Bad Bunny and jingoism lite: was this the Super Bowl where woke roared back? | Super Bowl LX

A.oger Federer smiling wolfishly at the crowd: a return to woke? Adam Sandler’s hangdog in the stands at Levi’s Stadium, Jon Bon Jovi mooching on the sidelines like a retired dentist on a cruise, Billie Joe Armstrong belting out American Idiot on the pregame show under his motionless meringue of dark-blonde hair: were they a sign? A New England Patriots team that was neither favored nor widely reviled, then promptly rewarded an appreciative public by losing: Was it the Super Bowl that proved that history really can move forward, that America is not destined to remain hostage to the tremors and hatreds of the past? Well, yes and no.

A year after Donald Trump made himself the centerpiece of American soccer, Sunday’s game in Santa Clara still promised a correction of sorts — a cooling of the mood, perhaps even an end to the manipulation of the sport for political purposes. As always, the best way to gauge the success of this mission was as the gods intended: through a television screen. Trump — struggling with historically low approval ratings, facing a midterm massacre this year and no doubt cautious about risking a public appearance in the deep blue sea of ​​the Bay Area — was absent on this occasion, and he also kept the F-22 fighter jets that were to be part of the pregame flyover away from Levi’s Stadium. (Unspecified “operational missions” was the reason given for the planes’ withdrawal, which means there’s probably a low-ranking member of the Trump administration pouring big money into a U.S. military strike somewhere in Latin America as we speak.) And yet the absent autocrat still loomed large over the proceedings, his paralyzing influence turning every moment and every gesture on Sunday into a referendum on the prospects for a post-Trumpian sporting future. Could football return to normal?

The Seahawks and Patriots did their part, putting on a game of punishing defense and attrition offense that had all the carefree charm of a medieval torture procedure. Can football return to normal? It’s still unclear, but obviously it can certainly be boring, which is perhaps a form of progress. Despite the best efforts of professional jaw surgery patient Jake Paul, the pregame talk was mostly about de-escalation: Even ESPN host Pat McAfee felt moved to point out, on his first visit to San Francisco, that the city had nothing to do with the urban hell described by the doomsayers on Fox News and other right-wing media. Maybe, for once, the Super Bowl wouldn’t be dragged into America’s tedious, never-ending culture wars. Between Paul’s racist critique of the halftime show and the alternative spectacle offered by Turning Point USA, perhaps all the right can do now is cry helplessly into the void.

On the field, Joe Montana, Peyton Manning and a group of other football legends got things moving by flashing peace signs through a pregame honor guard of young women with violins, and from there the tone of this Super Bowl as a grown-up affair, with all the strings and restraint, was set. Even the pregame ceremony to mark the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence had a shrugging, almost apologetic quality, with a curt sermon and feathery symbolism: It was chauvinism, but on Ozempic. YouTuber Charlie Puth was a surprise choice to sing the national anthem, and no one seemed more shocked than the man himself: Dressed like a fun-loving dad on his way to parent-teacher night – button-down shirt, tie, brown leather jacket and straight-leg jeans – Puth forewent the standard pomposity and delivered The Star-Spangled Banner in a feline whisper. Perhaps more than any other recent episode of the biggest day in American sports, this Super Bowl seemed determined not to draw attention to itself. “I know we won the Super Bowl, but we could have been a little better on offense,” winning quarterback Sam Darnold told reporter Melissa Stark after the game. Even in triumph, there were lessons to be gleaned, lessons to be remembered, improvements to be planned. It was the Super Bowl as a corporate retreat, a time to pause, reflect and reset for the year ahead.

With Mike Tirico and Chris Collinsworth, NBC boasted two play-by-play announcers with the character to respond to the soporific moment. Collinsworth, qualifying for his sixth Super Bowl, offered a clinic in stating the obvious, noting midway through the second quarter that “this is shaping up to be a defensive play.” He’s certainly not bad for Tom Brady, but no one besides Brady is. Meanwhile, Tirico, fulfilling the dream that sparked his defection from ESPN in 2016 to host his first-ever Super Bowl, had to juggle his duties at Levi’s Stadium with his role as anchor of NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics, a fact that viewers were reminded of about once every 30 seconds on Sunday night. “The champion will be crowned in 30 minutes,” Tirico announced at halftime with a theatrical pause, before adding with an elongated burst: “Mmm, maybe more.” It’s a good thing that NBC has tied the big man to a long-term contract, because it’s unclear if anyone else working in media today has the talent to produce such powerful material. Tirico is the most white-collar commentator in American sports; he has an unrivaled skill at making every in-game call and on-set interjection sound like something your accountant might say to you as he walks you through your tax return. In this sense, he was the perfect on-air complement to this turgid encounter, an anti-hype guy suited to his times.

Yes, but was it woke up? Was the theatrics behind this Super Bowl, both in the stadium and on television, some sort of “statement” on America Today? Is progressive culture now “back” in any meaningful sense? The choice of Bad Bunny as the halftime headliner may have been a trap for Red America, but as convincing as the field at Levis’s Stadium was terraformed to resemble the San Juan hinterland (it wasn’t very convincing), the Super Bowl ultimately did not herald a permanent “turn” by the NFL toward cultural progressivism. No one, not even Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio himself, “made libations”; However welcome or unexpected it may have been, the halftime show did not give rise to any major protests over ICE or laments over the country’s rapid descent toward authoritarianism. After last year’s Super Bowl devolved into a Trumpified debacle, Sunday was all about leveling the ledger, welcoming the sport’s non-Maga contingent into the tent — a project in which the inclusion of Bad Bunny, the lack of drama on or off the field and the bipartisan clash over $180 hamburgers all played a galvanizing role.

As always, it’s the commercials, rather than the events in the stadium, that say the most about the state of the world today. Aside from a few outliers—Guy Fieri as “some guy” in a Bosch power tools ad, Adrien Brody in method mode for TurboTax, William Shatner as a near-incontinent Raisin Bran ambassador named “Will Shat”—this year’s ads advertised products that fit a reliable number of recurring categories: AI, gambling, food delivery, and insurance. Here, in taxonomic miniature, is a brilliant summary of what culture has in store for us: slop, speculation, withdrawal from the commons, and indemnification – if we’re lucky – against the disasters that await us. Amid the tedium of the action on the field, this Super Bowl offered a powerful advertisement for the theatrics and violence of capitalism, as usual.