By Jasmine Lam
Staff Writer
The National Football League (NFL) officially confirmed that artist Justin Timberlake will be headlining the 52nd Super bowl Halftime Show on Feb. 4. However, some viewers expressed their disapproval due to Timberlake’s last performance.
Those that oppose Timberlake’s upcoming performance expressed their anger because they felt that it was unfair to artist Janet Jackson, who headlined the 38th Super Bowl halftime show in 2004 and had Timberlake as her special guest.
Towards the end of their performance of Timberlake’s hit song, “Rock Your Body,” Timberlake made a move to rip off a part of Jackson’s top as part of a stunt, but resulted in a wardrobe malfunction exposed Jackson’s breast.
Shortly after their performance, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reported that they received more than 500,000 complaints and the FCC fined CBS Corp $550,000 for indecency. Though the fine was dropped by a federal appeals court, the case went on for years and was officially dropped in 2012.
Though both Timberlake and Jackson released several statements apologizing for the wardrobe malfunction, Jackson was placed under more scrutiny than Timberlake.
“If you consider it 50-50, then I probably got 10 percent of the blame,” admitted Timberlake in an interview with MTV in 2006.
Jackson made a video, apologizing for the malfunction but later on stated that her management team urged her to do so. Later on the in the year, Jackson appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and expressed her surprise that the malfunction got so much attention.
“I thought it was absurd,” told Jackson to show host, Oprah Winfrey, “I thought it was very crazy that there was so much emphasis put on this when we were at war, our troops were over there [in Iraq]. So much more important things were going on in the world and the focus was on my breast? That didn’t make any sense to me.”
Tom Freston, then chief executive of MTV, blamed Jackson for the malfunction and claimed that she had orchestrated the stunt. The FCC conducted an investigation into the incident.
Sponsors of the halftime show such as America Online (AOL) also released statements to distance themselves from the singer and expressed their disappointment of the events that occurred on stage.
News of Timberlake being invited back to perform at the halftime show lead to the creation of the hashtag #JusticeforJanet, where some Twitter users pointed out that Timberlake was part of the privileged.
“This Justin Timberlake privilege situation is like textbook white privilege,” Twitter user @ClosetoRih tweeted, “Seriously.”
Viewers demanded another apology from Timberlake but he has yet to address their disapproval.
