Rather than address one of the biggest controversies in American sporting history – the “take the knee” protests by American footballer Colin Kaepernick – 2019’s Super Bowl deflected it with Adam Levine’s abs. Fronting Maroon 5 topless, his performance was much derided; the New York Times described it as “an inessential performance by a band that might have lost some moral authority if it had any moral authority to lose”.
Praise be, then, to Jennifer Lopez for her performance at this year’s final. As well as being a triumph of hair styling, pole dancing and leather craftsmanship, this daughter of Puerto Rican parents also deployed staging that featured children sitting inside cages – surely a reference to the Trump-approved detention of Latin-American immigrants. There was female empowerment, too, with her singing dance troupe of girls surrounding her as she wrapped herself in a reversible flag – one half Puerto Rican, the other stars and stripes – as she sang a snatch of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA with her daughter Emme Muñiz.
It is a potent image: Bruce Springsteen wrote the song to be bitterly ironic; this percolates into Lopez’s performance. She and her daughter were born in the USA, yes, but are perhaps feeling less patriotic than ever thanks to Trump’s cruel policies. As with Springsteen, though, the melody has real nationalist fervour – the sound of someone wanting to love their country as much as they feel they should.
Lopez’s statement is brave, because the Super Bowl’s reality-warping cultural weight means even innocuous moments such as MIA’s cheeky middle finger as she joined Madonna’s performance in 2010, or Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction in 2004 (which exposed her breast for half a second), are judged as horrendous moral failings. Sure enough, tabloids are trying to confect a fuss out of Lopez’s crotch. But like Lady Gaga’s 2017 performance of Born This Way, which brought a queer pride anthem into the homes of millions, or Beyoncé’s 2016 affirmation of black female pride as she brought Black Lives Matter, Malcolm X and Black Panthers references to the stage, this is a show that is still about soft power. Lopez, with her co-headliner Shakira plus the Latin pop megastars Bad Bunny and J Balvin, sang at length in Spanish. It harked back to another Miami-based final, in 1999, where Gloria Estefan and Stevie Wonder were another multilingual, multi-ethnic vision of US cultural richness. As well as a site of world-class sport and music, the Super Bowl remains a place for the United States to hash out its idea of itself.
