The halftime show was both art and entertainment, and that’s the best kind of both. I am not a fan of Bad Bunny. (I’m also not not a fan. I just don’t listen to much contemporary music, so I’m unfamiliar with his work.) But even I could tell that he was entertaining a stadium of 70,000 people and millions more at home. And even I could tell that he (and his team) were doing more than entertaining in a performance that was both defiant and celebratory.
It was actually the Taylor Swift documentary that helped me realize the role that pure entertainment can play in cultivating a collective experience that lifts people up. In a world of hyper-individualization and a fair amount of brokenness and cruelty, shared delight is no small thing. Both Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny lift people up with their music. They provide an experience of joy.
But entertainment can also be art, something that pushes us into deeper questions and experiences, something that taps on the darkest and the brightest aspects of who we are as humans, something that keeps us within the present moment while also connecting us to something greater than ourselves. The number 64 on Bad Bunny’s jersey, the telephone poles, his take on “God bless America”—all push the entertainment into questions about the role of the United States in the world and the injustices experienced by other nations (and territories) in our hemisphere.
(I had a similar experience with a host of other recent films, conversations, and performances, including Deliver Me from Nowhere, the film–and book– about the season of Bruce Springsteen’s life when he was making the album Nebraska, And So It Goes, the documentary about Billy Joel, my conversation with Makoto Fujimura talk about his art, and watching Pilobolus, a modern dance company, perform.)
In a world of chaos and superficiality, where we are bombarded by advertisements and tempted by meaninglessness, art invites us to face the darkness and hope for the light all at the same time. Like a flag raised in defiance and hope, with a backdrop that declares “The Only Thing More Powerful than Hate is Love.”
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