The lights go out Sunday evening at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minn., as the Eagles and the Patriots march into their respective locker rooms. The darkness stuns the crowd into silence for 1 ... 2 ... 3 seconds, and slowly the stands start to glitter with tens of thousands of cell phone lights. Ecstatic football fans cheer for the arrival of Super Bowl LII’s halftime show.
Under a single spotlight, a giant American flag unfurls at the 50-yard line. It flutters with the force of dozens of dancers tirelessly pumping their arms up and down and up and down and up and down. Just as the waving stripes of red and white fill the screen, the flag snaps away in one quick motion. Justin Timberlake stands alone on a stage, defiant, bearded and … in flannel.
The crowd roars.
Towers of sparkling pyrotechnics shoot up into the air, a wall of strobes blasts the stage, illuminating a forest of dancers in blink-of-an-eye bursts of light. Yes, it’s a literal forest of dancers! Slender, muscular bodies writhe around on stilts, wrapped head to toe in bark and leaves and twigs and the man is in the woods — the sexy, sexy woods.
As the music starts to pump out of the stadium’s sound system — the intro to Timberlake’s new single “Filthy” is loud enough to be heard in St. Paul — the trees (the sexy, sexy trees) kick and wave their limbs in synchronicity. Timberlake cries out, “If you know what’s good!”
The beat drops. The trees freeze. Timberlake is now at center stage, holding his arms out like lumberjack Jesus. One tree starts to creep forward. With each step, more is revealed — the stilts come off, the twigs fall away, the bark peels back and the lights flash on to expose … JANET FUCKING JACKSON. She rips Timberlake’s flannel shirt off his stoic body, but, what’s this? There’s nary a nipple in sight! Timberlake’s entire chest is painted black, with white lettering reading TIME’S UP across his torso. The sexy, sexy trees scatter forward and engulf the singer. Back into the woods he goes as Miss Jackson pumps her fist in the air to signal the start of a flawless medley of “Rhythm Nation,” “That’s the Way Love Goes” and “Black Cat.” Her record sales soar! Timberlake donates the proceeds of his album sales to RAINN! And the Eagles win the game!!!
None of this will happen, of course (except maybe the people-dressed-as-trees part), because Justin Timberlake is, at best, a clueless pop star. At worst, he's a hypocritical jerk.
Sure, he’s a fantastic performer, a great singer and a surprisingly funny comedic actor. But in today’s world — the never-ending tweetstorm of nuclear threats that it is — there’s little room for completely empty calories. Timberlake, like too many of his music industry peers, hasn’t adjusted accordingly. It’s a flaw that has become especially obvious as we approach his highly anticipated (and rightfully criticized) Super Bowl appearance.
Many haven’t forgotten what happened the last time Timberlake took the Super Bowl stage in 2004. During his performance with Janet Jackson, he clawed off a piece of her costume and momentarily revealed her nipple on live TV. The FCC received over half a million viewer complaints and fined CBS $550,000 (which was ultimately voided) and Jackson’s music — not Timberlake’s — was temporarily blacklisted. Some say it irreparably damaged her career. Meanwhile, Timberlake won two Grammys just one week later. In 2007, he won an Emmy for a song about putting his dick in a box.
Now, 14 years after the incident that popularized the phrase "wardrobe malfunction," the Super Bowl has invited Timberlake to return. Without Jackson. It stings for several reasons, not the least of which being that, in the wake of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, men are supposed to be atoning for their sins, not embracing them. And Timberlake is well aware that he’s not innocent.
In 2007, the singer acknowledged Jackson was treated unfairly, saying, “I probably got 10 percent of the blame, and that says something about society. I think that America's harsher on women. And I think that America is, you know, unfairly harsh on ethnic people.”
But if he knew that then, why, now, has his only recent mention of Jackson been the insistence that he and the “Rhythm Nation” singer have “made peace”? Even more maddening, in a recent interview with Zane Lowe, he added, as though to congratulate himself for going above and beyond, “I don't think it's my job to do that.”
My dude. It is exactly your job to do that. When you publicly acknowledged that Jackson got the short end of the Super Bowl stick in 2007, it became your job to, at the very least, right that wrong. And then, when you learned about and spoke up against rape culture in 2013, and promised to "... create safe communities and encourage respectful relationships for women," it became your job to do even more. And last month, when you boldly wore a Time’s Up badge to the Golden Globes, despite having just starred in Woody Allen's latest movie, it absolutely and without a doubt became your responsibility to do all you could possibly do to ensure that women, especially women of color, are no longer being mistreated, ignored and abused by industries with a history of mistreating, ignoring and abusing women.
But instead of becoming an actual ally and loudly demanding equal treatment for the woman who took 90 percent of the blowback from a shared controversy, you're going to reinvent yourself as a horny lumberjack, brazenly benefit from the fucked-up system and just hope people are so blinded by your new bearded and "woke" sensitivity that they don't notice your cries for equality are bogus?
Saying the words people want to hear isn't enough anymore. Just wearing a button doesn't cut it. For Timberlake to really prove he’s made strides, not just as an artist, but as a human, he needs to get Jackson — hell, he needs to bring a whole army of talented women — up on that stage with him and prove he's not missing the forest for the trees. (The sexy, sexy trees.)
