Janet Jackson documentary is a revelation but can it reset the record?

It beggars belief that in the collective lifetimes of pop dynasty the Jacksons there is something still unseen, unsung or unspoken. But the new four-part documentary Janet – an assembly of home movies, long-forgotten performances, and interviews – is a revelation.

Ostensibly the story of just one Jackson, singer/dancer Janet, it quickly reveals itself as a biographical essay on the entirety of the family: tough patriarch and manager Joe, devoted mother Katherine, the original Jackson Five – Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael – and later, Michael’s transformation into a singular pop icon.

Janet Jackson has a new documentary series.Credit: Lifetime

In one sense, the modern music documentary is almost always intended to reframe history. Not necessarily to rewrite it, but rather to express it free of the cumbersome headlines and plot twists, which slowly, inevitably warp the narrative over the decades.

It can work brilliantly, as we saw in Peter Jackson’s stunning Beatles documentary series for Disney+, Get Back. And sometimes not so brilliantly, as Alanis Morrissette found out with the documentary film Jagged (she said the final product “was not the story” she agreed to tell).

The story of the Jackson family is doubly complex because it is also a story of black cultural power largely framed, over the years, through the prism of a white-controlled music and media business. There is also the lingering unease around father Joe Jackson’s “tough” management style.

Janet’s devotion to her father is obvious, as she casts his iron-tight grip as that of a man who wanted only for his children to excel. But there are moments that still sit awkwardly. “Keep ’em under control,” he says in one interview clip. “There’s no way you can go wrong.”

The documentary begins, as the Jackson story does, in Gary, Indiana, where Janet and her brother Randy are revisiting their childhood home. The rags-to-riches pop music story is a common refrain, but conditions in the Jackson house were indeed tough: six boys shared one bedroom with only three bunks, while Janet and her sisters Rebbie and LaToya slept in the living room. “It’s charming,” Janet says.

The documentary also addresses the so-called “nipplegate” scandal. In 2004, at the half-time show of Super Bowl XXXVIII, singer Justin Timberlake tore open Janet’s costume, exposing her breast to the broadcast audience of about 140 million viewers.

“It was an accident that should not have happened, but everyone is looking for someone to blame and that’s gotta stop,” Janet says in the documentary. “Justin and I are very good friends and we will always be very good friends. [We have] moved on and it’s time for everyone to do the same.”

In many respects, the reinterpretation of that 30 seconds is a key part of the cultural narrative about Janet. This documentary is as much about a woman’s agency, and telling the Jackson story on her terms, as it about anything else. It was initially filmed in 2017, during Janet’s eighth concert tour. But the crew continued to film after the tour, resulting in a documentary compiled from material filmed over a five-year period.

Self-authored documentary, which this is to some extent, is always risky. But Janet does not shy away from complicated topics: her marriages, the claims of a secret child, and her brother Michael. In the early 1990s, Michael was accused of sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy he had befriended (Michael was never charged and the case was settled out of court). Then, in 2003, Jackson was charged with seven counts of child molestation, unrelated to earlier accusations. In 2005, he was acquitted on all counts, but by that time his reputation was severely damaged.

“My brother would never do something like that, but I’m still guilty by association,” Janet says in the program. “He didn’t have that in him.”

Addressing the financial settlement with one of Michael’s alleged victims, Janet says: “He just wanted it to go away, but [the settlement] looks like you’re guilty.”

Janet says the entire family stood by Michael through the scandal. “To show him that we were there for him. They build you up and then when you get there, they are so quick to tear you down. It wasn’t fair ...

“I wish my brother really would have let the world know him better,” Janet says.

Whether the documentary resets the record remains to be seen. It is unlikely to repair Michael Jackson’s reputation as easily as it recasts Joe Jackson from a bullying father to a visionary who mapped out the extraordinary success of his children. But it does reshape the legacy of the Jacksons, collectively, as a family whose extraordinary highs were inevitably matched by dire lows.

Janet is streaming on Stan, owned by Nine, the owner of this masthead.

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