Be Curious
A lukewarm take on the Bad Bunny halftime show
Unlike tens of millions of people around the world, I’m not a fan of Bad Bunny. But as a football fan who was less interested in the Seahawks-Patriots match-up than any in recent memory, this was one Super Bowl whose halftime show struck me as far more enjoyable and memorable than the actual game. On a musical level, Bad Bunny (with guests Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin) was nowhere near the heights of Prince (2007) or Beyoncé (2013), nor the lows of Maroon 5 (2019) or the Black Eyed Peas (2011). But between the vibrant, lavish staging and surprisingly intricate, even intimate camerawork, I found it enormously entertaining — and helpfully challenging as making a claim for the centrality of Puerto Rico and Latin America to U.S. history.
No one needs to read yet another hot take on the cultural meaning of Bad Bunny. But if I can offer three quick lukewarm takes…
1. The civil religious power of the Super Bowl
In a month when NBC is billing the Winter Olympics as an opportunity for Americans to come together in support of Team USA, it’s the Super Bowl that still best reflects the civil religious power of sports to temporarily reunite a divided nation. I don’t know that Sunday’s game topped last year’s record U.S. viewership, but surely over 100 million Americans from across the political spectrum shared the experience of watching the championship in the American pro sport with the most politically diverse athletes. While this Super Bowl featured teams from two blue states playing on a field in yet another blue state, I suspect that few Republicans avoided watching it on that account — nor that they failed to feel love of country when an avowedly queer Seahawks fan performed “America the Beautiful” during the pregame ceremony.1
Of course, it was inevitable that a Spanish-language performer whose choice had already been condemned by President Trump and who had himself criticized ICE at the Grammys would inspire disparate opinions. But if Bad Bunny was never going to inspire the kind of feelings that U2’s legendary post-9/11 performance did, his show offered themes of love2, inclusion, mutual respect, and an “out of many, one” sort of unity for those willing to recognize them.
2. Capitalism for the win!
