WORCESTER — A Clark University professor gave the skinny on Bad Bunny and the controversy of him being picked as the halftime headliner for the upcoming Super Bowl LX.
“He is a contradictory figure, for sure, and these contradictions make him interesting, and a lightning rod to get people talking about the Super Bowl, even if they never cared about football at all,” said professor Juan Pablo Rivera.
Speaking 90 minutes to a packed Higgins Lounge at Clark on Thursday, Oct. 30, Rivera — a Spanish professor and a native of Puerto Rico — didn’t pull any punches on a topic that mixes sports and entertainment. The lecture was titled “Understanding Bad Bunny.”
After the news was announced in September that Bad Bunny was picked for the big gridiron gig, some politicians and social media users criticized the NFL’s music taste.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said singer-songwriter Lee Greenwood of “God Bless the U.S.A.” note would have been a better choice. Trump criticized the Jay-Z-founded Roc Nation, which is responsible for the halftime lineup.
Rivera likes the selection of Bad Bunny as the halftime entertainer. The professor said the Grammy-winning performer being booked for what is traditionally the most watched telecast of the year makes sense.
“The NFL has been trying to appeal to younger fans, both at home and internationally, effectively trying to turn American football into a global sport by organizing games outside of the United States,” Rivera said. “It makes sense that, in this attempt to globalize, the NFL would choose the person who’s currently the world’s most global music star.”
In his lecture, Rivera explained how Bad Bunny started out as a trap (a subgenre of hip-hop) and reggaetón singer, before adding salsa, pop, dembow beat and other traditional Latin American genres to his repertoire on his way to becoming a “genre-crossing, eclectic artist with a multigenerational appeal. ”
In addition to hosting “Saturday Night Live” and selling out Fenway Park, Bad Bunny became a pop cultural phenomenon.
His 2000 release, “El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo,” became the first all-Spanish-language album to top the Billboard 200.
In his earlier songs, Bad Bunny played with gender expression in interesting ways, including dressing up in drag and hiring nonbinary models, Rivera said, noting what could be the underlining sticking points with critics.
Stressing that Puerto Rico is a part of the United States while pointing out that Puerto Ricans take pride and strive to stay true to their cultural heritage, Rivera said Bad Bunny aims to strengthen connections with the rest of the country.
Rivera explained that Bad Bunny is a harsh critic of colonialism, corruption and gentrification, the latter as an extension of U.S. imperialist projects, which causes another potential controversy.
And Bad Bunny is scheduled to sing solely in Spanish.
“In an increasingly polarized political climate, Bad Bunny sings about people coming together while remaining loyal to being who they are and to where they are from,” Rivera said.
Despite the controversy, Rivera predicts that Bad Bunny’s halftime show will be a historic moment that people will be talking about for years, and a celebration of how music and sports are meant to bring people together.
And in the end, even for people who don’t understand the lyrics, Bad Bunny will most likely prove that music can be a global language, Rivera said.
In the past, Bad Bunny has been a harsh critic of Trump. During Trump’s first presidency, two back-to-back hurricanes, including Hurricane Maria, ravaged Puerto Rico in 2017, killing around 3,000 people and displacing thousands more. At the time, Bad Bunny criticized the Trump administration’s response and lack of aid to the island following the natural disaster, according to USA Today.
