"Rows of field laborers hacking at sugar cane with machetes. Workers in harnesses dangling from power poles as lights strobe, then black out. The man who's arguably the biggest global pop star today weaving among them, rapping, singing, dancing, and interacting with tableaux of daily life and social issues from his Puerto Rican homeland and its diaspora. Not to mention the whole hemisphere's troubled relationship with the U.S. of A."
"At the opening ceremony before the game, veteran punk band Green Day played parts of three songs from the group's Bush-era protest album American Idiot that could be said to be even more pertinent today. But somehow Varietyand other outletsreported that the band had "skipped the politics." True, Billie Joe Armstrong didn't reiterate his explicit anti-ICE rhetoric from a concert earlier in the weekend."
Rows of field laborers hacked at sugar cane with machetes, and workers in harnesses dangled from power poles as lights strobe and blacked out during a Super Bowl halftime performance. The performer, one of the world's biggest pop stars, wove among these tableaux, rapping, singing, dancing, and engaging with scenes of Puerto Rican daily life and diaspora social issues, concluding with "God bless America" and a roll call of Latin American countries. Tens of millions watched at home. The performance contained dense politico-cultural symbolism akin to Kendrick Lamar's previous halftime show, while explicit anti-ICE rhetoric was largely muted.
Read at Slate Magazine
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