In a New
Documentary, Janet Jackson Is Hiding in Plain Sight
A four-hour film on
Lifetime and A&E touches on the highs and lows of a long career, but
doesn’t dig deep into one of pop’s great risk-takers.
By Jon Caramanica
Jan. 31, 2022
Throughout her
two-decade-plus heyday, Janet Jackson was an astonishingly modern pop superstar
— a risk-taker with a distinctive voice, a vivid sense of self-presentation and
an innate understanding of the scale of the labor required to make
world-shaking music. She was the embodiment of authority and command,
practically unrivaled in her day and studiously copied by later generations.
But throughout
“Janet Jackson,” a four-hour documentary that premiered over two nights on
Lifetime and A&E, the highs and lows of Jackson’s career are often
presented as a kind of collateral asset or damage. Her brothers were famous
first; Jackson was the spunky younger sister who came after. When her brother
Michael, then the most famous pop star on the planet, faced his first
allegations of sexual impropriety, Jackson lost her opportunity for a lucrative
sponsorship with Coca-Cola. When a wardrobe malfunction derailed Jackson’s
performance at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, it is her career that’s
tanked, and not that of her collaborator, the rising star Justin Timberlake.
It’s a curious
choice for the first official documentary about one of the most influential
musicians of the last few decades. But what makes it even more curious is that
Jackson herself is the executive producer (along with her brother, and manager,
Randy). It is a bait and switch, using the lure of access and intimacy —
cameras followed her for five years, we’re told — as a tool of deflection.
“Janet Jackson” is a
sanctioned documentary with the feel of a YouTube news clip aggregation.
Jackson is interviewed extensively, but largely provides play-by-play, rarely
color commentary. In some parts, especially when she’s shown in conversation
with Randy, she’s the one asking questions, especially when the pair return to
the family’s Gary, Ind., home. At almost every emotional crossroads, the film
drops a whooshing thwack sound effect, an unconscious echo of the “Law &
Order” cha-chunk, and cuts to commercial. That choice renders fraught moments
melodramatic, and melodramatic moments comic.
In between elisions,
“Janet Jackson” is bolstered by some phenomenal archival footage, mainly shot
by Jackson’s ex-husband René Elizondo Jr., who toted a camera throughout their
time together — as romantic and professional partners — with an eye toward some
future omnibus archive. We see Jackson in the studio with Jimmy Jam and Terry
Lewis, in a tug of war of wills while working out the sound of “Janet Jackson’s
Rhythm Nation 1814,” her second album with them and the follow-up to the
career-making “Control.” During the recording for the 1995 single “Scream,” we
see Jackson and Michael talking about lyrics, and Michael asking for her to tap
into the voice from her rock hit “Black Cat.” There’s sleepy but telling
footage of a meeting with Coca-Cola as Jackson is being offered that
sponsorship, and also scenes from the table read of the 1993 film “Poetic
Justice,” in which Jackson starred alongside Tupac Shakur.
As for drama — there
is no drama, this film insists. Everything is fine. Joe Jackson, the family
patriarch, is presented as a beacon of hard work and discipline, not abuse,
without whom the children’s success would have been impossible. Jackson’s exes
— James DeBarge, Elizondo, Jermaine Dupri — are largely forgiven for their
improprieties. Her third husband, Wissam Al Mana (they split up in 2017), is
never named, but the son they share, Eissa, is mentioned and briefly shown. As
for the Super Bowl performance that derailed her career, well, Jackson and
Timberlake are great friends, she says.
Or maybe something
else is going on. “She continually suffers privately, and doesn’t involve any
of you,” says Wayne Scot Lucas, her longtime stylist.
That seems to
include Benjamin Hirsch, the film’s director and the one peppering Jackson with
questions. In several segments, Hirsch uses the audio of his query in order to
provide a more complete picture of the incomplete answer he receives. His asks
are gentle but direct, with only a shadow of the awkwardness that comes with
pushing a famous and famously private person in an uncomfortable direction.
Often when he’s probing, Jackson is in the back seat of an S.U.V., being
chauffeured to a location designed to trigger a memory; the most vulnerable
aspect of these scenes is the physical proximity, a space-sharing closeness
that’s a proxy for actual feeling-sharing closeness.
When the spotlight
is ceded to others, especially Jackson’s behind-the-scenes collaborators like
Lucas and the dancer Tina Landon, little flickers of clarity emerge. And a
fuller appreciation of Jackson’s artistry comes from Jam and Lewis (who also
serve as music supervisors on the documentary), and her former choreographer
Paula Abdul. Plenty of other superstars are corralled — Whoopi Goldberg, Mariah
Carey, Samuel L. Jackson, Barry Bonds (!), Missy Elliott — simply to shower
Jackson with platitudes, a colossal missed opportunity.
It’s churlish to
linger over what’s not covered here, but given that official documentaries can
tend toward the hagiographic, there’s perilously little analysis or
appreciation of Jackson’s music or videos, just assertions of their greatness.
The one exception is Questlove, who discusses advocating for her election to
the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Jackson’s life has spanned many traumas, but
this film mostly recalls them gauzily, and doesn’t argue strongly enough for
her triumphs. What’s more, the editing is choppy, and the lighting is often
garish — a tabloid-style production for an artist who merits vanity treatment.
But the pall is
coming from inside the house. Even at her pop peak, Jackson was often
reluctant, and years of public scandal that tarred her even from a distance
have not seemingly inclined her to do much beyond shrug and retreat.
By that measure, the
film is a success. And sometimes the reticence is rendered literal. When
Jackson’s mother is asked about Michael’s death, she falters a bit, and someone
off camera, seemingly Jackson, asks her if the questioning is too much for her.
She indicates that it is, and they move on. And when Jackson is discussing her
father’s death — “I got the opportunity to thank him, thank God” — it’s the
rare moment where emotion gets the best of her. After just the faintest
shudder, though, she erects a wall: “OK, Ben, that’s enough.” And yet.
.webp)
