Football is a game that you can rightly despise because it is so violent. Because it can be so boring at the same time, well, often. Because it’s pervasively commercialized.
But then there are those nights. These stories that only sport writes. These turns in moments when everything seemed decided. This emotion and of course the tears, those of the losers and those of the winners.
The Kansas City Chiefs in Miami won on Sunday Super bowl, the american championship. They beat the San Francisco 49ers 31:20, and it was a fascinating game. Because Kansas City led early, but then allowed 17 points of the 49ers in a row – to respond with 21 points in just over five minutes. This night of Miami was a spectacle, both in terms of sport and aesthetics.
The Super Bowl is the one unifying event that has remained in America, divided into Trump admirers and Trump despisers. The United States has long been a streaming company, much more than Germany, and hundreds of cable channels are driving this individualization. Super Bowl still means: America watches TV.
And America forgets collectively.
It forgets that National Football League (NFL) wanted to cover up all the knowledge about brain damage caused by the many collisions. That the league is still racist: the club owners are white, only three quarterbacks are black, and Colin Kaepernick, once the 49ers’ playmaker who knelt down to protest racism during the national anthem, has been out of a job for two years now, while the NFL quickly integrates all those banned for a few weeks from rape or domestic violence.
The United States likes to forget all of that for that one evening because the Super Bowl is always the biggest pop cultural event of the year. The halftime show is a must, even the (this time 80) commercials are part of it, because all of this makes the overall event bigger than the Oscars, much bigger.
America celebrates itself, enjoys itself, that’s the Super Bowl. The date was bizarre this time.
Two days earlier, the Washington, DC Senate had heard witnesses in impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump refused and thus ended the process (even if it will officially continue until Wednesday). The first democratic primary is held in Iowa on Monday and Donald Trump’s State-of-the-Union speech on Tuesday.
That’s why this 54th Super Bowl also became a political event: Fox broadcasted the game, i.e.Rupert Murdoch’s broadcaster cheering and supporting Trump, and shortly before the game Sean Hannity, Trump’s advisor and favorite Fox presenter, was allowed to interview the President,
Hannity was nice to Trump, and Trump sometimes spoke confidently and sometimes offended. A revolution is underway in the United States, he said, “I mean, a positive revolution.” He called the impeachment process “very unfair” and the political concepts of Democrat Elizabeth Warren “a fairy tale hour”; for the other potential rivals Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders he came up with the words “sleepy” and “communist”; Michael Bloomberg, on the other hand, the not too big newcomer to the presidential election campaign, had asked for a hidden podium for the TV debates, Trump claimed (Bloomberg denied a few minutes later).
Then, luckily, it was about sport.
San Francisco started nervously, dropping an early one interception to, a passport intercepted by Kansas City. The quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs faked a throw a little later and ran for the first touchdown himself. 10: 3 led Kansas City, significantly stronger in the first quarter, then the game turned, soon it was 10:10 and now it was pause.
Shakira quickly started the halftime show in a red dress. With a rope she indicated bondage games and made it clear that she and the dancers around her would not give up power, certainly not to men. she sang She Wolf. Whenever, wherever. Chantaje and Empirethen crowdsurfing Hips don’t lie, The rapper Bad Bunny, Puerto Rican, stood up for I like it at Shakira’s side.
Jennifer Lopez appeared and writhed Waiting for tonight like a porn star around a pole dance pole: it was all pretty sexual, but also choreographed with a roar. Songs like Jenny from the Block and On the floor Lopez followed, finally Let’s get loud, together with her daughter Emme Maribel Muñiz. An American flag, in which Lopez was now wrapped, became the Puerto Rican, the twelve minutes of two Latinas in the predominantly Hispanic Miami.
“Muchas gracias”cried Shakira, “Thank you very much“cried Jennifer Lopez, it was the first show of the NFL’s new collaboration Jay-Z and whose company originated Roc Nation. Let’s put it this way: There have been a lot of slack and embarrassing breaks at the Super Bowl.
