Kendrick Lamar made a historic splash at this year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. For starters, this was the first halftime show ever to feature a solo rap headliner, highlighting rap and hip-hop as a behemoth of a genre that’s only gotten more popular. However, he made waves in other ways by exhuming his beef with Drake, which the stadium celebrated by singing the lyrics to his Grammy-winning song “Not Like Us”, but Kendrick also took this opportunity to make a statement about current politics, race relations, and the tension between the United States and its population of Black Americans.
Samuel L. Jackson’s Uncle Sam
The show starts with the actor Samuel L. Jackson introducing himself as Uncle Sam with the fictional character’s iconic look to start the halftime show. This race swap isn’t just to play off of their shared name. I believe it’s a subversion of the iconic character that portrays a specific stereotype, an Uncle Tom.
Uncle Tom was originally a character from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He was a slave who sacrificed his life to save his fellow slaves in hiding, but when the book was popularized into a play, the producers changed him into a subservient, compliant man who sells out his own race to earn favor with his white oppressors. This is where the pejorative “Uncle Tom” comes from, and it’s a character type that Samuel L. Jackson famously played in Django Unchained, opens a new window.
Here, we see him return as a version of an Uncle Tom, opens a new window but now a personification of a passive Black America. Throughout the show we see him interject Kendrick’s performance, chastising him for being “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto”. Something I’m sure many Black people and people of color hear their entire lives, and a common response to mostly liberal protests.
After Kendrick sings a slower song, “All the Stars”, Uncle Sam interjects again, saying “That’s what America wants, nice and calm”. Our Uncle Sam once again encourages pliant, kind behavior in order to avoid controversy or any real revolution. I think this can be interpreted as both the government encouraging compliance and as a portrayal of people that may be seen as Uncle Tom’s themselves giving in to the demands of their oppressors.
Kendrick’s Star-Spangled Banner
All of Kendrick’s dancers were Black, clad in red, white, and blue jumpsuits, and they, at one point, come together to create the American flag before disintegrating.
Some patriotic viewers might misunderstand this scheme and gesture as pride in this country, but I think Kendrick’s choices are bitingly chastising. They remind us that America was created on the backs of slavery; black people’s bodies and blood figuratively and literally made this country and they continue to be integral in maintaining our infrastructure , opens a new window despite many Americans' resentment, intolerance, and outright racism towards Black Americans and even immigrants to this country.
During “Not Like Us”, the dancers drop to the ground, something quick that can be easily seen as just part of some interesting choreography. Yet, some dancers contort their limbs in an all too familiar insignia, a swastika. You can say I’m reaching, but in a time when we have emboldened white supremacists, opens a new window and a billionaire in the white house throwing around (alleged) Sieg Heils, opens a new window, I think this choreography was an intentional indictment of the rise of white supremacy and authoritarianism in our country and government.
One final quote I want to highlight is Kendrick’s adlibbed lyric, “40 acres and a mule, opens a new window/this is bigger than the music”. This is referring to the first instance of reparations ever offered to previously enslaved Black people in 1865. Despite being attributed to Union Major General William Sherman, the idea was actually proposed by a group of 20 Black ministers who were asked by Sherman and other Union leaders how to best repay and repatriate the freed slaves. They had agreed to disburse almost 400,000 acres of land in the South to the victims of slavery so as to start their own generational wealth.
Despite this agreement, the newly freed African Americans would quickly have this land rescinded after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It seemed to me that Kendrick chose to quote this line, opens a new window as a reminder of the United States' historic mistreatment of the victims of slavery. To this day, neither party has agreed on mass-scale reparations which Kendrick Lamar believes to be an injustice worthy of calling out on the largest stage in America.
“You want the dangerous me or the famous me?”- Kendrick Lamar during his historic performance.
Love It or Hate It, Art Has Something to Say
Like every event nowadays, Kendrick’s performance garnered plenty of praise and disdain. Celebrities and fans alike were in awe of his hype performance and his willingness to go all out in his messaging, his on-going beef with Drake, and platforming Serena after she herself has been the victim of undeserved controversy for years. On the other side of the coin, many detractors thought his performance boring, unintelligible, and the worst they’ve ever seen. Some people took offense at his criticism of this great country, and some people found his messaging frustrating.
One quote by a popular streamer stuck out to me:
“[The] point of the halftime show isn’t to give the world some puzzle to figure out.” - XQC, online streamer
I wanted to challenge this by proclaiming that that all art has something to say. What it says and how it’s delivered is up to the artist, but art cannot be created in a void. It is directly influenced by our society, our conditioning, and our feelings.
Music is art, and Kendrick Lamar chose to include symbolism and meaning in his performance that is obviously important to him and millions of other people. It’s okay if you don’t like it or if you don’t understand it initially. But I think it’s important to engage in these puzzles and be willing to think more critically about what we consume and the art we enjoy.
The struggle of Black Americans and Black people across the world is a foundational one that influences the civil rights of all marginalized communities, from women, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, disabled people, and everyone else who has been historically and systematically abused, forgotten, or silenced.
Kendrick Lamar chose to use his privilege and once in a lifetime opportunity to push these struggles to the forefront of our minds and challenge us to acknowledge the United States' sordid relationship with Black Americans.
Related Reading
Check out the materials we have in the library to expand upon the symbolism of Kendrick Lamar's performance and learn more about the history and legacy of African Americans.
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