“Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson,” the next film from the award-winning series The New York Times Presents, will premiere Friday, November 19 at 10 p.m. ET simultaneously on FX and Hulu.
In 2004, a culture war was brewing when the Super Bowl halftime show audience saw a white man expose a Black woman’s breast for 9/16ths of a second. A national furor ensued. “If the culture wars could have a 9/11, it’s February 1st, 2004,” said one observer. The woman was Janet Jackson, and her career was never the same. The man was Justin Timberlake; his stardom only grew. The New York Times examines the racial and cultural currents that collided on the Super Bowl stage, and explores how the incident impacted one of the most successful pop musicians in history.
“Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson” features rare footage and interviews with several people who were at the controls that night in Houston — including N.F.L. and MTV executives — to reconstruct an incident that shook the country and explain how it shaped culture in the decades to follow. With new reporting by The Times, as well as insights from music industry insiders, cultural critics and members of the Jackson family, the film illuminates the extraordinary fallout, and CBS executive Les Moonves’s role in it.
“Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson” is directed by Jodi Gomes (One Child Left Behind: The APS Teaching Scandal; The Jacksons: A Family Dynasty) who also serves as a Producer.
“Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson” follows on the success of The New York Times Presents’ “Controlling Britney Spears,” the explosive follow-up documentary to “Framing Britney Spears” that catalyzed international attention on the singer’s conservatorship battle. “Framing Britney Spears” received Emmy(R) Award nominations for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special and Outstanding Picture Editing for a Nonfiction Program, as well as the TCA Award for Outstanding Achievement in News and Information. The New York Times Presents also won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding News/Information (Series or Special) for “The Killing of Breonna Taylor.”
The New York Times Presents, a series of standalone documentary films powered by the unparalleled journalism and insight of journalists at The New York Times, is produced by The New York Times and Left/Right, a Red Arrow Studios company. Executive producers are Ken Druckerman, Banks Tarver, Mary Robertson, Jason Stallman, Sam Dolnick and Stephanie Preiss. Robertson also serves as the show runner of The New York Times Presents.
The New York Times Presents hails from the same team responsible for the FX and Hulu docuseries The Weekly, which won four News & Documentary Emmy Awards, an Overseas Press Club award, and its reporting on how a predatory lending scheme had corrupted the taxi industry in New York and elsewhere was part of a body of work that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
With more than 1,700 journalists who have reported from over 160 countries since 2019, The Times publishes about 150 pieces of journalism each day, including exclusive reporting on topics ranging from politics to culture to climate to sports to business. The New York Times Presents will continue to tell those stories in a visual and unforgettable way.