New documentary on Sky
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Janet Jackson is still underrated
Janet Jackson in 2019.
Photo: AP / Evan Agostini
The 55-year-old is one of the most successful pop stars of recent decades. Nevertheless, she is mostly in the shadow of her big brother Michael. A new documentary on Sky doesn’t even try to change that.
This might have been the documentary that is long overdue and needed: it should have finally given Janet Jackson the rank she deserves. The now 55-year-old sold more than 160 million records, she campaigned for equality in her music and with her stage personality as early as the mid-1980s, for the rights of same-sex couples, and she campaigned once morest discrimination. In 1986, she freed herself from the influence of her overpowering father and released the million-seller “Control,” an album that was such a powerful statement of female self-empowerment and liberation that it still resonates with younger colleagues like Rihanna, SZA, and Beyoncé, whose song “Formation ‘ includes an explicit nod to Janet Jackson.
However, the four-hour production “Janet Jackson”, divided into four parts, does not do all that. It is content with retelling the well-known stories from the life of the most famous family in the United States following the Kennedys. Worse still, there are complaints that Janet Jackson has been overshadowed by her famous older brother Michael for too long. But director Benjamin Hirsch doesn’t bring them to light, instead comparing them to the former King of Pop on several occasions.
Janet Jackson sits in front of the camera and talks, but the interviews are mostly used to set the voiceovers to old family films. Everything is plastered over with harmony: the father, who urged his children to success, is portrayed as the man to whom everything is to be owed. And, worst of all, Justin Timberlake, who is partly to blame for the big break in Jackson’s career, is referred to as a friend.
You remember: 2004, halftime break of the Super Bowl. Jackson and Timberlake perform together, Timberlake tears at Jackson’s clothes, a chest flashes, scandal. Jackson is then on black lists, Timberlake is more successful than ever. You should have started there, that would have been the story: How misogynist pop was and maybe still is, especially since Janet Jackson once had a contract with a large beverage company through the rags because the first allegations of abuse once morest her brother came up. Which she otherwise dismisses: Michael wasn’t like that.
There’s a lot of whispering in this series co-produced by Janet Jackson. Does she really have a secret daughter, as they called it in the 1980s? The makers of the film are incensed that the rumor – which has no truth to it – made money at the time. But they use it as a cliffhanger between episode one and two. Men play a major role, father, brothers, husbands and lovers, and it is hardly ever mentioned how enormous Jackson’s musical achievements were on the albums “Control” (1986), “Rhythm Nation 1814” (1989) and her masterpiece “The Velvet Rope” (1997). How, on her own, she debated the issues of race, poverty, and growing up as a black woman with innovative R’n’B. “No, my first name aint Baby – it’s Janet!” she sang.
Only celebrities like Questlove and Missy Elliott can briefly say that Jackson is one of the most important pop artists of the past decades and has almost life-changing qualities. But hardly anyone does it in detail. So in the end, the desire to hear their songs remains. Perhaps start with their most virtuoso piece: “Got Til It’s Gone” with the great Joni Mitchell sample. The singer Lizzo recently came up with a formula on Twitter: “Janet Jackson: Queen of Pop”.
Info “Janet Jackson” runs in two double episodes on Sky: from March 11th and 18th.
