The annual Super Bowl is invariably the most watched television event in the world, clocking in at about 111.9 million viewers last year. This number doesn’t even include the estimated 1.4 million live-stream viewers per minute or the out-of-home viewers that push the previous number closer to around 160 million. Tweets about the Super Bowl garner around 1.3 billion views throughout the night, and a vast majority of these tweets either reference the costly interval advertisements or the always extravagant halftime show.
Needless to say, anyone performing during this worldwide phenomena, whether that be on the field or on a stage, is being openly consumed by quite a few eyes.
Earlier today, conservative news anchor Tomi Lahren tweeted a reference to Lady Gaga, 2017 Super Bowl LI’s halftime performer, pleading that she, “Show up in an egg or a meat dress or whatever just for the love of God, don't make it political.” This was followed by an upsurge in support from her right-winged millennial supporters asking that the singer, “Please just sing.”
There are two fundamental flaws with this argument.
The first is apolitical, and only requires a marginal degree of thought to render Lahren’s micro-movement completely directionless. It is that anyone presented with as large an audience as the Super Bowl’s, regardless of his or her beliefs, will be forever remembered for what occurs in that short amount of time. The audience’s preference of what Gaga says or does during her show has no bearing on what she chooses to say or do. She will inevitably display all that she believes is deserving of such attention, what represents her career and her image as a performer, and what is morally justifiable from her perspective.
Politically open-minded performers such as Gaga may be bothersome to Lahren because they arguably detract from the laidback spirit of football spectatorship. These viewers may feel validated in claiming that their enjoyment is held hostage by politicized performers pushing controversial agendas, as was said by countless after Beyoncé’s surprise appearance in last year’s Super Bowl L show.
Beyoncé barely acknowledged the outrage that followed her public allusions to the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, and the black power movement. She released the most political album of her career, Lemonade (featuring the same single she debuted during the halftime show), later that year. “The Super Bowl was not a venue for her to act out,” said one particularly upset viewer.
Tomi Lahren can plead all she wants for Gaga’s neutrality during her show, and she can even invite her fans to back her case, but this won’t alter the course of Gaga’s performance. Especially when the singer's career more than triples the length–and immensely outweighs the success– of Lahren’s. Claiming that the Super Bowl is not an appropriate venue for a political demonstration will not change the fact that it is the perfect venue for any demonstration because it is the furthest reaching venue on the globe.
The second flaw in Lahren’s argument is slightly more political, but no less valid. It is that a performer like Gaga, who believes in spreading her controversial beliefs for the betterment of mankind (and whose beliefs remain, regardless of who agrees with her), understands that there is a unique importance of the audience she is reaching.
This importance lies in the fact that many of the people exposed to her performance would never have willingly seen it without the envelopment of the Super Bowl. In fact, it is arguable that a great number of the people watching the Super Bowl actively stand against Gaga’s missions of gender, marriage, and racial equality.
If the vast majority of people who plan on watching Super Bowl LI already agreed with Gaga, or at least didn’t disagree with her, maybe her potential plans would be different. If Donald Trump, a man who she actively and publicly opposes, hadn’t been elected president, maybe Lahren would have nothing to worry about.
If the world were open-minded enough to discuss and listen to Gaga’s beliefs for the sake of common good and understanding, maybe she wouldn’t need to rely on a pseudo-captive audience to get people to listen.
My final words of advice are applicable to any performer, regardless of his or her political agenda.
Don’t ask a performer to ‘just sing’ when you know her career is comprised of much more than singing. Don’t misguide people into thinking their demanding degradations of a successful musician’s career will alter her political goals, when you know they won’t. And don’t ask someone not to speak if you were the one who refused to listen. What happens during the halftime show is subject to the choice of the performer and those who allow the performance to occur. No one else.
**It is important to note that this article was written before Lady Gaga’s halftime performance. Whether or not she truly did make a political statement during her show was unknown at the point of this article’s submission.
