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What is this 'Super' in the Super Bowl halftime show

Reading Stuart Hall's excellent "What is this ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture," I couldn't help but reflect back on this year's Super Bowl halftime show—low hanging fruit, certainly, but one I have no qualms about devouring. 

This year, of course, was the first time hip-hop had taken center stage at the Super Bowl halftime show; I am deeply sad that Stuart Hall wasn't here to witness it, as his towering intellect would no doubt have enriched the often sensationalized discourse that circulated online before, during, and after the performance. 

Utilizing Hall's dynamic theoretical framework, one could compellingly argue that the halftime show signified hip-hop's incorporation into "the circuits of power of capital" (469) with the "control over narratives and representations pass[ing] into the hands of the established cultural bureaucracies" (470); in this case, allowing the NFL to censor anti-police lyrics in an attempt to sanitize the music and appease white conservative football fans. With this in mind, I ask: 

Do you agree with Dr. Cornel West's (who Hall cites throughout the article) post-show assessment that: 

[The show was] a missed opportunity for truth-telling about Brian Flores' challenge to the NFL's plantation system. Aside from brother Eminem kneeling, the political silence of our artists was sad!

My second considers Hall's concern on page 473 about "the very masculine identities that are oppressive to women, that claim visibility for their hardness only at the expense of the vulnerability of black women and the feminization of gay black men." 

Do you have concerns about the NFL's decision to "pedestal"—as documentary filmmaker Byron Hurt observed—Black musical artists such as Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg despite their "deeply problematic lyrics about girls, women and the queer community" (Hurt) and accusations of violence against women? 

Glenn H 

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