The key to the Super Bowl‘s awesome power as an entity is its egalitarianism. For what is essentially a holiday that emerged from a football game, it commands the cultural gravitas it does because it manages to trap far more than just football fans into its maw. Aside from the godawful, overrated ads that attract unabashed consumer-whores, the halftime show is linchpin in the wide net the Super Bowl casts. Idgaf if nets don’t have linchpins.
The pop music acts are chosen to maximize the bearability of the program for all audiences, meaning it has to target females. It’s not a trick to get females to watch a football game with alacrity as much as it is to get them to put up with watching it with their male friends and families. Hence the shows also skew towards a younger audience. Mom will watch if the kids are there too. It’s little Sally Snapchat that needs the most coaxing, what with all her goddamn Netflix and other media distractions that don’t come bogged down with broadcast advertising.
The Networks have the task of finding someone that the young people will like and the parents will put up with. That is, the blandest possible act imaginable.
Hence, Coldplay, Bruno Mars, and Beyonce. These acts really are at the maximum extent of broad-appeal and tolerance. Do you know anybody who would be offended by these acts? Yeah, some guys will bitch about Coldplay being too generic and mainstream or whatever, but they are completely inoffensive. Bruno Mars still enjoys heartthrob status, and Beyonce is still eminently popular amongst the young ladies, based on what filters down to me from the copious amounts of internet noise I consume that I should probably cut down on.
The Halftime show is customized by the best in the business to be as completely milquetoast as possible. It is corporate America’s pitch for the epitome of mass-appeal.
Which is why I did a double-take when people started commenting that Beyonce’s dancers were meant as an homage to the Black Panthers. My initial reactions was incredulity. “Just because black people have matching black uniforms…”. Beyonce’s uniform was an homage to Michael Jackson’s Superbowl halftime show–what group do Jackson’s dancers bring to mind with their uniforms? Frankly, I’d be content with just assuming the dancers’ uniforms were just meant to fit that style. I’m not exactly a fashionista…. But I am apparently oblivious on this one, with the reference being intentional. That the Panthers having their genesis in Oakland, just outside of the city the Superbowl was taking place should have been another clue. So while black people in black uniforms are not necessarily a reference to the Panthers, if they have berets on, it is. I’ll spare you my cries and heus of Huey Newton rolling over in his grave (#Apophasis). 1. I don’t actually care and 2. That’s not my point.
Beyonce is pretty much the opposite of the Black Panthers. And I mean that as an observation, not as a judgement. The Panthers were race-nationalists (at least initially) and militant socialists. Beyonce is none of those things. Being black and proud is a far cry from advocating for black nationalism, and she’s as capitalist as they come. Donning a beret is one thing, but that’s a fashion item, and for the daughter of a dressmaker from New Orleans, it’s not a terribly bold sartorial statement. Go through the list of the regs for the Black Panther uniforms. What’s the most conspicuously absent piece on that list from Beyonce’s accouterments? I’d say the firearms. The Panthers had a militant streak a mile wide. They would share more common ground with the Oregon militia folks than they would with Beyonce by a substantial margin. They had a mindset to be ready to meet violence with violence. It’s not an ideology for the feint of heart.
The notion that Beyonce was making a political point with her show is completely and utterly absurd. She was making the opposite of a political point. Beyonce is bland and inoffensive. And again, not saying this to knock her. She wouldn’t have been in the show with an audience of 112 million of the network thought there was going to be social upheaval involved. Her ass-shaking isn’t even that provocative in this day and age, an act that would have been beyond belief if it had aired at the original Superbowl. Beyonce is safe for middle America. She was there not to proffer a list of demands; she was there specifically because she has no demands. The Queen paraded around in her finery, telling us all that she “slays”–whatever the hell that means… idk, the kids are saying it now too–and that her girls are marching in formation… ready to meet that nice young man who plays the guitar and sings those love songs. Their bare legs reveal to us they are unarmed. There will be no shooting corrupt police officers and loosing of shackled prisoners.
It’d be nonsense to say that she is being put up to this. I’m with her: the Illuminati accusations and the like are silly. This is all mutual self-interest. The Network wanted someone safe with broad appeal. Beyonce is safe and has broad appeal. As of yet, she doesn’t appear to have a provocative bone in her body. She may think she does. I’m not sure. I don’t really care. What matters is when her audience thinks she is provocative, that she is taking a stand. Like her “contentious” label of feminist, her homage to the Panthers is almost entirely superficial. No, that’s not to say she’s never faced discrimination. Don’t lodge that complaint at me. What she is not is some penurious soul stuck in a ghetto advocating for potentially violent revolution. She doesn’t want that–and who could blame her? She wants to dance, and sing, and be proud of who she is. Rebellion against a cold, indifferent universe devoid of objective purpose this may be, but it is not rebellion against the system. She’s a part of the system now, and the system doesn’t want rebellion. So it puts on a song and dance number instead, and slips in an ad for a chain restaurant. The psychic energy that could be channeled into rebellion is harmlessly dissipated, redirected by the system to a four hour excuse to sell outlandishly priced ad-space.
The revolution will not be televised. Television will be televised. The revolution is off.