One Last Pup Cup (Game Over)
Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance at the Super Bowl reminds us to not stop talking
Joshua Kloss
Cameras open to a darkened field, just moments after a reminder that we’re watching the Apple Music Halftime show. White lights are arranged in the shape of a three-by-three grid of square boxes, resembling a game board. In each of the four corners of the board there is a different symbol—an X, an O, a triangle, a square. Kind of like Playstation controls. The shapes take turns lighting up, following some sort of sequence. Meanwhile, numbers are projected on the audience and quickly counting up. After they reach one hundred, our attention is diverted to Uncle Sam down on the field, played by Samuel L. Jackson.
“This is the great American game,” he reminds us.
We cut to Kendrick Lamar on top of a black Buick muscle car, who opens his set with “Bodies,” an unreleased song originally from the teaser for his recent album “GNX.” As he raps with impressive stamina and breath control, dancers pop out of the car. They are entirely cloaked head to toe in either red, white, or blue.
Over a dramatic cacophony, a swarm of red-dressed dancers outstretch their arms and reach up. Lamar announces in between swaths of music:
“The revolution ‘bout to be televised; you picked the right time but the wrong guy.”
It was at this point that I wriggled excitedly in my seat and wondered what the President’s face might look like right about now. Lamar then begins singing “Squabble Up.” Before completing the song, Uncle Sam interrupts—“No, no, no!”—and raises concerns about the performance that are not unlike the ones your right-leaning uncle might share. “Too loud, too reckless, too ghetto.” Uncle Sam asks Lamar: “Do you really know how to play the game?”
Perhaps in response or neglect, Lamar goes into an energized performance of “HUMBLE.” He parts the American flag that the dancers have intricately laid themselves out to form on the staircase. As the dancers march out in rows, Lamar switches to “DNA.”
The light formations over the audience read “WARNING WRONG WAY,” as Lamar performs “Euphoria.”
There’s much to unpack about Kendrick Lamar’s performance. I, personally, have always admired Mr. Lamar for the poetics of his rap, his poignant storytelling, and his unfailing attention to social and historical issues. As such, I was rather excited when watching his performance. Lamar used one of the most televised events of the year to throw political imagery right in the face of millions of Americans, whether they wanted it or not.
There are several images in Lamar’s show for us to digest: Uncle Sam’s dialogue mirroring the sentiment of many viewers who eggshell their way around politics; dancers occupying the X-shaped glass box during “peekabo”; SZA and Lamar performing “All the Stars” and satiating Uncle Sam; Serena Williams crip-walking during “Not Like Us”; perhaps, the most long-lasting image from the finale, when Lamar performs “TV Off”—in which the lyrics instruct us to “Turn this TV off,” repeatedly—as the lights say “GAME OVER” above the audience. Shortly after the fact, the cameras bounce back to broadcasting the good old pigskin game that Uncle Sam might have been alluding to on the surface level of his metaphor in the performance’s beginning.
It begs the question of what this game is all about, and I’d be a fool if I say I have it all figured out. One thing I know is that Kendrick Lamar is daring as ever, something that we know from his music. Lamar, with a fascist in attendance, occupied the stage and reminded the nation that, yes, it is all, always, forever, political. Lamar’s performance, currently, is the most televised Super Bowl halftime show of all time. The performance is unflinching, it’s layered, it’s art at the end of the world—but then again, maybe all art is—and I’m taking it as a sign to continue speaking about Donald Trump’s overstepping oligarchy, his oppressive executive orders, and his overseeing mass deportations without due process.
It’s not game over unless we let it be. Turn this TV off, yes—but listen.