A lot of people go their whole lives trying to fathom the
extraordinary disconnect that occurs between generations of parents
and children with respect to many things, most notably musical
preferences. Recently, however, one object has provided us with a
symbolic answer.
That object is the right nipple of one Ms. Janet Damita Jo
Jackson.
Yes, I’m aware that this is a tired subject and no, this
is not going to be a treatise on how one woman’s nipple is a
touchstone in a culture war. Instead, I find it fascinating that
the fallout from the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show has managed
to illustrate why parents and children just don’t
“get” each other.
The Super Bowl halftime show is hardly an extravaganza of
incredible music. Typically, it’s the home of cookie-cutter
tripe (witness the Super Bowl XXXV halftime excretion of N*Sync,
Britney Spears and Aerosmith), but Nipple-Gate has changed all that
in a rather odd way.
Ms. Jackson’s fashion faux pas has made the NFL positively
frightened to have a halftime show that could be seen as
objectionable by anyone, for fear of incurring the wrath of the FCC
and its fines. (Though why monstrous organizations like the NFL and
the broadcast networks are so frightened of fines that rarely climb
north of $1 million remains a mystery.)
Now, the NFL has an interesting conundrum to deal with. Much of
the music that American youth listen to is seen as inappropriate
““ and the youth is precisely the market the NFL is
desperately trying to attract. This audience wouldn’t mind
seeing the Black Eyed Peas rock out to “My Humps” in
front of over a billion people.
So imagine you’re the NFL. You pretty much can’t
book any of the acts popular among teens and 20-somethings because
of decency concerns, but you still desperately want to attract as
many viewers as you can. So what’s the answer?
You bring in established older acts that everybody loves.
The NFL’s plan to counter the networks’ decency
concerns is to bring in “safe” older acts that the
American parents (i.e. baby boomers) OK with. The intriguing thing
about this, however, is that these “safe” acts are the
same ones that the NFL would have been horrified to put in front of
viewers 40 years ago.
Last year, Paul McCartney performed at Super Bowl XXXIX, and
this year the Rolling Stones will grace the biggest football game
of the year with its presence. Now, they’re both influential
artists who show no signs of slowing down, but I can’t help
but think how ironic it is that they are now obscenity-free artists
who won’t anger the FCC.
What many people have forgotten or fail to realize is that, at
the time of Super Bowl I, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were
the devil’s music to moms and dads. To our parents’
parents, these groups inspired as much confusion and outrage as
artists such as Marilyn Manson inspired among ours.
But our parents are OK with the Rolling Stones and The Beatles
because these groups have been around them their entire lives.
They’ve watched the bands over the years and have, for the
most part, always identified with what they had to say.
Yet as our parents grew up, stopped railing against The Man, and
eventually kicked him out and took his place, a funny thing
happened: What became acceptable changed, and what was considered
to be “the devil’s music” shifted.
The NFL is placing the Stones and McCartney in this position
over controversial pop and hip-hop artists because our parents run
organizations like the NFL. The people in charge of these groups
grew up listening to these artists. They see nothing wrong with
them, and based on the stuff their kids listen to, the messages
these artists get across are comparatively tame.
The inherent irony is amusing and troubling. After all, the
Stones and the Beatles are two of rock ‘n’ roll’s
greatest pioneers, synonymous with playing music as a way of
expressing oneself.
It’s almost tragic that now, by reaching so many people
over the past 40 years, they’ve reached a point of acceptance
to the extent they have. In fact, they’ve become the
soundtrack to The Man’s show.
Then again, this pretty much guarantees that the halftime show
at Super Bowl LXXX will consist of a set by rock icon Marilyn
Manson and a headlining performance by Eminem. Because you and I
will find the brand of neo-electrogaze-core porn-rock played in the
brain-embedded iPods of our children completely unacceptable.
Humphrey thinks neo-electrogaze-core porn-rock will sound
something like My Bloody Valentine on speed and Viagra. E-mail him
at mhumphrey@media.ucla.edu.