The Seattle Seahawks had a nine-point lead over the New England Patriots at halftime of Super Bowl LX. While the players filed off the field, America prepared itself for the greater gridiron battle: the anti-American Bad Bunny half-time show vs. TPUSA’s populist alternative that featured Kid Rock and a handful of generic country singers.
Bad Bunny’s performance had him wandering sugarcane fields in a padded shirt and bearing a football, touring Puerto Rican cultural storefronts, and presiding over a presentation of rotating rumps. Performing exclusively in Spanish, as is his wont, Bad Bunny sang lyrics that were as alien to me as they were to older relatives — a departure from last year’s half-time show starring Kendrick Lamar, which was indecipherable exclusively to those over age 40.
Lady Gaga showed up at some point, and some strings contributed the most musically interesting aside of the show. Ricky Martin popped out of the foliage with some bananas, and then Bad Bunny — bearing the Puerto Rican flag — led a revolution of sorts up a power pole. He then led a parade of flags, listing off the countries of Latin America and North America.
His last act was to spike a football with the words “We Are All America” written on the pigskin, seemingly a protest against U.S. immigration enforcement and American exceptionalism.
It was an odd show, completely removed from the stadium audience by foliage and sets. The gender-bending Bad Bunny, and LGBT fixtures Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin, had a more subtle subversive message than was expected, and so the show failed to either entertain or incense. It was a bland Disney jungle cruise of a show. Safe to say, Prince retains the crown as the greatest performer and performance in Super Bowl history.