The Jackson Family's Material Girl

Mixed Media

JAMES WOLCOTT

When Janet Jackson's "What Have You Done for Me Lately" giddy-upped through aerobics-class speakers this spring (a sure sign of a crossover hit for a black artist—activate those leotards!), it took me three or four listens to realize that this was the same Janet Jackson who as a child actress used to dodge wino breath on TV's ghetto comedy Good Times. She played Penny, an adorable sweet pea with an abusive mom; her adoptive mother, Willona (Ja'net DuBois), practically threw a blanket over her to protect her from street bloods and the mutters of strange men. Despite her own reputation for strutting it tall and proud, Willona was determined to shield Penny from anything having to do with s-e-x. What really fried her bacon was when J.J. (Jimmie Walker) would go on loudly and lewdly about some fine-looking fox. She didn't want none of that trashy talk tarnishing her Penny.

Freed from that cabbage-patch role, Janet Jackson has flamed her hair into a spouting mane and now makes guest shots on Soul Train doing a sexy Madonna-like trot with a pair of muscle boys. She's become a Material Girl with a smooth coat of sexual boast. To enthrone herself in the boudoir, she's had to shed the choir robes handed down not only by her TV family but by her real-life kin. For Janet Jackson is of course the youngest sister of Michael Jackson, whose virgin might burns like a heavenly sword. Janet, however, has wisely decided not to join brother Michael at the top of the celestial staircase. Fallen angels have more fun than angels on high.

Born in 1967, Janet is the baby of the Jackson clan, forming the caboose of a conga line led by Maureen, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, LaToya, Marlon, Michael, and Randy. (Marlon had a twin who died shortly after birth.) That's a lot of living-room traffic. Where the Jackson men have gone in for honorguard dazzle, decking themselves out in sashes, epaulets, military tunics, big gold buttons, and bellhop caps, the Jackson women have opted for an image far less space-age and bejeweled. They don't try to look like Captain Videos preparing for blast-off. LaToya, for example, appears on the cover of her 1986 Imagination album in a simple eye-catcher of hot red, while Janet packages herself on her Control album in an elegantly severe uniform of padded shoulders and basic black. (She looks like Sade reporting for induction.) Musically, both eschew the cosmic bombast of their brothers to secure a grounded Eurodisco groove on the fast numbers and a swaying, nuzzling intimacy on the slower tracks. It's makeout music for those who think rich. But a catchy beat and an affluent sound aren't enough to make an imprint. Janet Jackson's previous albums

had a lavish getup and a pleasing lack of affectation, but they were also sugary sweet and innocuous—puddings without a theme. On Control, she's found her theme.

The theme, not surprisingly, is sex—but sex kept at a classy distance. Produced by the hit-master team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Control was recorded in Minneapolis, the musical base of Morris Day, the Time, and Prince, not to mention those molls in lacy undies Vanity, Apollonia, and Sheila E. Although one of the songs ("Nasty'') has the cat-prowling lyrics and attitude of a Prince-inspired outing, Control isn't an exercise in pantie flash, like Vanity's cocktease LPs. Indeed, even Jackson's older sis is more erotically blunt. On her Imagination album, LaToya has a number called "Boys Got Somethin' Girls Ain't Got,'' leaving no doubt as to what that somethin' is.

Control is about seduction and release, but on terms that don't violate a woman's comfort zone in these hazardous times. This comes through most clearly not in "What Have You Done for Me Lately," which is essentially a do-right-by-me declaration in the great tradition of Aretha Franklin's "Respect," but in "Let's Wait Awhile," where the singer asks her sweetie to postpone sex until the moment is romantically ripe... a far cry from the push-push-in-the-bush / pull-up-to-thebumper instant-gratification songs disco gave us only a few years ago.

Perhaps the sharpest contrast with this pleasure-dome promiscuity comes in the album's closer, "Funny How Time Flies (When You're Having Fun)." Here, Jackson enacts a situation nearly everyone has faced in his or her life—necking in a doorway or at a bus stop after a date, wanting to continue and yet feeling compelled to call it a night. Marred by whispery coyness and French dialogue (Jackson actually murmurs, "Oh je t'aime, mon cheri"—puhleeze!), "Funny How Time Flies" nevertheless has a turnon finish as our heroine tells her boyfriend "Stop. . .stop" while surrendering to the moment with soft little moans. When Donna Summer did her famous moans in "Love to Love You Baby," it was an invitation to orgy, a mating call of mass bliss. Jackson's more demure love sounds belong to an era of selectivity and caution ("stop" wasn't even in the vocabulary of most disco singers, one of whom—Andrea True—was a former porn star), spiced with the realization that choosiness has its own heady pleasures. Delay can be tantalizing, and a true gentleman is worth a pile of barbarians. Control isn't only about control, but about when to lose it. Pretty spooky, all this poise and sophistication—Janet Jackson, after all, is still in her late teens. She's polishing herself as an idol at an age when most kids are applying pimple cream.

Like brother Michael, Janet Jackson has sculpted herself a persona out of black opal. Commenting on Michael Jackson's notorious nose job, the critic Albert Goldman argued that with this operation Michael consummated his pop vision. "What Michael Jackson got from his audacious act of self-authorship was a face that matched his soul and thus enabled him to become all soul. His face became the perfect instrument of his art." I don't know whether or not Janet Jackson has had herself surgically altered (actually, LaToya is the one who looks sleekly remodeled), but she's certainly managed to customize herself a mask to match Michael's. On Soul Train and in the "What Have You Done for Me Lately" video, she might be Michael's androgynous twin in the sweep of her arm, the accusatory glare in her eyes, the collapsing diagonals of ,her dancing. While she doesn't have what Goldman called Michael's "weird vibratory aura," she projects more normal, party vibes. On Soul Train, she actually climbed down from the stage to bump hips with the audience, something Michael would never dare. He's a solo dervish, spinning on the burning axis of his own obsessions. She's a mingler, mirroring her desires in the moves of her dance partners. Mingling is what may keep Janet Jackson from becoming as infantilized and exquisitely breakable as Michael. Baby sister knows that maturity is saner and sexier than the toy pleasures of nevernever land. Stuffed animals can't generate warmth.