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Monday, February 02, 2004
Superbowl: Of Patriots and pasties For your browsing convenience, I've combined both the breast-related and non–breast-related aspects of my Superbowl musings into one post. Non–breast-related: If I knew a darn thing about sports, or even where to find sports trivia, I wouldn't have to ask this, even rhetorically: Is the Superbowl between the New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers the first one where both teams didn't have a specific home state, let alone a home city? One thing I said while I was thinking about this last night was "At least there won't be rioting in a specific city when their team wins or loses." But I underestimated the degree to which Boston considers itself the capital city of New England. (I guess it is, at that; what else would it be, Stowe, Vermont? Providence might make a claim for it, but they didn't have riots.) Breast-related: The game, of course, is not the aspect of the Superbowl that people are actually talking about. It's not even the commercials this year (which were mostly subpar, I think; there's a limited amount of things you can do with trained animals, even trained animals as huge and impressive as grizzly bears). No, it is, of course, Ohmigodawoman'sbreast! (I wish I didn't need that apostrophe to break up the flow of letters.) Not that it was a particularly shocking moment, as shocking moments go; it was only one breast, and for heaven's sake, she wasn't even bare-breasted; she was wearing a spangled pasty. Lil' Kim has worn less to major awards shows (I will, for now, link only to the purple-pasty outfit at the 1999 MTV Video Music awards). And Jennifer Lopez has worn more while simultaneously revealing more; remember that see-through Oscar dress that required her presentation speech to be shot from the neck up? What I find most amusing is that, although millions of people saw it on live TV, now no one can actually show it again to those who missed it; at least, no one in a U.S. daytime or prime-time media organization. (I imagine it's different in Europe, where they have nekkid girls in daily newspapers.) Oh, and of course now MTV says it was an accident ("The tearing of Janet Jackson's costume was unrehearsed, unplanned, completely unintentional and was inconsistent with assurances we had about the content of the performance"), and Justin Timberlake says it was an accident ("I am sorry that anyone was offended by the wardrobe malfunction during the halftime performance of the Super Bowl"), and CBS says it was, if not an accident, not done in collusion with them (spokesperson: "CBS officials attended rehearsals of the halftime show all week, 'and there was no indication any such thing would happen'"); yeah, whatever. To quote from no less an authority than the New York Times: There were signs that this was not an accident. It happened during Timberlake's song, "Rock Your Body," in which he promises his dance partner to "have you naked by the end of this song." Jackson's choreographer, Gil Duldulao, had told an MTV interviewer to expect "some shocking moments." And some Janet Jackson fans were, no doubt, disappointed to see that a body part they were eager to see was obscured behind a silver star, more evidence that Jackson might have been planning ahead.And the Drudge Report, which sometimes actually is no less an authority than the New York Times, has dug up some documents averring that it was, indeed, planned in collusion with CBS; but the page isn't opening very well at the moment, probably due to thousands of people trying to access it every millisecond. (If you do successfully open it, it's pretty definitely not work-safe, even if she is wearing a spangled pasty.) In the interest of, um, full disclosure, J. and I actually didn't see it; we were sort-of watching the halftime show, but not paying much attention, especially when Justin Timberlake showed up, looking like he'd just been woken up from sleeping in someone's garage and had to steal clothing from the Salvation Army on the way to the stadium. (Me: "The other people don't look good, but at least they look like they dressed for the occasion.") I reported the Pasty Seen Round the World to J. after going online and seeing all the hyperventilating headlines. His comment: "And next year it'll be two women exposing their breasts while kissing." (Hey, MTV, don't get any ideas.) [ at 12:21 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] |
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