On Sept. 28, Apple Music, in partnership with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, announced that Puerto Rican superstar Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio (better known as Bad Bunny) would be the headliner for the Super Bowl LX halftime show. Bad Bunny has become increasingly popular not only within America but also globally. Bad Bunny was Spotify’s most-streamed artist globally on the 2020 year-end chart, the first time a non-English language artist has ever achieved that feat.
Between then and now, he has released four albums, won two Grammys, completed one residency in Latin America and three world tours — the last being his Most Wanted tour, which included 31 dates in North America. More recently, he announced his Debí Tirar Más Fotos World Tour in support of his new album of the same name.
When the announcement came, every room I entered for the rest of the day was filled with excitement. Friends, professors and more were ecstatic about the news. Over the last few years, there has been growing interest in Latin music, in a multitude of cultural and genre infusions that have only just reached the mainstream — a merging of reggaeton, R&B, salsa, pop, hip-hop, house, all styles Bad Bunny has seamlessly blended into one uniquely his own.
People have taken notice of his artistry, and now Bad Bunny will be able to display his talents on one of the biggest stages in the world, the likes of which legendary artists like Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé have performed on.
Unfortunately, not everyone is on board with Bad Bunny’s halftime show. In the three weeks since the announcement, far-right corners of the country have begun to heavily criticize the halftime show choice.
For as much excitement as I witnessed in real life, I saw tenfold the hatred online.
People are criticizing the choice for his race, his nationality, his political views. As soon as President Trump declared the decision for Bad Bunny to perform “absolutely ridiculous” and that he had “never heard of him,” the hate reached full force.
Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, called it a “terrible decision” and even asserted that the Super Bowl deserved a “more American-style act” like Lee Greenwood, an artist whose discography consists of mostly Christmas music, though he did record “God Bless the U.S.A.”
Fox News host and conservative commentator, Tomi Lahren, insisted during her podcast that “[Bad Bunny] is not an American artist,” to which her podcast guest corrected her. Bad Bunny is an American citizen, born in Puerto Rico, which is an American territory. Conservative YouTuber Benny Johnson insisted Bad Bunny was chosen for the sole purpose of putting someone onstage who “hates Trump and MAGA.”
The truth here is that it’s not entirely off-base to assume his dislike of Trump or MAGA. Bad Bunny designed his recently announced tour so that it would skip America’s mainland with the sole intention of avoiding ICE agents who would come to arrest Latino fans in bad faith, a choice that inflamed many. Back when Biden was campaigning for president, Bad Bunny offered the use of his song “Pero ya no” in promotional material.
He has poked fun at his detractors multiple times, including during his appearance during his Saturday Night Live (SNL) performance when he joked that “everyone is happy, even Fox News,” in reference to his Super Bowl slot. He even mused in a post following after his SNL performance, “After speaking with my team, I think I’ll do just one show in the United States.”
The hate has coalesced into quite the movement, and what better vehicle for such a movement than an organization that has lost its leader and its major attraction — Turning Point USA (TPUSA).
On Oct. 9, TPUSA announced in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that they would be running their own “All-American Halftime Show” programming in opposition to Bad Bunny’s halftime show. Upon first glance, there is already glaringly obvious racial rhetoric here — an implication that the actual Super Bowl halftime show, an American institution for almost six decades, has somehow suddenly become anything but, all because the performer, an American citizen, is Latino.
If this is somehow the marker for what is and is not American, there are approximately 68 million people in the United States that should not be considered American citizens. Surely this can’t be the reason TPUSA’s show is being promoted as All-American, right?
On the grounds of political ideology, there are not many descriptors that are classified as anti-American, save for socialism, fascism, Nazism, etc., Bad Bunny is none of these. While he is certainly anti-ICE and less than a fan of the Make America Great Again movement, he is one of many, many Americans who share similar sentiments. Moreover, it is absolutely anti-American to suggest that someone is anti-American because they hold political views such as these.
America is not a purely conservative nation, nor is it a purely liberal nation — we are very much in between, and we are not without nuance. To equate the quality of “Americanness” with conservative, right-wing ideology is reprehensible and a very slippery slope.
In reference to faith, it is very much a misnomer that America is a purely Christian nation, though TPUSA’s halftime show has been marketed as a celebration of “faith, family, and freedom.” While a large percentage of Americans identify as Christians, around 40% of Americans identify as affiliated with other religions or as unaffiliated.
As a devout Catholic myself, a subsect of Christianity which Bad Bunny also belongs to, I think it is disingenuous to suggest that TPUSA’s halftime show is somehow more American and that Bad Bunny’s is not on the basis of faith.
The Super Bowl Halftime show has always been a secular affair which Americans of all faiths or none have enjoyed together. The association of faith with America as an end-all-be-all defining trait reveals something very akin to Christian nationalism, and it is a worrying thing to tie religion so directly into a political movement.
The only other grounds on which I could see Bad Bunny’s performance being somehow anti-American is on the basis of his music itself, which is the least of the ongoing discourse — that is, if you somehow believe that Spanish music is inherently anti-American in nature. Bad Bunny’s catalogue is largely in Spanish, though he also includes English in his music and blends many American styles with Puerto Rican tradition. Additionally, 13% of Americans speak Spanish, and the US did not have an official language declared until March 1st of this year — to suggest that Spanish is irregular in America is blatantly ignorant.
Regardless of the primary language of his music, he has received critical and public acclaim in America for almost a decade now, and the demand for his artistry is only growing among Americans. This is also not the first time that the Super Bowl has had Latino and Spanish music as the main halftime attraction — Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, J Balvin, Emme Muñiz and Bad Bunny performed at the Super Bowl in 2020 to much critical and public acclaim.
If the issue is in the content of the music, perhaps it can be said that TPUSA’s halftime show will be a more suitable option for children watching the Super Bowl; that said, the Super Bowl has always made its best effort to censor expletives as well as any overly sexual themes in the show.
Admittedly, the quality control is not always there, though the themes in Bad Bunny’s music are not any different from the likes of past Super Bowl performers: love, loss, heartbreak, betrayal, sex, sensuality, friendship, culture, identity. That said, this has certainly been the least of the discourse — the “family” aspect of TPUSA’s halftime show is not something that has been absent from the Super Bowl in the past, and it is a small, forgiving trait in a largely undeserving and frankly propagandist attempt at rewriting what it means to be American one step at a time.
Overall, there is something extremely suspect about the running of TPUSA’s show in opposition to Bad Bunny’s halftime performance. For an organization once helmed by Charlie Kirk, a man that believed in the backing of all of his beliefs by logic before anything else, there is a serious lack of logical backing for the “All-American Halftime Show” and a lot of right-wing virtue-signaling occurring instead.
The subtext (is it even subtext?) is right under our noses — racism, Christian nationalism, the facade of “family values” and more all unite in TPUSA’s “All-American Halftime Show” as means of rewriting the narrative of America as a country that does not contain multitudes or nuance. It is deeply anti-American.
Riley Sanders is an 18-year-old biology major from Denham Springs, La.
