Music Mondays (or Late Sunday Nights): Kendrick Lamar

Philosophical Reflections on the Super Bowl Halftime Show

So I am going to try something with this post. I am going to write it in real time! And just since I figure that almost all of us either watched the Super Bowl, or actively didn’t in a moral statement about all kinds of stuff, I am making this post available to everyone. And, the videos I will link certainly have explicit lyrics.

Yeah, so not sure how this is going to go, but I am going to watch the halftime show with Kendrick Lamar and do a philosophical reading of it as it occurs. I doubt that this is going to be the deepest of all possible Music Mondays, but maybe it will illustrate what it might look like to see the world via a philosophical lens.

And yes, it might be that doing so causes you to run quickly back to your regular hermeneutic glasses!

Alright, let’s see what happens.

Hasn’t started yet, but thank you commentator for noting the importance of “protecting the quarterback” if the Chiefs are going to come back.

Yes, all of the football brilliance here noting the fact that "Kansas City needs a big play.” Thanks for that. Ugh.

Ok, well, after a couple minutes of unbelievably dumb commentary - but made more impressive by the fact that the dude were all wearing suits? - now a few more commercials to remind everyone that the real winner of the Super Bowl is capitalism.

And so it begins . . .

Some branding from Apple. Ugh.

Samuel L. Jackson as “Uncle Sam” is interesting in its inversion of the typical racial dynamics of our national self-conception. I am intrigued at how this will play out as a running commentary that challenges the assumptions of anyone who thinks that the national identity of a country that is grounded in the words of hospitality on the Statue of Liberty is rightly re-conceived as a “MAGA” society. We find ourselves in a society in which patriotism is replaced by vile nationalism and engaged discourse is undermined by the self-interest of our leaders.

The opening with Kendrick on the car is cool - he is understated and yet spitting fire. The idea of the focal point of national attention being on this aesthetic presentation is fantastic. The dancers all jumping out in red, white, blue maintains the interrogation of what it means for football to be a “pastime” and social event that reflects American identity.

By the way, my son is now rapping along with Kendrick, which makes me proud.

Samuel L. Jackson: “Too loud, too reckless, too ghetto.” Nice. Again, here we see him challenging the status quo and expectations of the audience in real time. Then for Kendrick to immediately go into “Humble” is amazing. Perhaps the virtue most lacking in our country, and especially in our political leaders.

The dancers creating the American Flag is impressive as a powerful visual forcing all the viewers to interrogate their assumptions about who counts as an “American” and how to conceive of “patriotism” in a broken society.

I genuinely like the understated backdrop throughout the show. Especially cool is the streetlight and the folks singing there on the corner is really compelling for anchoring the performance in not only Kendrick’s own local background coming from Compton, but also in the history of hip-hop - which literally started with folks in the South Bronx throwing block parties by tapping into the power of the streetlights by breaking open the power boxes at the base of them. Here we see a profound critique of the way that power has become so centralized and narrowed in the hands of an oligarchic few - at the expense of those who have to tap into alternative power sources in order to keep the lights on.

Next, Samuel L. Jackson saying “you done lost your damn mind” is hilarious as a statement that is reflective of the way in which we probably feel in the face of a world gone mad. And, it is also a manifestation of what many in the audience who are unable to maintain critical distance from their own assumptions are saying about Kendrick’s very halftime show itself.

Then, SZA - the lady in red - comes on as things slow down for a minute almost as a way of Kendrick illustrating that what folks want is just to ignore the seriousness of social commentary and get their groove on. The triumph of emotivism over rationality.

What is so impressive with Kendrick is how intentional everything is. He is not just singing his hits in order to make the crowd cheer, but actively scripting - almost liturgically scripting - every single thing as a sustained challenge to the assumptions of those who bow at the economic altar that the Super Bowl represents.

Oh, wow, then in response to the slower, more sensual track, Samuel L. Jackson shows up to say “yeah, that’s what America wants . . .” Yes, yes it does. We don’t want the level raised. We don’t want the bar set higher. We don’t want to have to navigate conceptual tensions. We don’t want to face up to our own failures. We just want, like the fans of whoever wins tonight (clearly it is going to be the Eagles), to chant “We’re number one!” Social self-aggrandizement is no more virtuous than bald egoism. Both corrupt any sense of relational existence.

Then, Kendrick goes into “They Not Like Us” with the lyrics that speak directly to the importance of resisting the historical power structures of oppression and racial stratification. As if to offer a critique to the very “America” announced by “Uncle Sam” throughout the show. This move is so cool and so impressively subtle that I fear most folks will likely miss the weight of it.

As a way of concluding the show, we hear “Turn this TV off” on repeat. This line performatively challenges the very lack of substance so frequently found in the economic model of identity and importance that the Super Bowl, itself, actually reflects. Then, to turn and smile at the camera while basically giving the finger to the very ideological framework in which his performance is likely to be read by most folks is sheer brilliance.

It is as if to say: You just saw the most meaningful thing - a performance that contests the structure of American identity internal to the oligarchy dictating that very “American” identity - and so the best thing that we can do, and perhaps even the most “American” is to refuse to be “bought” by the powerful. So, now that the show is over, turn the tv off. Stop listening to the reality tv star who wants only loyalty while ignoring the suffering of those harmed by concern for ratings over actual moral flourishing. Turn off the tv and begin to hear each other at the level of our shared humanity.

Sounds like a decent idea because Kendrick Lamar offers us an invitation to embrace some semblance of decency. Alas, we have forgotten what that looks like.

And then, of course, we go back to the Apple branding and more commercials (which, I admit that I do enjoy just for the creativity, but Kendrick just called the entire bluff of the shallowness of our society and the “influencers” who think that they control it).

Well done, Kendrick. Kierkegaard says that the Bible is a “mirror” in which we are meant to read ourselves - to face up to who we are and where we have failed. I see this halftime show as inviting the same sort of self-reflection. If we fail to see ourselves as challenged by this show, and instead either just give into unreflective applause, or unthinking criticism of it, we will have failed to realize that the “plank” in our own eye might be blinding us from seeing much of anything at all.

I am going to stop here since the football commentators are back on saying unbelievably trivial and dumb things about what it takes to win a game. Sigh. I guess I should have turned my tv of a few minutes ago.

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Ok, what did you think about the show?