The Bad Bunny Bowl And Bewilderment
Rumi says: "Sell your cleverness, buy bewilderment." When I first heard that quote I got the idea that "buying bewilderment" would be cerebral, or abstract, or not immediately gratifying. (A guy like Rumi would only say to do something that seems easy if it were actually hard, right?) There's something arduous-sounding about the word "bewilderment". I'm not sure what; maybe it's because it's a long noun that's rarely useful as a subject or an object and is therefore destined to live inside a stiff prepositional phrase. Certainly when someone says "bewilderment", my mind goes to Fanny Howe talking about the quidam in 13th-century poetry and not, like, Subway Surfers.
But the ivory towers are gatekeeping the truth: bewilderment is fun. Like, fun in the normal way. For example, recently I watched a Bad Bunny concert coincident with some sporting event or another, which took place almost entirely in a language that I don't speak. And I enjoyed it, viscerally, because being mildly bewildered in a safe and well-constructed way is fun in the same base, dopaminurgic way as Balatro.
When the Bad Bunny Bowl was first announced, my impression was that the average monolingual American progressive appreciated it in the way they might appreciate John Cage or Steve Reich: something that would be cool to read about later or to imagine someone else enjoying, but not to listen to as music. Respectfully, this was stuffy of them. The modern Super Bowl halftime show is the largest music event in a country with a lot of English monolinguals. They are obviously going to broadcast something an obligate anglophone can vibe with not as a thought exercise, but as music.1 They did not want you to flip over to TPUSA's counterprogramming, they wanted your ass in your seat enjoying yourself.2 Whether or not it's "for us", it's for us. You, too, can be entertained with a little visual storytelling, banger Latin trap, and the base joy of bewilderment. Just because the pleasure doesn't happen in the Broca's area doesn't mean it's beneath you; sell your goddamn cleverness.
The Benito Bowl dazzled me in quite a few ways. The first was that it felt physically huge. It didn't feel like a small guy talking to a big audience, it felt like a big production that went on for miles. The first time we got a big drone shot of the whole stadium, I chuckled-- I'd genuinely gotten lost in the movie magic like a toddler, and forgotten that the sugar cane didn't actually go on forever. I feel like that's special in some heart-shrinkingly modern way. I've been told that, in a world I was born too late to experience, a teen could go to the circus and be dumbfounded by how big the elephants were, because there was no YouTube. I don't know, this feels like the first time in years that I've been awestruck because a space was spatially big, and that feels special.
I also fell in love with the rhythms. Trap does that. Classical guitar also does that. This was one of my first exposures to Bad Bunny, and the man raps with an extraordinary amount of range, in both pitch and dynamics. This means that he has immaculate, inviting phrasing that carries you from idea to idea, no matter how much you understand. My impulse with music in languages I don't understand is always to look up a translation, something to desperately hold onto. This time, though, I didn't bother until maybe the fourth rewatch. I'll look up the lyrics later, I reasoned, but for now I'm comfortable getting lost in the sauce. Bewildered.
The performance organizers stuck Lady Gaga in the middle of the set, presumably to jerk awake the doubters. As an English main who thinks that Fame Monster is perhaps the most underrated pop album of all time, I feel like this should be a highlight for me. But all I could do was ask: Where's Bad Bunny? I want Bad Bunny! Please save the salsa rendition of Lady Gaga's worst song for Dancing With the Stars and give me more Bad Bunny!
I think for most people, the standout moment of the night was the ending. Fireworks, colorful flags, a big corny sign saying that love triumphs over hate so BlueSky will have something to repost. "God bless America!" shouts Bad Bunny, the first English he's used all night. But we quickly realize that the exclamation point was a colon, as he starts listing the countries in the geographical Americas! This includes pointedly listing the United States (as an English endonym), a sort of marking of the unmarked majority. And, of course, the last country he names is Puerto Rico, which is a subtle nod to the fact that it is a country and not the fifty-first U.S. state. It's a razor-sharp message in a big, triumphant moment, and I hope we talk about it for years to come.
But my favorite moment of the night happens at around the nine-minute mark. The video cuts to a shot of a television set replaying Bad Bunny's Grammy speech. For a moment, we're over the shoulder of two parents and a child. As the words "Puerto Rico" reverberate, the father motions to his son with one hand and points to the TV with the other. Bad Bunny runs in and, with an impossibly smooth swooping motion, bends down to the child's level and hands off the physical award. And for five seconds (the camera waiting for Bad Bunny to take his place across the stage), we see the child, holding the Grammy, grinning ear to ear.
I can't speak for this child. He looks genuinely happy to be there, and I suspect he understands that this is a significant moment. But especially because we see his face for so long, it's hard not to wonder what he's thinking. There's at least a little confusion. He knows that something exciting is happening, and surely understands that this is a win for his entire heritage-- but of what direction and what magnitude? A little kid has a different relationship to their national identity than an adult who knows how voting works or what triangular trade is. You grow up fast when you're marginalized, but not that fast.
So we recognize this child, smiling, in a state of happy confusion. As it happens I am also smiling, in a state of happy confusion. We've stumbled into a sort of empathy-by-technicality, in which I feel as though I'm communicating my joy translinguistically and am being represented. I'm humbled; I have sold my cleverness. We are bewildered.
For the record, we should all be listening to Steve Reich as music and not as a statement on art, too, but that's a different can of worms.↩
The idea of Kid Rock's All-American Super Bowl is upsettingly funny to me. The idea of grandpa demanding the hosts turn off the literal Super Bowl to put on Kid Rock's Star-Spangled Sing-Along Of Shit, like a strange and sad humiliation ritual purpose-built to make them confront the fact that their family friends find their circlejerk off-putting! The idea that some hick-larper Salesforce enthusiast for TPUSA woke up one morning and said, like Icarus did, "I think my employer can compete with the Super Bowl!" It's my Cunk on Earth. It's my "Scott's Tots". The dramatic irony is parbaked into the premise. Save my soul.↩