Rachel D, Peter Fenzel, Ryan Sheely and Matthew Wrather overthink the ads and halftime performances of Super Bowl L.
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Further Reading
Response to demographic survey:
white male 35-40
checks etymonline.com more than once per week
hair status: somewhere between “receding” and “scattered resistance in the face of overwhelming odds”
… and I nominate Wrather as our international spokesman
Blessed be Rachel D!
Demo: white male (duh) 35-40.
So I watched the “Formation” music video before I listened to your comments about Beyonce in the half-time show, so I am not sure if this is the right place for these thoughts, or if they should be held till later, but I will share them now because who knows what will come later.
So “Formation” is a very Black song. I think it is great and more power to Beyonce. I couldn’t help but think of the show Lip Sync Battle on Spike as I watched it though. Could a white celebrity, male or female, go on Lip Sync Battle and lip sync to “Formation?” Then I was reminded of the overthinking it article https://www.overthinkingit.com/2015/12/30/top-ten-best-album-lists-2015/ and the recommendation made to read the essay on “To Pimp a Butterfly” from Pitchfork ( http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/5/ ). The article includes this line, “Whatever his reasoning, “The Blacker the Berry” provided white people with no entry into the song: There is hardly anything on the song for Taylor Swift to lip sync in her car unless she was going to deal with psychic turmoil of mouthing “My hair is nappy, my dick is big, my nose is round and wide/ You hate me don’t you?/ You hate my people—your plan is to terminate my culture/ You’re fuckin’ evil, I want you to recognize that I’m a proud monkey.”” Could a white celebrity go on Lip Sync Battle and lip sync those words?
To me this feels like a right way to address the notion of White privilege, make something that requires Black privilege to engage with. Make White people uncomfortable trying to connect with it. In both cases I think it says something about our culture that after these two very Black songs have been recently popularized, society lives on. There was not a Beyonce metaphorical wardrobe malfunction and Kendrick Lamar won the battle of top 10 lists. The future looks bright to me, even if the percentage of popular songs available to lip sync goes down.