Arguably no halftime display has ever been as memorable as Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake‘s February 2004 performance at Super Bowl XXXVIII.
The display was a relatively standard halftime concert till the overall second when the “Mirrors” singer ripped off a part of Jackson’s gown, revealing her most commonly uncovered right breast. Seen by way of more than 150 million audience, the incident ended in years of backlash and impressed a new wave of censorship throughout all varieties of media.
On the evening of the efficiency, each Jackson and Timberlake reacted with marvel before the published lower to commercial. In the times following the sport, on the other hand, there have been many conflicting experiences about whether the divulge used to be in reality an twist of fate. At the time, the Poetic Justice celebrity took many of the public blame, however some fanatics have all the time wondered why she shouldered the accountability when so many other people were involved in producing the show.
Regardless of who or what caused the “wardrobe malfunction” — a now-common time period that was once if truth be told coined within the wake of the scandal — the results had been speedy. The Federal Communications Commission fined CBS a file $550,000 for the incident, and some networks and radio stations quickly blacklisted Jackson’s music. (The tremendous used to be later voided by way of the U.S. Court of Appeals.)
The efficiency was once so steadily looked for online that Jawed Karim, cofounder of YouTube, later said it impressed him to create the now-ubiquitous video-sharing carrier. Some observers even prompt that all of the incident was once a conspiracy to distract Americans from the continued Iraq War, which had began three hundred and sixty five days prior.
The Super Bowl has since hosted many iconic performers, but the 2004 scandal (in the end referred to as Nipplegate) has never utterly decreased from view. When the “Rock Your Body” singer headlined the show through himself in 2018, some critics and commentators felt that the opportunity should have long gone to Jackson, whose occupation took a serious hit within the aftermath of the incident.
In November 2021, the filmmakers behind the “Framing Britney Spears” episode of FX’s The New York Times Presents sought to correct the record with a new installment of the show titled “Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson.”
Featuring interviews with NFL and MTV executives who were present at the infamous game, the episode set out to explore the very other ways Jackson and Timberlake’s careers had been suffering from their involvement.
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“In 2004, a tradition conflict was brewing when the Super Bowl halftime show target audience saw a white man divulge a Black lady’s breast for 9/16ths of a second. A nationwide furor ensued,” a press unencumber for the documentary mentioned. “’If the culture wars may have a 9/11, it’s February 1st, 2004,’ stated one observer. The girl was Janet Jackson, and her career was never the same. The man used to be Justin Timberlake; his stardom only grew.”
Keep scrolling for a whole timeline of the incident:
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