The English, man. ;-)
Feb. 6th, 2004 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foxmonkeyOh my goodness. ;-) From this article in the telegraph.co.uk:
Jordan v Janet: whose breast is best?
By Zoe Heller
The powers that be are not yet mollified. They have banned Janet from performing at the Grammys this Sunday and, for safety's sake, they have also bounced J.C. Chasez , a member of Justin Timberlake's band, *NSync, from performing at the NFL's Pro-Bowl on Sunday.
Mr Chasez doesn't even have breasts, but you can't be too careful: the Pro-Bowl half-time show will now feature "a Hawaiian extravaganza" (with the hula dancers presumably attired in turtlenecks)...
Jordan v Janet: whose breast is best?
By Zoe Heller
(Filed: 07/02/2004)
My friends tell me that Britain is fixated on the extravagant embonpoint of someone called Jordan. Well, not to be outdone in its capacity for mammary-derived excitement, America has been in a national convulsion all this week, over just one breast.
The gland in question belongs to Janet Jackson and it was exposed during a rather uninspired song-and-dance duet that Jackson and Justin Timberlake performed during the half-time show at last Sunday's Super Bowl. (The Super Bowl, which is watched by an audience of 89 million, is nominally a football game but, like most major sporting events in America, it is more accurately described as a medley of adverts and variety acts with some brief bursts of sporting activity thrown in.)
The Timberlake-Jackson number began predictably enough with the two pop stars prancing about in a generically "provocative" fashion while singing Timberlake's recent hit, Rock Your Body. Jackson wore a complicated S&M leather costume.
Timberlake wore something that looked like it had come from the Young Casuals department at M&S. Towards the end of the song - at the very moment, in fact, in which they were promising one another "Gotta have you nekkid by the end of this song" - Timberlake reached over and unstrapped one of the patent-leather cups that had hitherto been shielding Jackson's chest from view. Lo, a roll of flesh about the size and complexion of a toasted bagel came spilling out.
In the subsequent uproar, it is not entirely clear which is supposed to have been more offensive – the breast itself, or the fact that it was garnished with a gold "sunburst" nipple ring. There are some indications that the age of the breast may have been the decisively subversive factor.
Various commentators have remarked on Janet Jackson's advanced years – she is 37 – and suggested that she is no longer sufficiently pulchritudinous for such candour. (Had it been a breast of more Jordan-like juiciness, it might have passed muster, but as a breast d'un certain age, it was automatically sad and disgusting.)
At any rate, America is officially Freaked Out. Every newspaper in the country has run editorials and columns deploring the vileness of modern youth/pop culture/the Jackson family/nipple rings. CBS, the network that broadcasts the Super Bowl, is in disgrace. MTV, the cable network that produced the half-time show, is in disgrace.
The Federal Communications Commission has received 200,000 complaints and Michael Powell, the head of the commission, who has condemned the incident as "a classless, crass and deplorable stunt", is promising a thorough investigation. The President of the United States himself was canvassed for his opinion on the matter, but it seems that he took the precaution of falling asleep in front of the telly on Sunday, before the breast could spring its attack on his tender sensibilities.
Initially, Jackson and Timberlake defended themselves against the hoo-ha by claiming there had been a "wardrobe malfunction" (a phrase that looks set to become a satirical catchphrase rivalling "I did not have sexual relations with that woman").
Then, in a videotaped apology, Jackson admitted that the exposure had been planned but that she had never intended to cause offence. Timberlake, meanwhile, has continued to insist, ungallantly, that when Jackson's breast emerged from its hidey-hole, he was "shocked and appalled… completely embarrassed".
The powers that be are not yet mollified. They have banned Janet from performing at the Grammys this Sunday and, for safety's sake, they have also bounced J.C. Chasez , a member of Justin Timberlake's band, *NSync, from performing at the NFL's Pro-Bowl on Sunday.
Mr Chasez doesn't even have breasts, but you can't be too careful: the Pro-Bowl half-time show will now feature "a Hawaiian extravaganza" (with the hula dancers presumably attired in turtlenecks). Breasts are now so much the gland non grata that NBC has decided to excise a scene from this week's episode of ER in which an 80-year-old woman, who is having a heart attack, has her shirt removed for resuscitation.
Meanwhile, it should be noted, Janet's reviled bosom has become the most popularly requested item on all internet search engines.
I am genuinely bemused, I must say, by the sexual and moral frenzy that the Super Bowl breast has caused. In a country where porn is a multibillion-dollar industry, where you cannot open your email without receiving invitations to grow your member, watch Paris Hilton fellating her boyfriend or see "horny girls" disporting with farm animals, this outrage seems a little quaint.
The point, I am told, is that Jackson's breast was thrust upon the viewing public during a daytime, family show. Children were exposed to it! But if it's the kiddies we are worried about, why wasn't there a fuss about the heavily sexualised choreography in Jackson and Timberlake's performance? How is a common-or-garden bosom – even a pierced one – more threatening to childhood innocence than the energetic simulation of rear-entry intercourse?
Thirty years ago, Philip Roth wrote a novella called The Breast, in which an English professor awakes one morning to find himself transformed into a 115lb bosom. At one time, Roth toyed with writing a sequel in which the professor – now more or less reconciled to his condition – would turn into a celebrity breast-at-large, touring the United States in a specially customised, padded van and appearing on late-night talk shows.
He never did write that sequel, but no doubt Roth, who once famously questioned the ability of writers to keep up with the crazy fictionality of American life, will have been smiling this week, as America enacted its great bosom tizzy. After all, how long can it be before Jackson's breast appears on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno? Before the breast is offered its own recording contract? Before it succumbs to pressure and agrees to tell its own story in a million-dollar memoir?
Jordan v Janet: whose breast is best?
By Zoe Heller
The powers that be are not yet mollified. They have banned Janet from performing at the Grammys this Sunday and, for safety's sake, they have also bounced J.C. Chasez , a member of Justin Timberlake's band, *NSync, from performing at the NFL's Pro-Bowl on Sunday.
Mr Chasez doesn't even have breasts, but you can't be too careful: the Pro-Bowl half-time show will now feature "a Hawaiian extravaganza" (with the hula dancers presumably attired in turtlenecks)...
Jordan v Janet: whose breast is best?
By Zoe Heller
(Filed: 07/02/2004)
My friends tell me that Britain is fixated on the extravagant embonpoint of someone called Jordan. Well, not to be outdone in its capacity for mammary-derived excitement, America has been in a national convulsion all this week, over just one breast.
The gland in question belongs to Janet Jackson and it was exposed during a rather uninspired song-and-dance duet that Jackson and Justin Timberlake performed during the half-time show at last Sunday's Super Bowl. (The Super Bowl, which is watched by an audience of 89 million, is nominally a football game but, like most major sporting events in America, it is more accurately described as a medley of adverts and variety acts with some brief bursts of sporting activity thrown in.)
The Timberlake-Jackson number began predictably enough with the two pop stars prancing about in a generically "provocative" fashion while singing Timberlake's recent hit, Rock Your Body. Jackson wore a complicated S&M leather costume.
Timberlake wore something that looked like it had come from the Young Casuals department at M&S. Towards the end of the song - at the very moment, in fact, in which they were promising one another "Gotta have you nekkid by the end of this song" - Timberlake reached over and unstrapped one of the patent-leather cups that had hitherto been shielding Jackson's chest from view. Lo, a roll of flesh about the size and complexion of a toasted bagel came spilling out.
In the subsequent uproar, it is not entirely clear which is supposed to have been more offensive – the breast itself, or the fact that it was garnished with a gold "sunburst" nipple ring. There are some indications that the age of the breast may have been the decisively subversive factor.
Various commentators have remarked on Janet Jackson's advanced years – she is 37 – and suggested that she is no longer sufficiently pulchritudinous for such candour. (Had it been a breast of more Jordan-like juiciness, it might have passed muster, but as a breast d'un certain age, it was automatically sad and disgusting.)
At any rate, America is officially Freaked Out. Every newspaper in the country has run editorials and columns deploring the vileness of modern youth/pop culture/the Jackson family/nipple rings. CBS, the network that broadcasts the Super Bowl, is in disgrace. MTV, the cable network that produced the half-time show, is in disgrace.
The Federal Communications Commission has received 200,000 complaints and Michael Powell, the head of the commission, who has condemned the incident as "a classless, crass and deplorable stunt", is promising a thorough investigation. The President of the United States himself was canvassed for his opinion on the matter, but it seems that he took the precaution of falling asleep in front of the telly on Sunday, before the breast could spring its attack on his tender sensibilities.
Initially, Jackson and Timberlake defended themselves against the hoo-ha by claiming there had been a "wardrobe malfunction" (a phrase that looks set to become a satirical catchphrase rivalling "I did not have sexual relations with that woman").
Then, in a videotaped apology, Jackson admitted that the exposure had been planned but that she had never intended to cause offence. Timberlake, meanwhile, has continued to insist, ungallantly, that when Jackson's breast emerged from its hidey-hole, he was "shocked and appalled… completely embarrassed".
The powers that be are not yet mollified. They have banned Janet from performing at the Grammys this Sunday and, for safety's sake, they have also bounced J.C. Chasez , a member of Justin Timberlake's band, *NSync, from performing at the NFL's Pro-Bowl on Sunday.
Mr Chasez doesn't even have breasts, but you can't be too careful: the Pro-Bowl half-time show will now feature "a Hawaiian extravaganza" (with the hula dancers presumably attired in turtlenecks). Breasts are now so much the gland non grata that NBC has decided to excise a scene from this week's episode of ER in which an 80-year-old woman, who is having a heart attack, has her shirt removed for resuscitation.
Meanwhile, it should be noted, Janet's reviled bosom has become the most popularly requested item on all internet search engines.
I am genuinely bemused, I must say, by the sexual and moral frenzy that the Super Bowl breast has caused. In a country where porn is a multibillion-dollar industry, where you cannot open your email without receiving invitations to grow your member, watch Paris Hilton fellating her boyfriend or see "horny girls" disporting with farm animals, this outrage seems a little quaint.
The point, I am told, is that Jackson's breast was thrust upon the viewing public during a daytime, family show. Children were exposed to it! But if it's the kiddies we are worried about, why wasn't there a fuss about the heavily sexualised choreography in Jackson and Timberlake's performance? How is a common-or-garden bosom – even a pierced one – more threatening to childhood innocence than the energetic simulation of rear-entry intercourse?
Thirty years ago, Philip Roth wrote a novella called The Breast, in which an English professor awakes one morning to find himself transformed into a 115lb bosom. At one time, Roth toyed with writing a sequel in which the professor – now more or less reconciled to his condition – would turn into a celebrity breast-at-large, touring the United States in a specially customised, padded van and appearing on late-night talk shows.
He never did write that sequel, but no doubt Roth, who once famously questioned the ability of writers to keep up with the crazy fictionality of American life, will have been smiling this week, as America enacted its great bosom tizzy. After all, how long can it be before Jackson's breast appears on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno? Before the breast is offered its own recording contract? Before it succumbs to pressure and agrees to tell its own story in a million-dollar memoir?
