It doesn’t take much to see the Superbowl as a parallel for our society. It is the ultimate display of consumerism, violence, nationalism and faux-Americana. Every year it gets a little worse. Equally unbearable are US families who decry the “edgy” advertisements as they try to “enjoy the game” with those spastic mental cases they call children. This year’s orgy of excess finally culminated in a third quarter power outage putting a halt to the show. A better metaphor for our broken economy and self destructiveness could not be chosen.
Once you get into this mindset of viewing the Superbowl as a microcosm of our society, all sorts of hidden deformities come to the surface. Lets start with the advertisements. After all, there would be no game without them. Take the Oreo ad where passionate cookie lovers beat on each other and burn down a library. Then there’s the GoDaddy ad which is not only hyper-sexualized chauvinism, but as a friend of mine pointed out, a distilled corporate form of sexuality, which is somehow even worse.
But commercials are nothing new. You don’t really get to understand America’s perverse nature until you tap into our tendency for nationalism and self-aggrandizement. The spectacle really began with a choir of kids from Sandy Hook Elementary School singing America the Beautiful (first verse only because that’s all anyone knows!). Yes, lets watch the survivors of a recent tragedy sing an ode to a nation that doesn’t exist, meanwhile our government bombs the shit out of thousands of kids just like them in other nations. What a treasure.
Madonna Beyonce did the half-time show this year, yet another in a long line of aging “artists” who is now far more identifiable as a rich elitist. Reuniting with Destiny’s Child… yes very interesting. Looks like diminishing returns aren’t limited to stocks and bonds.
Then there’s the game itself, which isn’t so much a game as millionaires playing out scenes of violent tribalism. Professional sports, like everything else in our society, is a perversion of the real thing. Sports enhances personal fitness and encourages respectful competitiveness, but the spectacle only allows viewers to live out righteous fantasies. The absurdity of supporting a private team they have no connection to whatsoever escapes them. “My limited liability corporation is better than your limited liability corporation!”
In the third quarter, a power outage brought the whole damned monstrosity to a halt. And sure, at first this was a part of the show too, a way to poke fun at conventions and maybe squeeze in a few more ads, but I suspect that after thirty minutes of waiting, just about everyone had enough. The perfect ending to a bloated and unsustainable mess and thank God too. Hopefully, it was prophetic as well, as we spiral into this economic abyss.
By the way, here’s one of the other verses to America The Beautiful:
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!
