AS THE WORLD WATCHED INFERIOR BOWL SUNDAY 2010
by Alexandra York
What could be more American than football, snack food, beer, and the National Anthem?
Unfortunately, one would never identify these as positive hallmarks of American “culture” by
watching the “Super” Bowl this year. Deteriorating in quality for a long time, this event finally
undid itself with disgusting commercials and gross behavior on Sunday. What must the whole
world (and the whole world was watching!) conclude about our country in general, witnessing
endlessly inane antics parading as an approved-for-all-ages sports event, traditionally shared
by family and friends?
In what by now have become routine, primitive rituals, otherwise talented and excellent athletes (of all sizes, shapes, and colors) butt chests, slap heads, knock fists, and hop around like certain creatures in the wild, but many of them do adorn themselves with tattoos and body piercing as if to prove that, actually, they are humans (albeit of the tribal type). Such wonderful role models for our own youth, plus those of other nations, who look to America to set trends!
And the commercials? What do they reveal about America? Doritos dramatizing the strangling of a human being by a dog with its own “don’t bark” collar, causing us to choke over the blatant “animal rights” political correctness? But maybe their other ads showing a “man” lusting after both a young boy’s snacks and his mother’s body, or the pretend corpse stuffing his mouth made their product more appealing? Anheuser-Busch’s ads, typically adored by destructive, unruly, mindlessly party-mongering adolescents of all ages, are de rigueur for that company by now; since the producers never grow up themselves, what more to expect? But Snickers almost beat them this year with a game of “adult” embarrassment, featuring the hard tackling of old people (including, sadly, one famous but misguided actress) to the ground. Oh, the FUN of it! Or make sense of $2,500,000 of our tax dollars spent on nonsensical scenes purporting to have some connection with the U.S. census? Dockers? A bunch of males slow-marching around with no pants—gosh darn, what titillation for us gals! Or Career Consultant’s fat males and females in their undies—a real “turn on” for both sexes! Dove soap’s family bath, Teleflora’s dead flowers, Intel’s car bashing and paper-eating? Well, I could go on—I regret to leave out some of the other, equally offensive or brainless ads, but after all, there were 48 minutes of them (25% of game time)--so enough said to “get” the many pictures adding up to one big picture for the world to see: Americans of all ages, acting like shallow, sensation-seeking, joy-riding, mouth-stuffing, freak-loving, undisciplined children. But I save the best for last: Audi’s Green Police enforcing environmental edicts (see the frightening thing on Youtube if you missed it in person). Better not laugh in your beer over this one--Coming soon from Washington!
Finally, the “music”: Adding to the free-for-all, “comic” festivities of this frolicking
Sunday farce (or tragedy, depending on your taste in theater), we were treated to Who?
Oh yes, those old men surrounded by “shoot-‘em-up” pyrotechnics to add some extra volume and flash to their own brash noise, blasting our ears the same as they did some 40 years ago (!) when they were young and maybe didn’t know any better. Still, the crowd in the stadium loved the sensory overload, dancing, jumping, and flailing about, getting their cathartic “high” through yelling and hooting in emotional purges that only revealed the already desensitized state of their minds. Plus, so sorry to inform Queenie: “America the Beautiful” is not a gospel song, and lyrics actually “say” something if the words are strung together as written rather than separated into breathy, sort-of rhythmic beats; I mean, “above the froooo-tedd plain”? And maybe she could have worn something more respectful than blue jeans for the occasion to “present” one of America’s most cherished and patriotic songs? Also, a side-note suggestion to off-key Carrie to look up the composer and date of America’s National Anthem; screaming “soul” was not what they had in mind.
So there it was in all its international “glory”: Super Bowl 2010, this year becoming the most-watched show in the whole of television history, broadcasting to the entire world a series of snapshots depicting Americans’ preferred pleasures and pastimes. I submit that the only spin worth watching at this “Show” was that of the sleek football, propelled aloft physically by the purposeful hand of an expert athlete and aimed with precision at a mentally pre-conceived destination, sailing through the air in spellbinding silence, the only remnant of beauty and expertise in American sports today.
Art and Culture critic, Alexandra York is President of American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART), a New-York-City-based nonprofit arts foundation, with a mission to promote beauty and life-serving values in all of the fine arts.
Discuss this Article (95 messages)
|
