Celebrity skin

Janet Jackson is all for us, not for herself

by Jon Caramanica

Last month, MTV bestowed the latest in a series of increasingly bombastic tributes upon one of its leading lights, Miss Janet Jackson. The newly crowned "Icon," a position that apparently is one step beyond "Video Vanguard" and a rung below senior VP, seemed less than grateful, however. Skimpily underdressed, she all but cowered in her seat, flanked by the beefy producers who've held her hand throughout her career, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. You'd think she'd been pulled from a cave and thrust into the spotlight. It seemed that, given her druthers, she'd have remained wrapped in the skimpy white fur throw she's barely hidden behind on the cover of her new album, All for You (Virgin).

But Jackson is nothing these days if not a hostage. She's a victim of her own celebrity, doomed to refresh if not reinvent herself every couple of years to maintain her prestige, wealth, and sex appeal. There are few stars of her status, and the public demands their blood perennially. She's a victim of her family, which is notorious for its psychologically damaged offspring. Of the clan, Janet always appeared to be the together one, but the past few years have seen her threads unraveling, and that's been reflected in her music, where it's most obvious that she's being held captive.

Jackson's early solo work was a revelation -- a bristling mélange of sensuality, sass, and edge. She danced and wailed. She wore pseudo-military garb and preached harmony through music. She avoided excessive make-up. As confident a black pop star as there was, she made Whitney Houston look timid by comparison. Starting with her first flesh baring in the Herb Ritts-directed video for "Love Will Never Do Without You" and culminating in the luscious menagerie of lust that was Janet (Virgin, 1993), she gave sincere expression to the idea of a young woman at play: "That's the Way Love Goes" showed the coy, flirting side, "If" revealed a dominatrix-in-waiting. She seemed emboldened, embracing her new kitten demeanor as eagerly as she'd renounced such frivolities a few years earlier.

But there was no basking in the sun. Almost as soon as she'd burst into the spotlight, Jackson was nowhere to be found. By the time she re-emerged, in 1997, her carefree smiles were a thing of the past. The Velvet Rope (Virgin, 1997) presented her as victim. Unlike Madonna, whose forays into increasingly deviant sexuality always seemed exciting and daring, Jackson's felt contrived, as if she'd shrouded herself in absurd rhetoric and behavior to mask other, deeper problems. And Velvet marked the first time her music sounded out of step. Timbaland and Missy Elliott had sprung upon the urban-music world with ferocity, and the hip ears of Jam and Lewis were coattail-riding in hopes of making Jackson sound fresh. They failed, partly due to their uninspired beat biting, but mostly because she'd lost her heart. Success wasn't the easy roll it had been, and scars were beginning to show.

Four years later, they're showing again. Her split with long-time partner Rene Elizondo has clearly been painful, as has his recent spilling of the pseudo-marital beans to the tabloids. But Jackson's depression runs deeper than love. Growing up in the spotlight, perpetually subjected to public scrutiny, she has an ego premised upon public acceptance, not organic self-confidence. Many celebrities suffer the same fate, but few so acutely as Jackson, who's had her life in the hands of others since before she could speak properly. On the cover of All for You, she looks downright sad. Her cheeks are sagging, her pout isn't sexy. Regardless of whether she's been going under the knife in the past few years to maintain her youthful glow, as rumor has it, her look is that of an old woman constrained in a young body. And hating it.

The songs are little better: they're mostly feeble love ballads peppered with an occasional wronged-woman torch song. Jam and Lewis seem anchorless: their production is an irksome combination of blip-pop, guitar soul, and ethereal washes. It's a cleaned-up Velvet Rope, with occasional glimpses of vulnerability. But on the cusp of her 35th birthday, Jackson should realize that the best thing she could do for her music is let go. Let go of the past. Let go of people's expectations. Most important, let go of her anger. Instead of striving for perpetual pop purity, she should ease into a new phase of her career as a salty diva, one who tears men to shreds with an icy glare and who wears confidence like a low-cut dress. Then, instead of a quivering MTV icon, she can be a lofty VH1 diva.