Kendrick Lamar's subversive rejection of the White American gaze
I’m going to be like everyone else today and write about Kendrick Lamar’s half time performance, though it was a busy day so I’m late. I haven’t read much as I wanted to write first so these are my takes. It’s going to be long because that was fucking ART.
Kendrick Lamar served a masterclass on performance that creates a subversive critique of a ruling culture mainly by focusing the entire performance on ignoring that ruling culture’s gaze. I don’t like the NFL and don’t usually watch but my son has internalized Super Bowl Sunday as a nacho holiday because one year when he was younger and the Patriots played (we’re from Boston) I made nachos and we watched. Ever since, that has been requested and we’ve had to watch at least some. But last night I was really excited to see what Kendrick would do because I believed he would offer some form of social commentary. He didn’t disappoint and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about his performance.
First, the Drake beef is done. Kendrick killed him last night. RIP Drake. You will never come back from that.
Second, I want to point out how bare and minimalist this performance was in comparison to many, many other Superbowl shows in terms of bells and whistles and bling. He didn’t need a ton of flash because he had ideas, epic choreography, subtlety, and knew how to use them. Kendrick Lamar was expected to deliver patriotic tropes no doubt, every half time show has to walk this line. No one can say he didn’t include the American flag. No one can say he wasn’t showing off the red, white, and blue. But he muted it, he stripped it down and subverted it, literally spotlighting what is often not highlighted at all: black culture as a means of perpetuating Black excellence, not as a means of gaining approval from white culture. The dancers were not dressed for consumption by white audiences. Their bodies were mostly covered, homogenized within their costume color. It didn’t escape my attention the females wore red in the beginning, a nod to so many global protests for women. These bodies were not on display for white enjoyment, in fact, their faces and heads were often covered or lit in a way to show us less. We did not have access. They were performing for those that knew and wanted to know, not consume. The lack of texture to the background dancers outfits was striking to me. There was nothing reflective there, nothing capitalist, nothing to distract from the messaging. And that’s one of the reasons many white people felt uncomfortable. They want rap to be about the bling and lifestyle and entertainment because they can’t understand the actual lyrics, but the only real jewelled piece on offer was Kendrick’s lower case ‘a’ diamond medallion, a clear reference to A Minor and an inditement of both Drake and Trump’s preference for young girls. By limiting the amount of dazzle to this one item, by dressing his dancers as he did, he made us focus on what was really happening and what it meant. It was clear immediately the viewership would be mostly divided between those who got it and those who didn’t. In doing so, he turned the gaze back on the white audience and declared he didn’t care if they understood it or not because it wasn’t for them. In so many ways the performance rejected the white gaze from the get go as being central, in fact it felt absent or rejected in a way that was refreshing to me, but I’m sure angering to many whites who are so used to having their likes catered to.
The grid that opened the performance brought forth the feeling of a rigged game, a game that cannot be won, tick-tack-toe. The only chance you have there is moving first and occupying the center square, something Black people never get the opportunity to do in America. The declaration from Samuel L Jackson that we were watching the great American game called into question whether the great American experiment and dream was ever possible for Blacks or if it was always rigged against them. Obviously perfect casting of Samuel L Jackson as Uncle Sam, who we later hear speaking more like an Uncle Tom trope, trying to keep Kendrick in line with white tastes, offering the exact critiques of Lamar’s performance that we are now seeing by racists on Twitter. He saw them coming and included them in the performance because racism is so so predictable. Obviously given Samuel L Jackson’s previous outspoken stance against Trump, this was also a very intentional confrontational choice, despite him saying “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto,”; A lion cast to meow scoldingly while everyone knows he’s a lion.
The set design and lighting added so much to the meaning throughout the performance. For me the lighting immediately referenced so many different things-a block party, a black top, the street, the prison yard, spotlights and streetlights mixed with the flood lights of policing and riots. The smoke enhanced this feelings of the performance happening on shifting, contested ground. The structures throughout felt like brutalist architecture used to maintain compliance, stark and hard edged. As the dancers emerged from the car, they vaulted into the space, taking up as much as possible individually and collectively. They would not be contained like they were supposed to be. When they formed a flag made of black male bodies it was striking because it lacked any stars, almost like States no longer mattered, and it presented a declaration that our flag is entirely what we make it. In the beginning those same dancers are divided into groups along costume color lines of red, white, and blue. They are segregated and come together to form the flag. But as soon as they re-segregate themselves, the flag disintegrates. This is a striking commentary obviously about how America is built on Black bodies, but also about how strong and how weak our country is depending on how we behave as citizens and our current state. As Lamar says in the beginning, we chose the wrong guy and we’re more segregated and divided than united. Our flag can come apart as easily as his dance formation.
When the dancers scatter after what sounds like mouth made gun fire, the scene shifts and what struck me most was the way the dancers moved-swinging arms, long low strides, heads pushing forward with determination and force almost. I couldn’t help but feel the difference between how these men might be perceived on the actual street instead of stage street, and how every day they are misperceived as threatening to white people because of their skin. It was so clear while I watched them move that they were never allowed to move like that in the real world because they embodied too much power and so many pains have been taken to never allow black men to wield that kind of dominating stance in public spheres. I think this is why white men won’t ever stop trying to punish black men. Because I just don’t think a group of white dancers could have ever embodied in the same way what I saw on that stage; White male bodies have been able to move freely forever so it isn’t in their genetic experience to have to constrain their own power constantly and to shrink themselves, so it would be difficult to call up what was necessary to portray a body overcoming that, breaking free from it, and striding as they wanted.
White America only allows for black dominance in sports because it is contained in arenas of entertainment. White people have yet to allow Black people to occupy space as freely as they’d like without it needing to refer back to how the white person is feeling about their presence. Lamar addressed this by confining himself and his dancers to small or narrow spaces walled off between larger spaces they could not access during different sections of the performance, almost like he was constantly being limited and kept from being united with his full team. Uncle Sam chasing them off the streetlight post despite it being a moment of community singing demonstrates no matter how Black people take up space they are being policed and judged and held to narrow constraints. There are ALWAYS condition of acceptance it seems. You must be enough but never better in a way that makes white people feel more aware of our inadequacy. The gas lighting that white people have forced upon black people in America is unbelievable. And I feel like Kendrick Lamar’s performance was a streetlit inditement of all of it.
The moment the dancers hit the ground like chalk profiles, though brief, was incredibly powerful.
When SZA joined the performance and the dancers slowed down to form orderly lines and some to dance in an endless circle where they think they are getting higher only to find themselves back at the bottom again, Uncle Sam interrupts to applaud this softer, less menacing tone. This is what White people want. But then Kendrick quickly references 40 Acres and a Mule and we know he isn’t going to give Uncle Sam what he wants. Instead, he performs They Not Like Us and he and his dancers finally occupy the entire stage in a way that feels like it belongs to them. The way he dances with women in white behind him, Suffragette white done black, oozing confidence and this time more lit for us to see them better. The tone has shifted. They are no longer having to walk a fine line between barriers imposed on them but instead have united and take up the full stage as if those barriers no longer exist at all. I feel this decision to focus on Black Joy at the end serves as a direct rebuttal to the way in which white Americans let Black Americans down in November. This is a searing inditement of how long Black Americans have been dancing for white approval and that it’s time to stop and dance for themselves. Serena Williams doing the Crip Walk without smiling at us was icing on an absolute stone cold serve not just to Drake, but to the White America that wanted her to entertain them but almost let her, and so many black mothers like her, die in child birth. As a professional athlete that has had to play a rigged game on a tight wire in a white skirt, she owned that moment.
The dancers turning their backs on the audience to form a circle was a huge statement on who has access and a right to perception, autonomy, and control.
When the performance was culminating and brass was added, the formations took on a much more drumline feel and there was an exuberance and joy that was not present in the opening. This was nothing short of a total reclaiming of the Superbowl space before our eyes. I personally didn’t care about the game at all after that and we took Kendrick’s advice and turned the TV off. We all need to stop playing the rigged game.
The images I screen shot or took from the Times. I chose moments that were compelling to me that I tried to discuss. The image I chose for main image was my main take away feeling maybe.