 yards for holding, given Jackson some batons to twirl and let it go at that.
But because of all the fuss, the most famous mammary in recent memory received more instant hits on the Internet, according to Google, than George W. Bush's budget proposal — a boob-related thing in its own way, one supposes.
For Americans, issues of race and sex are involved here. Angry e-mailers are clogging cyberspace with details about Jackson's age — she's 37 — her sexuality and "wanton" behaviour. To them, Jackson had this planned after realizing she was getting out-manoeuvred on the shock front by elder brother, Michael.
And politics are not far behind. Reactions to Jackson have shown a divide in America as deep as the one revealed by Howard Dean's attack on Bush's Iraq policy.
Dean, by the way, thinks the FCC is "silly about investigating this." He's got a point. In wanting to launch "an immediate investigation," FCC chairman Michael Powell sure makes it sound if the incident may warrant review under the Patriot Act. Then again, his dad is Secretary of State, Colin Powell. This could evolve into a family affair.
But this instant, emotional knee-jerk reaction could have been expected to vaporize in a day or two.
But no. And it's the aggrieved parties are keeping it going. CBS, terrified that boob-baring mania might sweep across tomorrow's Grammy Awards, has banned Jackson. It has also instituted a tape-delay procedure, although vetting the Grammys for rebellion is like worrying about a good body check during an afternoon of lawn bowling in Rosedale.
But what if this virus can be transferred across corporations? This is ABC's horror scenario. The network has instituted its own five-second tape delay for the telecast of the revered Academy Awards Feb.29 lest Meryl Streep attempt to pull a Jackson.
Now, if this very same tape delay were to bleep out an anti-government remark from the likes of a Michael Moore, the father and son Powell tag-team match would be a reality faster than you can say "hanging chads in Dade County."
The PepsiCo threatens to pull out of next year's Super Bowl unless it receives assurances such an outrage won't be repeated.
Envy, not nudity, seems to be the advertiser's problem. Pepsi's executives were disappointed that all their "quality work has been over-shadowed" by the evident quality work that went into displaying Jackson's bosom.
Papers worldwide have weighed in, as have talk show hosts, and editorialists.
"The Super Bowl is a time for stars and stripes, not stars that strip," opined The Courier-Mail in Brisbane, Australia. "Why then invite a line-up of entertainers who make their living singing about sex and dancing like demons?"
"If the French need another example of their moral superiority over their Victorian American allies, this should just about do it," complained Peter Brown, a Bowl-watcher in San Jose Cal. to the San Jose Mercury News.
Having seen a still photo of the offending moment for about the 50th time, I suddenly realized I'd seen something very much like this offending image before, in a 400-year-old El Greco painting called The Holy Family With Saint Anne (1600-1610).
The painting shares the same three elements as the frozen TV image: a bare breast (Mary's breast in pretty much the same place in the composition as Jackson's), the woman's face in a state of rapture; and a man positioned to the right of the image — on the woman's left — but clearly part of the intimate scene.
Of course, the bared breast of a buxom, mature young woman struck a wondrous human response among those who saw El Greco's painting, not the seething cries for retribution we hear today.
What heathens they were back then.
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This is the El Greco referred to in the article