I'm shocked at what I'm seeing on my TV these days. However, unlike the moral minority, my problem isn't with Janet Jackson showing her right tit, it's with the amount of air-time given to covering how "shocked and disgusted" everyone is.
It was the lead story on Monday night's news. There were interviews with people from the FCC, and Denver mothers. People were talking, on camera, about how distraught and offended they were by it.
To remind you, this was the brief showing of one female breast. It wasn't even a pair. It was also shown, due to (and I can't believe I'd ever quote Justin Timberlake), "a wardrobe malfunction" - the implication being that it was not a planned event.
Frankly, even if it was a planned event, it was a lame one. The irony of the situation of course, is that people being so very up-in-arms about the whole thing, is giving it a hundred times as much air-time as was originally intended. I bet Janet Jackson's publicist is laughing his or her arse off. There is, after all, no such thing as bad publicity. Who knows, it might even distract the networks away from covering the trials, tribulations and oddities of her brother Michael?
By the way, you can see uncensored pictures of the event on the no doubt morally bankrupt heathen godless sinners website: BBC News. I'm only linking to this out of sheer bloody-mindedness against the idiots going on about how awful it all was, and NOT for any entertainment purpose! The full story is here.
Whilst I realise this nation was founded by Puritans, I really thought it had moved on in the past couple of hundred years, and briefly showing a single part of a naked human body would not cause so many people, so much upset.
I am aware that children will have been watching, but they're also watching the constant torrent of violence and killing on television, shown daily. Surely, even the most Christian of Americans would agree that that does more harm to the moral fibre (or fiber) of young people, than a brief glimpse of a nipple? Maybe that's just my crazy, bohemian European approach to life?
Then again, maybe it's because I know that more people were killed or injured by bullets and guns last year, than by breasts.
Posted by Max at February 03, 2004 03:00 AM | TrackbackYes, that's a real cultural divide.
What's really appealing is that it would have been be apparently ok for her to perform in a leather S/M outfit a show I can imagine quite hot, but not to show half a breast ? It would have been ok to have her bustier ripped off on stage, as long as she kept her bra ? And she had to hide her nipple with some sort of ninja star ? (caution, those breasts can hurt you...)
I mean, and that's an honest question, what's so taboo with nipples ? As far as I know children use to suck nipples...
my objection to the event isn't a religious or moral one, it's a feminist one. i simply wouldn't want my children to grow up thinking that it's ok to use women's bodies as spectacle, entertainment. but if it was an "accident" (which i doubt it was), then whatever.
Posted by: melanie on February 3, 2004 09:04 AMI take your point Melanie. Even if this was (as it almost certainly was) a cynical marketing exercise, plus a chance for another Jackson to take the public spotlight off Michael, it could possibly be seen as saying it's OK to molest women. Then again, as Ms Jackson was no doubt a part of the performance, she was in control of what happened to her on stage.
Posted by: Max on February 4, 2004 01:05 AMEveryone's so up in arms about the tit, but I couldn't give a rat's (or anyone else's) ass abou tit.
The whole halftime show sucked ass. Crotch-grabbing, bad lip-synching, acts that looked torn from the early 1990s. I didn't even notice the tit thing. I was too busy being disgusted by the so-called acts.
Posted by: Jodi on February 4, 2004 01:51 PM