Ah, the Superbowl Halftime show. Every year it offers a few artists the opportunity to amaze us with what they can do with the songs that we love and to confuse us with songs noone has ever heard, partnering with other artists many don’t know or have forgotten and to lip sync while dangling upside down out of a cannon of glitter confetti. What a great moment in the calendar year.
It also offers us the opportunity to realize just how polarized America has become.
This year was no exception. Two women and one Bad Bunny took the stage ready to make a statement. Shakira, or as I like to call her, clearly the winner of the “who looks the best at 40” contest, comes out and it is like watching a high def performance from 1999. She is met on stage by Bad Bunny, who looks like Guy Diamond from Trolls picked his outfit. And then came J-Lo.
If you haven’t seen the show by this point, I’m not going to give a play by play. I’m really only interested in responding to the flood of social media posts which let me know that by nature of who I am, I can have no other response but pearl clutching outrage.
Did I take issue with the halftime show? Sure, I did. But I’m not sure that the issues I took were the issues that the internet feels I should have taken.
- First, this was legitimately the best example of smart art I’ve seen in a while. Our country can no longer put out the same picture of the typical American family that it put out 50 years ago. We are beautifully diverse. And one big piece of that diversity is that there are a HUGE number of people who speak Spanish. We are out of excuses to not encourage our kids to take Spanish in school, to not recognize that we are going to need to evaluate if language classes need to start being offered as a part of regular curriculum at a much earlier age, and to challenge ourselves to learn a 2nd or 3rd language. Thomas Jefferson himself would let us know there is nothing more American than learning multiple languages.
To sit and watch Bad Bunny and Shakira performing in Spanish and to know, I am simply not going to understand this song even though I have some semi-functional basic Spanish skills. What an powerful opportunity to offer experientially a social lesson to millions of people all at once about what it is like to be at a major event in our culture and think, “Shoot, somehow I’m missing out because I don’t know this language.” That experience would be able to stand alone as a teachable moment taken and delivered well.
But…the next day…I only saw 1 person on the internet…1…say that it was crazy that when they started speaking Spanish they thought, “I have no idea what they’re saying, but I love it!” My first issue is that this moment of smart art has been completely overshadowed. - Secondly, when artists take the mic at an award show and start to lecture me about the ethical ills of our country and identifying the political perpetrators of these grave wrongs, even if I agree with them, it only ever makes me want to sigh a deep sigh and change the channel. We did not show up to hear a lecture.
But if an artist wants to use art to do what art SHOULD DO, to make a statement and to inspire discussion and to press people towards change, then I’mma show up for that.
Those children, in those cages. That was a statement. A powerful one. Delivered not through self righteous shame lectures, but instead by humanizing an issue that really effects real human children.
And I didn’t really GET IT until the next day. I interpreted it as just freeing the next generation of girls, probably because I only deeply relate to those girls as females. I admit that I watched that with a limited perspective, but once I had it clarified to me, man. I can appreciate smart art, and that was smart art.
My 2nd issue is that this moment of smart art was completely overshadowed. - And then J-Lo emerges wearing what on initial observation looked to be an American flag cape designed by Snuffaluffagus, throws her arms wide to reveal the Puerto Rican flag and sings Born in the USA. SMART. ART.
If you don’t follow David Begnaud, now is the time for you to search him and follow him. Puerto Ricans are Americans. And they are struggling right now. Both from a humanitarian perspective and from a political perspective and we should care as much about it as if Texas was suffering. That ridiculously hair flag cape popped open and it’s like, BAM! Smart Art.
My third issue is that this moment of smart art was completely overshadowed. - And last but absolutely NOT the least, blocking out the stadium lights casting the deep dark shadow over all the smart issue, there was J-lo atop a pole, like the crystal ball at the top of the pole in Time Square on New Years Eve.
I want to start this by saying that I found last year’s performance equally uncomfortable as Adam Levine pulled off his clothes. My issue is not that I like watching men take off their clothes but not women.
I also want to say that I separate out Shakira from J-lo in this performance, as Shakira was performing a legitimate dance style. And where the outfits are concerned…it’s not so much about coverage, because J-lo was wearing fabric on her whole body. Every year at the pool the thought comes to mind that if a girl walked out in her underpants pretty much everyone would be horrified, but the same girl can walk out in a bikini and people are not uncomfortable. The difference in fabric is only slight, but the difference in perception is huge. Do I wish J-lo’s but was convered? Yes….but I wish all butts everywhere at all times were covered.
My final issue is this….
In a day and age when we are absolutely aware of the dangers of human trafficking, right at the close of sex trafficking awareness month, at an event where there is heightened risk and concern for people to be caught up and abused in and by this trade…..it really is tasteless to glamourize stripping.
Just because culture tells us we can do something, doesn’t mean we should. Having a right doesn’t make using that right RIGHT in all situations at all times.
The sex trade industry is not built on a healthy sense of body awareness which values the employee’s intrinsic worth and pays a fair wage and offers good health care and protects its employees with strong HR policies. Can people find some empowered women who are also strippers who will take a microphone and tell the world they’re happy or a woman who took pole aerobics in the late 90s and think it’s the same thing? Sure.
But that is NOT an accurate representation of a large portion of people involved in that industry. And it is dangerous to those people who are so dependent on the paycheck they receive and the situation they are caught in to tell our culture that a woman on a pole with a pile of people at the bottom worshipping her is so common place that it should be front and center of the halftime show and the conversation following it. There are people, women and men, are trapped in that industry, unwillingly whether by force or coercion or lack of resources…and making it seem like a thing which should be celebrated? That is backwards and thoughtless.
It is time to retire the pole.
It is time to retire dance moves which are clearly emulating stripping.
I REFUSE TO ACCEPT THIS IMAGE AS FEMALE EMPOWERMENT.
I have read post after post shaming women who were uncomfortable with what we watched, suggesting that not supporting it was bigoted and holding women back. Those statements are made in conversations between women who have a voice. If someone is going to come with “women should support women,” let me give that a hearty AMEN. And let me encourage us to begin by support women who have no voice in terrible situations in a terrible industry.
Sisters, we can do better.
So that’s it. That’s my take. 4 issues, 3 complementary and one which finds fault. The takeaway? Learn Spanish. Promote safe and solid immigration practices. Learn about and support Puerto Rico. Retire the pole.
Oh, and don’t let Guy Diamond pick your outfit.
Sarah Kinzer 