Beyoncé, The Super Bowl and the Politics of “Civility”
by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
America’s “culture warriors” have been busy with the conclusion of this year’s Super Bowl. Lamenting Beyoncé’s clothing, her gyrations, her sexuality, and the inappropriateness of her dance moves, they have converted their feigned outraged over lip synching to the real movements of her body.
Over at the National Review,[1]Kathryn Jean Lopez in her “Put a Dress on It,” channels in her inner puritanical censor ethic, arguing:
Last night’s Super Bowl half-time show was ridiculous — and gratuitously so. Watching Twitter, it was really no surprise that men made comments about stripper poles and putting dollar bills through their TV sets, was it?
Why can’t we have a national entertainment moment that does not include a mother gyrating in a black teddy?
Not to be out-done, Rich Lowery also at National Review, which is clearly taking a break from its war on women with a war on Beyoncé, waxed nostalgically about Super Bowl IX:
Someday a cultural historian will write the definitive history of the Super Bowl halftime and how it morphed from a showcase for the likes of the Grambling State University marching band to a platform for gyrating pop stars. (Michael Jackson started the trend in 1993.) Beyoncé dressed like she was headed for a shift at the local gentlemen’s club, and put on a show that was an all-out assault on the senses. She was stunning and athletic, as well as tasteless and unedifying.
The conservative disgust was not limited to the National Review as Laura Ingraham tweeted “Very family-friendly dancing S&M by Beyonce. What every girl shd aspire to. #waronwomen [sic].' S.E. Cupp bemoaned her conduct unbecoming of a pop star, while Rachel Campos-Duffy wondered about its impact on her children:
As my kids, ages 2 to 13, and I watched Beyonce's performance, I half-expected a stripper pole to pop out of the platform, which was actually staged to look like a peep show. (After the scathing public backlash from Janet Jackson’s infamous nipple-gate, you’d think the NFL would have thought twice about Beyonce's set.)
"Mommy, what is that lady doing?" That awkward moment when you realize the Super Bowl halftime show might show a bit more of Blue Ivy's mama than you expected.
As soon as I saw pelvic thrusts and legs wide open to the camera, I debated internally about whether to change the channel or use it as a teachable moment. I opted for the latter, and prayed I made the right choice. Interestingly, I noticed all the kids had quizzical expressions on their faces as if to say, “What is she doing?”
Given the GOP unrelenting war on women; given its foundational demonization of poor women of color; given its lamenting of “takers” and the 47%, it is no wonder that conservative commentators find so much to fear in Beyoncé.
“Constructions of deviant sexuality emerge as a primary location for the production of these race and class subjectivities,” notes Micki Mcelya (2001) in Our Monica Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest. “Policy debates and public perceptions on welfare and impoverished Americans have focused relentlessly on the black urban poor – blaming nonnormative family structures, sexual promiscuity, and aid-induced laziness as the root cause of poverty and mobilizing of welfare queens, teen mothers, and sexually predatory young men to sustain the dismantling of the welfare state” (p. 159). The fear of black female bodies, of transgressive bodies, of those that purportedly violate the ritualized spotlight on white American masculinity within the Super Bowl, has been on full display. And this is not new.
At last year’s Super Bowl, the mere sight of M.I.A. giving the finger during her performance with Madonna and Nicki Minaj prompted endless outrage and condemnation. The leader of this group was not surprisingly the Parents Television Council, who issued a statement condemning M.I.A. for giving the finger “to millions of families.” While offering no evidence for whom she actually flipped off (1 person or more), the Parents Television Council went further:
NBC fumbled and the NFL lied because a performer known as M.I.A. felt it necessary to flip off millions of families. It is unfortunate that a spectacular sporting event was overshadowed once again by broadcasting the selfish acts of a desperate performer. . . . It has been eight years since the Janet Jackson striptease, and both NBC and the NFL knew full well what might happen. They chose a lineup full of performers who have based their careers on shock, profanity and titillation. Instead of preventing indecent material, they enabled it. M.I.A. used a middle finger shamelessly to bring controversial attention to herself, while effectively telling an audience filled with children, ‘F– you.’
Of course, the reactionary culture police were not the only voices of “outrage.” The New York Daily News used the moment to not only denounce M.I.A. for her “gesture” but lament her values, noting, “Rapper M.I.A. isn’t ready for prime time — or family life.” The Los Angeles questioned M.I.A.’s “bad behavior,” lamenting how her antics were “overshadowing what many say is Kelly Clarkson's stellar rendition of the national anthem. The ensuing fallout has upstaged Clarkson's performance and Madonna's pageantry with a barrage of questions.” Heading the outrage, M.I.A, NBC, and others apologized.
Sasha Frere-Jones, with “M.I.A. Shouldn’t Have Apologized,” sees little to celebrate with the apologies, using the opportunity to highlight the hypocrisy of the culture warriors:
The outrage is tiresome and deeply hypocritical, in all the tiresome ways you’ve been tired out by before. M.I.A. was illustrating her line, acting out the attitude of the words: performing. Fine, it may not be legal to flip the bird on television, but that’s simply a remnant of the fifties we haven’t shaken. Unless somebody was handing out Xanax with the foam fingers, Lucas Oil Stadium was ringing with the music of profanities last night. More to the point, television viewers were submitted to ad after ad that likened women—negatively—to sofas, cars, and candy. Mr. Winter didn’t have anything to say about that, so I’d like to raise both of my middle fingers to him and anyone who thinks profanity is somehow more harmful to our children than images of violence and misogyny.
The hypocrisy is evident with the silence, if not tacit approval, of the barrage of sexism that is part and parcel to the Super Bowl experience. Sexist imagery is as central to the Super Bowl as Navy flyovers, processed food, and Disneyworld. Throughout the telecast, countless corporations and their media partners gave the finger to women, reducing women to sexual objects and eye candy whose purpose is titillation, temptation, and total sexualization.
At one level, the outrage and debates about Beyoncé dancing and M.I.A. finger gesture read against the silence and acceptance of the daily and material “fuck yous” experienced by countless people reflects the hypocrisy of contemporary culture. Yet, at another level, it reflects the powerful ways that race, gender, nationality and notions of disciplinarity operate within these same spaces. Unlike the representations of women in Super Bowl commercials, those promoting sexual violence, reactionary gender roles, and sexualization, neither Beyoncé nor M.I.A. are objects of control.
Instead, Beyoncé and M.I.A. are seen as disruptive and therefore subject to disciplinarity practices.
Their bodies and the agency they exhibit in the control over their bodies disrupt dominant conventions and the accepted place for women, particularly women of color, in public spaces. Michel Foucault describes the dialectic between state institutionalized power and calls/demands for discipline in the following way: “Discipline produces subjected and practiced, ‘docile’ bodies. Discipline increases the force of the body … and diminished these same forces of the body. . . .” The definitions of what constitutes civility and incivility, proper and improper behavior reflects the ways in which inequalities are normalized and erased from the public discourse.
Following these two Super Bowls, we all learned the prophetic lesson from Kahlil Gibran who once noted how he had “Learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, I am ungrateful to these teachers.”
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David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis. Leonard’s latest book After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness was just published by SUNY Press in May of 2012.
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