Janet Jackson Appreciation Thread

[Soaplovers]

She was pushed into music in her teens when she had cultivated a following from her time on Good Tims, Different Strokes, and Fame.

I wish she could summon the 19 year old of Control back...she's still within Janet. 

She needs to do music on terms and not let anyone dictate what she needs to do.

 

[will81]

I don't agree with this. Even Janet trashed Madonna about being too sexual in 93/94. Madonna was ripped apart during the sex book era. In fact she was called a slut and whore and the queen of sleaze right from the start. Her biggest gripe with Janet/Whitney/Mariah was that they played it safe and they were being rewarded for being "good girls" and she was being punished for being the "slut". I think that is why there has always been friction between her and other women in the industry. In 1985 she said she reached out to Cyndi Lauper and was hurt when she wanted nothing to do with her, The Go Go's and other women in the field all turned their back on her in 84/85 and called her "a big step back for women". Whitney said she would kill her daughter if she turned out like Madonna. Janet said she was pathetic for being so overly sexual. 

Hell she even got ripped for showing her belly button.

She was famously on the cover of the New York Post with the headline "WHAT A TRAMP" No one defended her or called the paper out for it. 

Prince was extremely sexual in his act and never copped what she did. Yes there is a racist component, but it is the exact opposite. I think white conservative America expected what they saw as hedonism and amoral behaviour from people of colour, as they always saw those artists as "savages" Look at Jean-Michel Basquiat- always being described as primal/savage/primitive. White conservatives were outraged that a white mid western girl was in any way similar. 

The big difference is Madonna published a book bound in mylar and only available to over 18's in a store and Janet had her moment (staged or not) during a family broadcast that attracts a ton of conservatives. It was never going to turn out well and it isn't the same. 

But Madonna too was blacklisted after she was critical of Bush and the Iraq war. Her career basically ended in the US after that. Radio wouldn't touch. When Hung Up came out and went #1 everywhere around the world except the US, Billboard realised radio wouldn't play the track - they asked a bunch of programmers why - they called her euro trash and un-American. 

[DramatistDreamer]

Why has this descended into a Madonna vs. Janet in a thread that was discussing the documentary? And this feels like this has happened before?

[te.]

The biggest issue with the Superbowl hoopla was the fact that Clear Channel is involved with it and it majorly pissed them off, so she pretty much got instantly blacklisted on major radio stations. When the dust started to settle a bit there was also the age factor that was starting to creep in - quite simply no hits in a while + over 40 = radio isn't going to play you.

[DramatistDreamer]

So you're saying you basically believe that Janet orchestrated the breast flash the way Madonna planned her book launch? I just want to be clear on what you're saying.

[will81]

I am not trying to vs. I was just pointing out that M hasn't had it easy, the treatment for both has been more misogyny than racist. No women in the business has had it easy. Janet didn't deserve what she got and neither did Madonna. 

[BetterForgotten]

Janet's treatment post-Super Bowl was definitely equal parts racism and sexism coming together in one big toxic mix. 

[will81]

Not sure, never have been sure, though I don't think it matters if she did or not, I was not making any definitive statement about it. Even if she did - the punishment was not deserved. She didn't show her nipple, it was covered up, I don't get why it was ever an issue, except that conservatives were always like this. They could only punish Madonna so much for publishing a book that minors couldn't get their hands on, but they could accuse Janet of corrupting the youth of America. It was purantism

 

Yeah I agree. I think I was more annoyed that people seem to think M was just having some great old time selling sex and being rewarded all these years and it wasn't like that at all. 

Edited January 31, 2022 by will81

[DramatistDreamer]

Not wanting to get into comparisons, but there is a brutal history of both hypersexualization of Black girls and women, while simultaneously punishing Black women who do have the temerity to take ownership of their own sexuality in a way that does not happen with other women.

It just doesn't.

So, you can have something as a blink and you miss it moment of a breast that hardly anyone even saw until the media decided to replay the instance over and over incur the wrath of a head of a network for at least a full decade. 

Also, those who watched the documentary know that the Superbowl was not the only incident of a corporation taking putative measures for something associated with the actions of someone else. Up thread, I mentioned what happened with Coca-Cola.

But I do think the more mainstream success one has the more one is able to get away with. In that case, Janet did not have that prolonged amount of mainstream success. I don't know what Black women has that. Beyonce? Eventually "they" came for her too by the time of  Formation. Things have changed since then and fortunately, Beyonce could not have cared less.  

And feminism within the U.S. has historically left out, diminished or flat out ignored the struggles of Black women.

Edited January 31, 2022 by DramatistDreamer

[will81]

Absolutely agree. I don't want to compare either - I had no intention of minimising the racism, even if that is how it came across. 

[Khan]

True.  All true.

Again.  Totally true.

[Vee]

Janet did well with "Made For Now" and that's what spurred a bit of a resurgence beyond the more loyal audience. It wasn't her umpteenth song about fùcking and it wasn't something we'd all heard before from her. I don't think she's going to turn back into 90s Janet the hitmaker but I do think she can continue to build off the recent energy and appreciation and put out at least one more pretty solid album. I liked some of Unbreakable more than anything since the '90s - there were a fair amount of hit singles in the 2000s but I didn't think the overall albums worked.

Madonna def went through it in the mid-90s and there was a time I thought she had gone too far for people and was done. Evita and Ray of Light were her massive comeback. But Janet has never had a comeback of that magnitude or global impact - Madonna went from being persona non grata for awhile to being the biggest star on the planet again; that's never happened for Janet. And nothing Madonna has experienced since (including any anti-Bush critique in the 2000s, which lots of artists did at the time and the Dixie Chicks got way, way more heat than her) is remotely comparable to how much Janet fell off in the same period with the media, the public and critically. American Life didn't work because it was a bad album, and Confessions was a hit. Janet would've killed for either of those sales or attention, and she didn't get it because there is a different standard for her than for Madonna.

She should absolutely work with both.

Edited February 1, 2022 by Vee

[will81]

Damita Jo still went platinum in the US which is what Confessions did in 2005, 20 Y.O went Gold in the US and so did Hard Candy in 2008.

I think the difference is Janet was still in her prime (even though I didn't like her music) She should have sold more. At least for those two albums and especially in the US.

I think the other major difference was Les Moonves and the corporations that basically wanted to bury Janet, and that is where the racism did come in. I don't think Madonna would have suffered in that way. She was blacklisted from radio but then so were the Dixie Chics - but that was political conservatism and not race related in anyway. 

Janet was punished in an extreme way - she should have never been punished at all, she did nothing wrong (accident or not)

I guess what I am saying is M was punished for the things she did - that doesn't negate the racism, especially towards black women that has and still does happen. My initial statements were not taking that into account. It was a fan defending M, not me trying to say because she  was treated badly that racism isn't a factor for women like Janet or that M suffers in the exact same way. 

I am not American, but nor am I white and I know the racism of my country and what has happened to the women in my family. What they fought for and how they have been treated. 

Edited February 1, 2022 by will81

[DramatistDreamer]

One consistent critique of the documentary is that it was it didn't delve deeply enough (another complaint this is somewhat tangential is that the doc was too short) but Janet Jackson has always been somewhat of a mysterious woman, perhaps the result of being from a famous family that has been in the spotlight since she was a very young child. She was never going to give viewers everything. How exactly do people think she was able to keep a nearly decade old marriage a secret in front of the eyes of the world?

The New York Times Arts section does call Janet "an astonishingly modern pop superstar" which actually sounds accurate.

And this is where the line is and should be drawn between Women of Color and Black Women. I realize that not everyone's struggles are the same but Black women in the United States have a profoundly different experience worldwide and in the United States. Black women were the only women brought to the Americas in chains and bred for commerce. The vestiges of that history are still reverberating to this day and neither money nor education nor class has allowed escape this reality. My mother, my aunts have experienced this, I have experienced this, which is why I recognize things for how they truly are.

[DramatistDreamer]

Critiques aside, mission accomplished?