The Super Bowl highlights two different Americas
There's a line between viewing the world as it is versus how we want it to be.
Two things emerged from last night’s Super Bowl LV. The first, Tom Brady, as much as it pains me to say as a Jets fan, is the greatest quarterback of all time. (Also, if it weren’t for the Jets knocking Drew Bledsoe out of commission, who knows if Brady ever sees a snap. But we don’t have time machines, so...)
The second, and more important: there is a fine line between viewing the world as it is versus how we want it to be, and as Kindred’s CEO Ian Schafer told me on Twitter last night, “And that’s advertising.”
(If you missed any of the spots, or want to watch them again, CNBC has you covered)
Last night’s broadcast reminded us that there are indeed two Americas; an America that applauds its most vulnerable citizens for doing the jobs that allow the other America to protect themselves; an America that will go to a large event during a pandemic while other Americans haven’t seen their families in a year; an America that tells its citizens to wear a mask while showing commercials of maskless Americans. We are a nation divided even as the NFL reminds us “it takes all of us” and brands tell us “we’re all in this together.”
The New York Times reminds us today that we are not in this together. Reporting on the disparity between grocery and retail workers, and the companies they work for:
Brookings found that while 13 of the largest retail and grocery companies in the United States earned $17.7 billion more in the first three quarters of 2020 than they did a year earlier, most stopped offering extra compensation to their associates in the early summer. At the same time, some opted to buy back shares and gave big sums to executives.
The tale of two Americas and the main messages of the night—of unity, of sacrifice, of hope — were on full display, with the quiet star of the evening, the coronavirus, serving as the backdrop for every moment of the broadcast—from the types of commercials and their messages to the realities of the game (from the crowd to the players to the naked streaker dude), the coronavirus cast a long shadow on the evening.
The Super Bowl is America’s vision, of corporate sponsorship and governmental (if not military) might, beamed into TVs around the world. There is no more land to conquer, so we try to conquer hearts and minds using sight, sound, motion. And a whole lot of fireworks.
The NFL, an $11 billion-a-year organization, has entwined itself with the American government for decades. We see the overt relationship when military fighter jets (which themselves cost billions of dollars) roar over stadiums; we get the interview with the President of the United States.
On a positive note, this relationship has yielded vaccine centers. The NFL is opening up all 30 stadiums to administer vaccines.
But we see the more subtle relationship, the softer-sell, through the narrative connective tissue between the myth of American exceptionalism and corporate sponsorship of the league..
We talk of unity, of sacrifice, of togetherness. But the images—from the 25,000 in attendance to the cutout cardboard people to the slate of commercials—belie that message.
New York Magazine reflects on this:
If you’re impressed by those 7,500 vaccinated fans, remember that the other 17,500 not only weren’t vaccinated, they weren’t even tested coming into the stadium. (There were 7,000 positive COVID cases in Hillsborough County in the last week, and of course, the Buccaneers were playing in their home stadium.) Social distance all you want, there isn’t a stadium in America with 25,000 fans in it that doesn’t hit traffic when visitors hit the concourse, concessions, and restrooms. And even if everything were safe inside, there are still the optics of a full-seeming stadium in the middle of the worst public-health crisis of the last 100 years. When you take a step back from it, it actually looks worse that the NFL wanted the stadium to look fuller than it was. Why would you want to advertise to people that they can gather, that everything is normal? Doesn’t that make it worse?
Yes. Yes. Yes. Advertising numbs us, makes us see the world as we wish it were, not as it is. And during a pandemic, it’s dangerous to have a false sense of reality.
AB InBev’s “Let’s grab a beer” spot shows us people doing people things, saying “When we’re back, let’s remember, it’s never just about the beer. It’s saying it’s about that simple human truth: we need each other.”
We do need each other. This is how society works. But we’ve learned in the last year that many people actually don’t believe this. Our social contracts have been ripped up. Know how I know? Americans violently stormed our Capitol because they bowed down to a false orange idol.
Or look at Jeep, which has, for the second year in a row, tapped into the Boomer vein. Last year, it brought Phil Connors (aka Bill Murray) back to Punxsutawney; this year, it asked Bruce Springsteen to lend his voice to talk about the two Americas.
It opens up with a road in the middle of the screen, literally dividing the scene. But it’s a visual twist as he talks about ‘the middle,’ something we need. The soil is common ground he said; we can make it to the mountaintop, through the desert. He mentions hope on the road (it is a car commercial after all). Advertising, as politics, is about campaigning in poetry.
Jeep tries to remind “us we are stronger than the obstacles in our way, and invites us to remember all the ways we are connected as Americans” even as we are more disconnected than ever.
Yet implied in these sponsored messages is hope. And while not a bad thing, to look forward to a time when ~all this~ is in our rear-view mirror, perhaps we’d be better off seeing the world through a less rose-colored lens. Why? Because even as we’re being told “we’re in this together” companies used the Super Bowl’s platform to espouse a hustle culture, where people have to get side jobs because they can’t make enough to live. How fucked up are we?
Fiverr’s spot on freelancers and Squarespace’s “5 to 9” spot, flipping the Dolly Parton song (she rewrote the lyrics: “Working 5 to 9, you’ve got passion and a vision/Cuz it’s hustlin’ time, whole new way to make a livin’”) emphasize the dichotomy between people who have been able to work from home during the pandemic and those who haven’t.
The conflicting messages can create whiplash, oscillating between a nation trying to figure out how to move forward and a nation trying to survive today. Perhaps nothing was as confusing than the one magical moment of every Super Bowl, when the winning quarterback looks into the camera and says where he will be celebrating.
A maskless Brady and Gronk telling the world they are now going to go to Disney World is as twisted as it is hopeful. A tale of two Americas.
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Phish, “Two Versions of Me”
Some interesting links:
For when analytics companies get bought:
WordPress VIP acquiring content analytics company Parse.ly (Axios)
For the evolution of Twitter:
Twitter Considers Subscription Fee for Tweetdeck, Unique Content (Bloomberg)
For media criticism:
Consider the Source: How the New York Times deceived Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. (Mother Jones)
Big Publishing Pushes Out Trump’s Last Fan (NYT)
Marty Baron considers his time at The Washington Post (The New Yorker)
Analysis: The end of the road for Lou Dobbs (CNN)
The Journalistic Tattletale and Censorship Industry Suffers Several Well-Deserved Blows (Glenn Greenwald)
For what the future holds:
Tesla to accept bitcoin as payment in ‘near future’ after $1.5 billion investment (The Verge)
For journalists:
New research shows how journalists are responding and adapting to “fake news” rhetoric (Nieman Lab)
For more editors-going-through-the-revolving-door:
Rolling Stone editorship opens up amid industry-wide leadership shuffle (Vanity Fair)