Will it be The Rolling Stones, The Hot Chili Peppers, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga, Up With People, or some other pop or rock act for the Super Bowl halftime presentation? Regardless, (I see Jennifer Lopez has been selected as the headliner for 2020) one can count on a halftime spectacular that will have a high production value, lots of dazzling special effects, and hordes of young fans swarming onto the field and gyrating to suggest they (and we) are having spontaneous fun attending a concert. We aren’t. With few exceptions (Prince and Michael Jackson), the grand scale of the venue overwhelms the immediacy and effectiveness of such a show, not to mention all the technical difficulties in channeling sound and spectacle to millions of television viewers. Music, dancing, and special effects never fully connect with a television audience, most of whom are in the kitchen fixing a snack or in the bathroom off-loading the beer consumed during the first half of football.
And yet. Why music? Why not a chariot race or a dancing bear act? How about a pie eating contest? Or a falconry demonstration? If left to choose, I would prefer seeing and hearing a pig calling contest. Why not have a halftime celebration without wham-bam music? Why the alliance of pop/rock music to professional football? My guess: NFL football is violent. Rock/pop music is often sexually suggestive and/or violent. There. I said it. (Frankly, I don’t know what to do with Up With People because they are mostly white rice and vanilla ice cream). The marriage of NFL football and big-time pop/rock music is consummated because during a bruising fight nothing goes better than the idea of a good bruising sexual encounter, or perhaps the pounding beat that suggests even more violence. Throw in piles of advertisement money (generated by football and headliners in the music business) and there you have the American dream: violence, sex, and money. Let’s all stand and salute the flag.
Hip-Hip-Hooray for the American way.
The NFL presents a gladiatorial spectacle each weekend and on several other days each week during the fall and winter. What goes well with broken bones and head-to-head concussions? Music that vibrates the fillings in your teeth and knocks you out, sends you for a loop, that’s what. And on Super Bowl day, brainwashed, slack-jawed Americans lean forward on their couches to absorb the advertisements, one shill after another selling cars, beer, medicine, insurance, and pure huckstering that contributes to a neurotic and sick society.