The New York Times Presents Framing Britney Spears series on Hulu was so popular and eye opening that it created a public outcry to have Britney released from her conservatorship of 13 years. The New York Times Presents will next tackle Janet Jackson’s costume malfunction at the Super Bowl in 2004 and the cultural fallout from that. Hulu’s Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson will have interviews from Janet’s team to the production team working behind the scenes and tackle the misogynoir that allowed Justin Timberlake to walk away from that performance unscathed while Janet’s career took a nosedive. The docuseries will begin airing November 19. Janet has her own documentary coming out in January 2022 that will be aired on Lifetime and A&E. Below are a few more details via E! Online:
[From E! Online]”Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson” will include “rare footage and interviews” with multiple people who were “at the controls that night in Houston” when co-performer Justin Timberlake pulled off Jackson’s leather bustier to reveal her breast on national television.
According to a press release from the networks, the show will provide insight from music titans, members of the Jackson family and NFL execs in order “to reconstruct an incident that shook the country and explain how it shaped culture in the decades to follow.”
The New York Times will ultimately examine “the racial and cultural currents that collided on the Super Bowl stage,” documenting how the Super Bowl show impacted Jackson’s career.
I am going to keep it a buck here, I feel like Justin Timberlake’s non apology earlier this year is absolute bullsh*t. He has said other things about it, but none were adequate. I would honestly love to see Janet’s account of this incident. I am not sure how I feel about Hulu rushing to get this docuseries out before Janet’s documentary in January. To be fair it may not have been done purposely. I feel we (the public) owe Janet an apology for what she has gone through because of that wardrobe malfunction that was completely out of her control. The way Janet was blacklisted afterwards was overkill but I wasn’t surprised by it. I will watch the Hulu series because I want to see the secondhand accounts of what went down but I also want to see Janet’s documentary to understand where she was mentally and emotionally after the incident. I hope the NYT series is well done because Janet deserves to be treated with compassion and respect. I may need to restart my Hulu membership for this docuseries but I will wait until a trailer comes out before I make a decision.
The Lifetime documentary trailer, which we’ve seen before.
Photos credit: Avalon.red and John Shearer/Idols
The horrible backlash and her black listing aside,i had rewatched that actual moment a dozen times. Their reaction was very telling,I mean she was so shocked and he just looked dumbfounded. So i was never sure if it was planned or it was his improve and he didnt expect the whole fabric to fall.
For anyone who still thinks Janet wanted to flash the world, the MTV producer who was on charge of cameras for the performance came out and explained the whole thing. It was an accident caused by that Timberlake person messing up the timing. If CB will allow the link, you can watch the producer’s explanation hete: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yr3HgqdzqUc
And on a related note, Les Moonves is vile for what he did to Janet’s career. Absolutely vile.
He was unprepared, did not give the production, Janet or the NFL the time they needed to get a great performance, and he pulled too hard. Too hard & too early, sounds like Classic Timbo.
Not defending JT. He’s scum
But from my view, the whole thing should have come down to the costume designer. They are the ones that f**ked up.
The last line of JT’s song says “I’ll have you naked by the end of this song”. The performance part was for him to pull at the black leather cup that appears to be held on by big metal snaps, and expose a red “bra”.
But ultimately, rather than Janet just wearing a red lacy bra underneath the black outfit, the costume designer had sewn a red lace fabric to the main black piece, and fastened the detachable black cup to it. However for both pieces to come off like that, it would make sense that the costume designer had sewn the red lace piece to the black cup (unintentionally or not).
If the costume designer designed an outfit to allow for a real red bra to be worn underneath the detachable pieces, it would have saved itself from a malfunction such as this.
In the end, I’m excited for this docu, and can’t wait to see how it plays out.
I hope they highlight the fact that after that Superbowl, every halftime show act for, I lost track of how many years, was a boring, safe old relic and always male. I think the Blackeyed Peas might have been the first band after Janet to finally have a woman on the stage.
Timberlake solidified his status as a total ass when he left her hanging out to dry.
Justin has a very long history of throwing women in front of the bus to save his own ass. He has done it with Britney and the woman he was fondling in New Orleans. I can not stand him and I hope this documentary gets Janet some long-overdue social justice
I’m predicting that Justin will issue another apology when this documentary comes out.
While also managing to plug his latest song or whatever he happens to be promoting at the time. Like when Mario Batali apologized for his abusive behavior, and included a recipe for cinnamon rolls at the end.
This is so weird-I was just thinking about this incident this morning!
It’s one of those stream of consciousness things where I heard a Maroon Five song,thought of Adam Levine and his super bowl performance which was not so great IMO and how he took off his shirt and then I immediately thought of the fiasco that was Janet Jackson’s nipple,and how she took so much flack and JT has been unscathed and ever more successful and still a douche.
I can’t believe I came here and there is a story about this,lol maybe I’ll play the lottery today!
I will watch the documentary.
I never understood what the point was anyway. What if there was no “wardrobe malfunction”, theatrically speaking what was the point of him pulling at her bodice? Was it to show her heart? Like what was the point? It seemed too purposeful.
I watched it live and never saw it again but I remember vividly.
Although the backlash against Janet was insanely overblown and Justin was an a** about it, I too didn’t/don’t get what was suppose to happen when he ripped off that material. Like, what was the point then?? I guess we’ll see in the doc.
I will probably watch both documentaries.
Justin Timberlake is probably not feeling so hot today!
I love Janet and I’m still so ticked about this. And I hope Les Moonves gets dragged too. I’ll watch both docs.
Great minds Jess.
I too am hoping they tackle Les Moonves as well. And also how Timberdouche was all up in Moonves craw after the fact.
His outrage about what Janet ‘did’ definitely didn’t turn out to prove that he was a good, moral person.
Good. She got shafted.
We started the year with an insurrection and ending the year with a documentary on the Great Nipple Slip-Gate. Seems about right.
Yes! Justice for Janet!!
I never actually saw it, but I got the idea that the breast exposure was planned and that both Justin and Janet knew about it. What I didn’t understand was 1) why it was such a big, f-cking deal that the whole country had a conniption about it and 2) how Justin Timberlake, who I believed was in on it, could just throw her to the wind to deal with by herself.
I remember at the time, Diddy made a comment to his kids, like, you just saw the breast of a beautiful woman. Like, no big deal. I still don’t understand how it blew up like it did and impacted Janet’s career. I know that racism and sexism play a big role. I’ll wait for Janet’s take on all this. She should have had no major repercussions for this. She should have been allowed to say something like, “My bad. It was a misjudgment. I’m sorry it happened” and just gone on with her career. The blacklisting I just don’t understand, but I’m very interested in what she has to say.