The 2019 Super Bowl exquisitely captured today’s mainstream American life: a culture that now screams, “Please don’t notice me!”
There was nothing fun, new, or — God forbid — controversial during the entire four-hour event, from the game (New England Patriots win again in the least-scored Super Bowl ever), to the commercials (which one do you remember?), to the halftime show (Maroon 5’s most radio-friendly songs of 2005).
Commercials during the event felt like companies were given massive budgets and decided to blow all of it cramming as many celebrities or well-worn effects into 30-second slots. The Pepsi ad featured rappers Lil John, Cardi B, and actor Steve Carell, putting forth the desperate message, “See? We’re cool. Just like Coke. Aren’t we?”
Mermaids were featured in two separate commercials, only one of which made sense, given that Bon & Viv Seltzer Water’s logo is a pair of mermaids. The other ad was for Sprint, the logo of which is, as far as I can tell, the peeling of a string cheese.
No less than five ads used robots to make a point, the most remarkable of which was the TurboTax ad. Its disturbing robot child stated how sad it was that it couldn’t become a tax accountant, right before it let out a concerning giggle instead of an expected tear.
As for the game itself, it was an almost entirely uninterrupted series of punts (if the Rams had won, their punter would have been the MVP) until the fourth quarter, when someone finally bothered to score the game’s only touchdown. Anyone who made it to the halftime show might have yearned for two seconds of Janet Jackson’s right breast instead of five minutes of Adam Levine’s shirtless, excessively tattooed body, which bore a lion of the animal cracker variety below his navel.
In between Maroon 5 songs, viewers got Travis Scott and former OutKast rapper Big Boi. There was nothing to talk about after any of it because, unlike Beyonce’s 2016 performance, with its black-militant overtones, there was no star power, no heat, and nothing to say.
That was the whole of the Super Bowl program. And it’s what the country deserved.
Nowadays, any ad that touches anyone the wrong way becomes a boycott. A halftime performance that provokes discussion leads the TV network and the NFL to break out in hives. The game itself was harmless, and that’s just how we like it.
That’s the state of our national consciousness now — it’s an adapted version of the three wise monkeys: see nothing new, hear nothing new, speak nothing new.
