Well, the Super Bowl has come and gone but it seemed as though the buzz worthy topic this past weekend was not whether Tom Brady could score another Super Bowl win, but rather what would happen during this year’s Pepsi Halftime show, one that happened to be headlined by the one and only Justin Timberlake. Now, the last time Justin Timberlake performed during the Super Bowl was in 2004 when he performed his hit “Rock your body” with Janet Jackson, a performance that went down in pop culture history and brought the phrase “wardrobe malfunction” into popular vernacular. During his the last bit of the song, a moment that is still debated among conspiracy theorist everywhere, Justin pulls off a bit of Janet’s bustier and “accidentally” reveals her seemingly bare breast. Coined “Nipplegate”, the scandal set off a domino effect that would be evident even fourteen years later while simultaneously impacting the careers of both Timberlake and Jackson. I was reading an article about the controversy and thought it was a really interesting take on the scandal. It makes a really interesting observation about the YouTube age in relation to the scandal as it produced one of the first known viral videos thus sparking the interest in creating a platform that made sharing such videos easier for the public. Was this the event that paved the way for other viral events such as Kim Kardashian’s sex tape or Miley Cyrus’s twerking during the VMAs?
The article also talked about the event’s repercussions regarding the careers of Jackson and Timberlake. One of the biggest complaints of the scandal is that Janet Jackson took all the blame for the event, whereas Justin Timberlake took almost none. His career skyrocketed after the event, selling hit album after album and becoming a Grammy winning recording artist who is one of the music industry’s most prized participants. Janet’s career certainly seemed to fade and she never enjoyed the amount of success she had in previous years. There is plenty of debate as to what really happened and whose fault it was that the “wardrobe malfunction” occurred, but the ways in which the blame seems to skate over Timberlake and fall on Jackson is curious. I wonder how much gender played a role in the distribution of blame, or rather was it a combination of previously established star power in relation to gender? I’m not sure what to make of it all but it seemed like it was an interesting topic to bring up in relation to this class. (I've posted the link to the article below)
http://variety.com/2018/music/news/remembering-justin-timberlake-janet-super-bowl-nipplegate-1202683090/
No comments:
Post a Comment