Janet
Jackson’s
Super
Bowl Stunt:
Do
we Still need to “Lighten Up”?
Michael J.
Matt
Editor,
The Remnant
No, I didn’t see it. But by now even TV-free traditionalists
have gotten wind of the little stunt pulled by pop music stars Janet Jackson and
Justin Timberlake during the halftime show at this year’s Super Bowl (American
football’s championship game). The sheer tawdriness of the incident prompted us
initially to question whether it should be mentioned at all here in The
Remnant. But, even as Lot and
his family must have been painfully aware of similar goings on in
The fact that this year’s
halftime extravaganza included a man and woman
cavorting about on stage is nothing new.
It’s unlikely that it would have elicited much of a reaction at all had
the show not culminated with a brief display of partial nudity that was
“accidentally” broadcast around the world. (Funny, but when a crazed fan runs
out on the playing field during a football game, the NFL cameras are instantly
switched so that images of the fan are never broadcast. This is done to discourage
copycats. Why the technology failed
during the halftime show is puzzling. Hmmm…)
At any rate, while the
major media have been having a field day with Janet Jackson’s overexposure, our
reaction to it can be summed up with one, short question: What’s the big deal? Was
that fleeting flash of flesh the thing that caused the vile performance to dip
below CBS’s moral waterline? What
kind of reverse Jansenism is that? The halftime song and dance routine (produced
by the notorious MTV included the lyric “I’m going to get you naked before the
end of this song”) had by all reports plunged into the moral toilette long
before any skin had been exposed.
The little stunt, in fact, seemed little more than Michael Jackson’s
aging sister’s pathetic effort to imitate her lunatic brother and shock the
world into reviving her sagging career. We agree with Daniel Henninger’s
Wall Street Journal suggestion that “the entire
But, tempting as it may be
to simply dismiss MTV’s gutter peepshows, the fact remains that things lying in
gutters tend to be toxic, and so-called Hip-Hop entertainment is no
exception. Hip-Hop is more than
just “music”. It’s a street culture that emerged from the Bronx and
Today’s Hip-Hop “artists”, perhaps more
than all the liturgists in the modern Church, represent a serious threat to
traditional Catholic families. Our
Lady of Fatima told little Jacinta that “more souls go to hell because of sins
of the flesh than for any other reason.”
If this was true in 1920 one can only imagine how it applies today. One
wonders when Catholics will begin to take the pop culture threat seriously. The Super Bowl halftime show wasn’t
performed by Ozzy or KISS or Marilyn Manson or some satanic freak trying to bite
heads off bats. No, this was so Top 40— N’Sync’s “innocent” little Justin
and charming Penny from TV’s Good Times.
If there’s a positive thing that can be
taken away from the stunt, perhaps it’s this: Catholic parents might finally
begin to get an inkling of just how deep mainstream pop music has sunk into the
cesspool.
The
Mass vs. the Masses
For many traditional
Catholic teenagers Super Bowl Sunday included two events: the Tridentine Mass
and the Game. They went to Mass in
the morning and watched the Game in the afternoon. During halftime they saw a
fornicator and a harlot cavorting on a stage, while the roaring masses screamed
their approval. Moments later and
in front of millions around the world, the fornicator ripped the harlot’s shirt
open.
Now, which of the two Super
Bowl Sunday highlights do you suppose Johnny Traditionalist will remember five
years from now? Oh, yes, I know,
“it’s the Mass that matters,” and Johnny went to Mass that day. But we mustn’t
treat the Mass like some magical shield that will automatically preserve
innocence even after days and years of self-inflicted exposure to these dog and
pony shows from hell that are regularly broadcast over our airwaves. If the Mass
failed to stall the advance of the sexual revolution in the 1960s, what prompts
us to imagine that it will save Hip-Hoppin’ Johnny Traditionalist
today?
Only a fool would ignore
that Trojan horse which rolled into a nominally Christian society fifty years
ago and proceeded to blow decency to kingdom come. The new music was from its inception in
1954 saturated with sex and rebellion. And who knows what part it played as
diplomatic liaison between the liturgical revolutionaries and Catholics in the
pews.
The grand revolution of the
1960s involved two fronts: one cultural and one liturgical/ecclesiastical. It is
no coincidence that they took place almost simultaneously, for the liturgical
offensive would not have advanced so easily, in my opinion, were it not for the
pulsating beat of the new music which signaled that the cultural “reservists” were deployed and ready for action. The New Mass was, let’s
face it, a concoction of the ecclesiastical counterparts to the Hippies. By the
late 1960s the old Mass seemed passé to everyone, even popes. It had to go.
Bye-bye Miss American Pie. On the cultural front, the powerful new music was
steadily propelling a youth uprising against purity, innocence and family
life.
Marketers have long
admitted that sex sells, but even they couldn’t have predicted just how true
that slogan would become in the music industry. For pop music moguls today it doesn’t
matter if “artists” can sing or play an instrument at all; sex appeal is the
name of their game. Thanks to them,
several sex-hooked generations have drunk deeply from the wells of hedonism;
they’ve developed a taste for it and, like vampires in perpetual search of
blood, can never be satisfied.
Ergo, “sex sells” now more than ever, as it must feed a global
addiction. The industry sells sex
and the kids are addicted to sex.
It’s a marketer’s dream.
Millions of dollars are found while millions of souls are lost. Oh well, it’s just the kids’
music!
Hip-Hop especially is
marked by moral and spiritual suicidal tendencies; it’s preoccupied with
promiscuity (the death of the soul) and violence (the death of the body), even
having its own martyrs such as Tupac Shakur and Big E who were gunned down in
the street by rival “gangstas” and who are now part of the sacred lore of the
Hip-Hop religion.
Gods
of Wasteland
For almost four decades
traditional Catholic writers in The Remnant have been banging the drum
against the rock subculture, and for much of that time we’ve been told that we
need to “lighten up.” Especially
after the publication of our book “Gods of Wasteland: Fifty Years of Rock ‘n’
Roll,” we were called “reactionary” and even “Jansenist” by one or two of our
intellectual friends who, by the way, are probably still walking around with
their heads in the clouds, waxing rhapsodic about liturgical “preferences” and
putting everyone to sleep. I very
much respect and appreciate true intellectuals, but I must say that, when it
comes to the cultural question, some of these good fellows have been snoozing at
the wheel.
Traditionalist teens today are up against
incredible odds and, as they come of age, many are opting out of active service
in this Catholic counterrevolution altogether, even after years of homeschooling
and weekly Tridentine Mass attendance. This year’s Super Bowl shed some light on
why: traditionalist teens, like all teens, are literally being
overpowered by the pop culture. Punks and rock ‘n’ rollers have stormed the
gates and seized the seats of power and influence once reserved for saints and
churchmen. And the Church of
It seems that after all
these years John Lennon was right—pop music’s gods are more popular than
Jesus and Christianity is going. But when John Lennon took his famous
shot at Christianity years ago, the
Still, faithful Catholics
must do something. When considering all those children on Super Bowl
Sunday—when contemplating the innocence lost, the little souls rocked, the
little minds blown—perhaps we can agree that enough’s enough. The NFL must pay some price (no matter
how small) for their globally televised child abuse. Perhaps traditional
Catholics might consider celebrating next year’s Super Bowl by watching
Heidi. (The reference here is to
the famous “Heidi Game” which took place in 1968 between the Oakland Raiders and
the New York Jets. NBC cut away from the game, the outcome of which they assumed
had been determined, when it threatened to preempt their scheduled movie,
Heidi. The Raiders came back
and beat the Jets in dramatic fashion in the last few seconds of the game,
causing fans such consternation that the tilt came to be known as the “Heidi
Game”.)
An
Experiment
Traditionalist parents
whose children have access to pop music may wish to conduct an experiment. Ask
your teenager for his impression of the Janet Jackson stunt. Watch his reaction closely. He’ll probably look at the floor and
then tell Mom what she wants to hear: “It was off the charts. She’s such an
idiot!” He may even volunteer a
comment on “Janet the has-been”… but
he won’t say much about the indecency itself. Why? Because he’s probably not a
hypocrite. When compared to what
he’s seen on MTV, VH1, BET and even dance floors on prom night, Janet’s cry for
attention at the Super Bowl was par for the course! What’s taking place right now—especially
in the Hip-Hop world where Tupac is god, and Snoop Dog, Nelly, Lil’ Kim, Jackie
O, Sisqo and P. Diddy rule—makes it regrettable that over the years we’ve all
used hyperbolic words like “pornographic” to describe pop music and its videos. Now it really is
pornography! In recent months the industry has crossed lines which make past
manifestations of rock/pop depravity appear mild. It’s enough to make David Bowie
blush!
Parents who are not paying
attention to Hip-Hop, for example, have no idea how wicked things have
become. When I deliver lectures about the pop culture, many assume
that we’re still carping about Mick Jagger or Jim Morrison. But nothing in the
60s, 70s or 80s (except, perhaps, the pornography industry itself) can compare
to what’s going on now. The notorious Van Halen, for example, was only mildly
salacious compared to Hip-Hop’s newest superstar, Nelly, whose latest video (for
a “song” called “Tip Drill”) features blatant and prolonged scenes of lesbian
sex, barely blurred nudity, depravity that I can not and will not
describe, and a barrage of images showing the “hottest” new dance craze which is
apparently called “booty poppin’.” (The Hip-Hop lexicon is here incomplete,
since evidently there’s some discrepancy among Hip-Hop wordsmiths over the
precise term). One thing’s for sure, though— it’s not the mashed potato. It’s so
raunchy and so destructive of innocence that it frightened me when I saw it and
brought tears to my eyes. It’s
performed by women wearing thongs and is pornographic in the literal
sense of that word. A few seconds viewing of a Hip-Hop video, in other words,
will destroy a child’s innocence forever.
Make no mistake— I’m not
talking about some underground phenomenon. This is Top 40! Walk into Target or Wal-Mart and take a
look at the fashions for teens—they’re dominated by Hip-Hop “shtreeet vibes”.
The days of the hair bands, heavy metal, grunge and even Madonna are gone and
passé. But Hip-Hop with its
penchant for raw sexual abuse, real gangland violence (between east and
west coast rappers) and grotesque self indulgence is mainstream and here to
stay.
We’ve all seen the
backwards baseball caps, the gaudy jewelry (a.k.a. “ice”) for men, the huge
oversized pants, the teenage fascination with cell phones, the low-cut pants for
girls, the blacktop court shoes, the “shtreet jam” hand gestures and lingo—this
is all part of the Hip-Hop “thang” and, though it was born on the streets of the
ghettos and promotes blatant reverse racism, it’s managed to take black and
white middle class young people by storm, annihilating both their self-respect
and their moral compass.
After praying a few Hail
Marys for fortitude take a look at BET (Black Entertainment Television) or MTV
and see for yourself— this ain’t yo momma’s rock ‘n’ roll, believe me! But it’s
so popular that unless other musical acts can find some way to make a liaison
with Hip-Hop, they’ll have limited success. And so there are bevies of white, black
and Hispanic singers such as Christina Aguilera, Pink, Eminem, Jennifer Lopez,
Beyonce Knowles, Shakira and Britney Spears “thugging” and “tarting” it up with
the best of them just to keep pace with the big gig in town—Hip-Hop. Dumbed-down, over sexed, violent
thuggery is “in”. “Whores,” “heifers” and “bitches” are how the males refer to
their girlfriends; young ladies refer to their boyfriends as “players” and
“pimps.” (No, I kid you not!) Sex is their sport.
If traditional Catholic
teenagers are listening to pop music, then the chances are good that they know
exactly what “bootylicious’” is, who Snoop Dog is, precisely how Nelly degrades
women in his X-rated videos, what Sisqo is singing about in the “Thong Song”,
what a “lap dance” is, which “artists” used to be porn stars, etc. Oh, yes, he knows all this and much
more. It’s “his music,” after all, and this is the stuff with which “his music”
is preoccupied.
By the way, traditional
Catholic parents should be patient with their teenagers if, in fact, they’ve
gotten mixed up in this. They’ve
been hit in the face with a barrage of gratuitous sex and decadence that men
living fifty years ago could have found only by prowling seedy red-light
districts in the dead of night. Now it’s right there in the song lyrics, in the
videos, on the internet, in the schools, in your living room, and at your Super
Bowl party.
And we wonder why our teens
are beginning to lose a little of that enthusiasm for the movement to restore
the old Catholic Mass…
One might say
that the only thing missing from Hip-Hop’s round-the-clock orgy is Caligula
himself, but this might not be fair to Caligula. I’d say Pagan Romans had nothing on us
when it comes to junior high proms that feature manage-a-trois behavior on the
dance floor, when eleven-year-olds turn up pregnant, when condom use is regarded
as the virtue of responsible teens who are committed to “safe sex”, and
when children are encouraged by pop icons to masturbate while leering at their
friends’ mothers, as is the case in Fountains of Wayne’s video “Stacy’s Mom,”
the lyrics of which include the
following:
Stacy’s mom has got it
goin’ on
She’s all I want and I’ve waited for so long
Stacy, can’t you see
you’re just not the girl for me
I know it might be wrong but I’m in love with
Stacy’s mom
Stacy’s mom has got it goin’ on
Stacy’s mom has got it goin’
on
Fountains of Wayne (FOW),
by the way, has been nominated for several Grammy awards and the band appears
regularly on mainstream variety shows such as David Letterman and the Late Show
with Craig Kilborn (as was the case on February 5, 2004).
Why are we losing our kids
today? Gee, I just can’t
imagine….It must have something to do with cigarettes. Call your congressman and demand more
spending on those smoking cessation programs in our schools! Yep, that’s the
ticket.
Conclusion
Certainly, CBS, the NFL,
Viacom and MTV need to hear our complaints about Janet Jackson and Justin
Timberlake (the “innocent” N’Sync’s lead singer whose Super Bowl antics
demonstrate once again that Catholic teens are much more likely to be led astray
by the “good, clean” pop stars then by shock-hounds like Marilyn Manson and
Trent Reznor). But, don’t fool
yourself: If your teens are
watching MTV or blasting “their music” on their head sets or car radios, they
really weren’t as scandalized by the Super Bowl
halftime show as they pretended to be.
They’ve seen much worse,
and, if they haven’t yet then they’ll see it tonight or tomorrow night or the
next time they flip on the television. The Super Bowl stunt proved that no TV
program is safe. Satan’s the
producer/director of the pop culture now, and the solution for us does not lie
in “finding the good stuff” in pop music (Jason and Janet were the “good
stuff” for the first half of their careers!); the solution lies in following the
dictum of St. Paul: “Come out from among them and be ye
separate.”
Oh, yes, I know, it’s just
the “kids’ music,” and we parents can hardly be expected to say “no” to
everything. Man, how many
times I’ve heard that rot! How many
times mothers have sobbed: “We did
everything right: we homeschooled, we drove two hours every Sunday to the
Tridentine Mass where our little Johnny and Billy used to be altar boys. Where’d we go wrong? It couldn’t have been their
music. That was just never a big deal.”
Never a big deal? Allowing pornographers, strip teasers,
foulmouthed harlots, pimps and abusive thugs to entertain the kiddies ‘round the
clock— not a big deal? For
homeschool children, especially, the main conduit to this nonstop cultural orgy
has not been the television (which is usually and rightly restricted or banned
by good parents), nor has it been public schools or even the Internet— it’s been
the pop music. And these days all
the catechism classes and Latin Masses in the world can’t compete with this
powerful lyrical pornography specifically marketed to impressionable and
isolated teens during their rebellious years. As long as we fail to recognize the real
enemy of our teenagers, we’ll go on losing this war for the soul of our children
while the future of the Catholic counterrevolution will grow tenuous, to say the
least.
Let me conclude on a
personal note. I was raised in a traditional Catholic family of nine children,
each of whom is still practicing the traditional Faith to this day and raising
large families of their own. My father and mother said “no” to a lot of
things—to most things, in fact (thank God!)— starting with rock/pop
music, which was summarily banned with no exceptions in my childhood home
(and this included Country and Christian rock!).
What whacky extremists
those reactionary parents of mine were!
I wonder why they didn’t just lighten up. After all, it’s just
music…
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