Along with nearly half the population of the United States, I watched the Super Bowl and the halftime show featuring the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio. To be honest, I was more excited about Bad Bunny, as I enjoy his music and was thrilled that he became the first Grammy winner for Best Album to do so with an album entirely in Spanish. I translated some of the performance for my family when I wasn’t too busy dancing. Also distracting me from my translation duties was that amazing set design, which I found out was made of hundreds of performers who wore costumes that made them look like rows and rows of plants.
This colorful, vibrant, inclusive, and fun performance stood out for its innovation and creativity. It was also a work of storytelling that began with sugarcane workers toiling on island plantations, the history of Puerto Rico from the arrival of white settlers to the present. A platform of power poles and lines referenced the devastation of Hurricane María in 2017 and the blackouts that continue to this day. Amid the struggles we saw the parties in homes painted in a rainbow of pastels and the familiar image of a small child sleeping while a wedding party continued late into the night. (Unlike the little one in the performance, Jonah and Reed did not fall asleep at our Super Bowl watch party.) The wedding was apparently real. Two icons who got their start in past generations made guest appearances — Lady Gaga from the 2000s and Ricky Martin from the 1980s. All of it capped off by a parade of American flags that included all of the Americas. Above the field the giant billboard featured Bad Bunny’s quote, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
At a difficult moment in the country’s history, Bad Bunny’s performance embodied the joy of freedom, the joy in diversity, the joy in resistance, and the joy of people telling — and celebrating — their stories. The 130 million who watched this halftime show dwarfed the 5 million who tuned into Kid Rock’s alternative show sponsored by the MAGA organization Turning Point USA. The vibrant colors and upbeat music stood in contrast to the grim, red-tinged vibe of Kid Rick’s clumsily lip-synced pro-regime performance, which lacked anything near the production values of the Super Bowl event. Last night, we saw a choice, two kinds of futures ahead of us. The world represented by Bad Bunny and the participants in his show is not guaranteed just because his show was far better and far more people watched it. It will take work; it will take sacrifice. It will take believing in, and living by, the principle that “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
