Decades ago, I started filing my taxes on Super Bowl Sunday. Even though all the tax forms for various employment were in by January 31st, I usually needed a few weeks to wrap my head around hunkering down to file.
In the morning, or after some morning exercise class, I’d sit with a glass of wine and paper copies of all the tax things with the goal of finishing in time for kickoff. Not because of the game itself, but to have a firm deadline.
This year, with the ease of filing electronically, I finished in less than a hour the day before the Super Bowl. The only thing that gave me a moment of pause during the process was whether Elon and Big Balls would see my filing. Even though a judge had temporarily blocked their access to the sensitive information in the US Treasury Department, who can really tell what this presidential shadow government is going to get away with in the end.
Par for the course, the Super Bowl was a boring, one-sided blow out. The commercials were marginally more entertaining, but the halftime show was spectacular. And polarizing.
If all you wanted to do was sing along with music, then this wasn’t the halftime show for you. However, if you were curious of why the NFL choose a Pultizer-prize winning hip-hop artist to perform, then you were captivated.
The opening drone shot of the game-controller markings on the performance space, clued the viewer that another game besides football was about to be played. The metaphor extended from Kendrick Lamar’s personal life to life in the States, or even bigger, the game of life itself.
Zoom in to Samuel L. Jackson introducing himself as “Uncle Sam,” complete with the iconic, patriotic red, white and blue attire. Throughout the musical performance and sleek choreography, which morphed into different, stylishly on-beat, visual configurations, Jackson maintained the narrative thread, reminiscent of an older West African archetype, a griot.
Griots, traditional West African travelling poets/musicians, tell historical stories. Like everything transported from the motherland into a foreign land, the role evolved to fit within the confines of 13-minute halftime show. Nonetheless, its inclusion served as a reminder that our history didn’t begin with slavery. Our ancestors had traditions, culture and all the accoutrements of a civilized society very different from their African American diaspora.
Jackson played counterpoint to Lamar, cautioning the younger Black man to “play the game” conservatively by unfolding a story that aligned with the dominate narrative. Lamar did his own thing, which set up, what my English teachers called a “foil.” Mom calls it “being contrary.”
Whatever it’s called, Jackson’s character contrasted with Lamar’s character, highlighting the positions of two political views: the conservative and the revolutionary. In case anyone missed that point, Lamar even announced that the revolution would be televised.
For many, the pinnacle of the show was when Lamar performed his most controversial song in which he accused another rapper of being both a colonizer and a pedophile. As if that wasn’t controversial enough, there’s an ongoing legal battle over that song.
Another battle continued after the halftime show. The angriest people who “didn’t get it” felt entitled to do so. None of that “getting comfortable in their discomfort” or looking up any lyrics they couldn’t hear/understand. They wanted to sing along with songs they already knew, not learn something new.
During a time when DEI initiatives are ending at the federal level and pressured to end in business settings, the entire show was performed by people of color. That, in and of itself, was not the problem.
In the not-so-distant past, minstrel shows had white actors in black face, depicting racial stereotypes, which white audiences found amusing. Actual Black faces confidently playing the game by their own rules with their own jokes was another thing entirely.
However, not everyone was alienated by that. After 50 years of hip-hop, many of us grew up on the genre. Skin tone alone no longer predicts whether a person enjoys hip-hop among the younger generations.
Therein lies the real battle between those who want to return to some alleged idyllic time in the past and those who weren’t alive back then. No one in the history of the world has ever managed to unring the bell of change. As tightly as some cling to the past, the present slips from their fingers.
In the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, whenever anyone would ask who I was rooting for or who I predicted would win, my answer was the same: Kendrick Lamar. I was right.