A single party won't save us, but a million parties will
Considering a halftime show, less as an object of adoration than a blueprint
Inside me there are two wolves, and they both watched the Super Bowl halftime show last night. They’re both fine wolves, mind you, and both deserve to be fed. There’s the smarty pants Marxist wolf that read a bunch of Debord and Adorno back in wolf grad school and rolls their eyes at art “brought to you by Apple Music and the National Football League.” When the topic of music comes up, that wolf is like, you should listen to Gil Scott Heron and NoName, man, they’ll really tell you what’s up. That wolf can spit some bars when handed a protest megaphone, but its friends all wish it would chill out from time to time.
The other wolf is more populist. It gets so jazzed when we get to be happy for a change. It hears that other wolf’s critiques, about elite capture and how identity politics is easily commodified, but it can’t resist an ebullient Puerto Rican superstar constructing both village and barrio in the middle of a football field and telling the world to dance and love. If identity politics means more people, especially people under attack by fascists, getting to see their culture celebrated on the biggest of stages, then that’s something, right? The populist wolf watched the show and couldn’t stop smiling. Its idealism has been taken advantage of in the past, but it’s still there, sappy and heartfelt as ever.
We are gifted big mushy hearts and analytical brains for a reason, to both feel and critique. I’m grateful for both wolves, and would hate if either disappeared.
As for last night, boy do I love a message of love and joy on a world stage. Boy do I love a million Boricua Easter Eggs, both in and of themselves and as an act of artistic decolonization. Boy do I love that the party on the field valued both elders and children, as is the case for all the best communities. Boy do I love hearing all that Spanish, and also the artist’s message about how he’d love if you’d learn that language, but it is even more important that you learn how to dance.
I adore all that, and I adore the million times I’ve already seen that Jumbotron image passed around, the one about love rather than hate. And also, I appreciate, in a different way, that it’s impossible to share images of that Jumbotron without the insidious reminder that the stadium, like the halftime show itself and like so much of our daily lives, was brought to us by a line item in a multinational corporation’s marketing budget.
I’m publishing this a day after Bad Bunny told every country in the Americas that he loves us and Apple Music told us to log on for exclusive supplementary content. I’m potentially already too late to add one more missive onto the already teetering discursive pile, so bear with me. There are so many angles from which I’m not that event’s most skilled interlocutor. I am neither a music critic nor a scholar on Puerto Rican history and culture. My beat, to the extent I have one, is cheerleading the power of groups coming together and building something lovely.
It’s not the only perspective, my broken record epistemology of the potluck, but I’d argue that it’s a particularly useful one right now now. It’s a worldview that recognizes that the value in an event such as this— both powerful and constrained, sacred and temporal, subversive and coopted— lies less in its permanent cultural impact than the lessons it offers as a single event. Most of us, I suspect, have some experience balancing both the radical and the populist inside of us. We know that a Super Bowl halftime show won’t change the world by itself, but that it makes us feel pretty darn good.
An event that won't change the world by itself, but that makes us feel pretty darn good.
When you put it that way, that sounds like the kind of gathering we can all host. We don’t need to be a global pop superstar with millions in production expenses at our disposal. We don’t need TV cameras and a global audience. We definitely don’t need corporate sponsorship. We too can host a joyful party. We can, I’d argue, and we must: as soon as possible, over and over again.
I also watched the other halftime show, by the way, the Turning Point USA one with Kid Rock. You all, it was immensely sad. And I don’t mean that in a smug leftist schadenfreude sense. Yes, it was sad in that it was performed on a weird sound stage to a tiny crowd, but I would advise folks who share my politics from taking its scale, alone, as reason for victory. Its aesthetic smallness, I fear, is actually central to the current conservative project. The fact that the left had the massive party with the celebrity cameos helps the MAGA fiction that they are not, in fact, the regime in power, but instead a stalwart group of rebels under siege by a hostile liberal world. We actually gain very little when we call them losers with microscopic crowds and D-list celebrities. In the funhouse mirror of conservative grievance, the mediocrity is the point.
No, when I say that it was sad, I mean that it was the kind of party that, even if I were a far right true believer, I would be desperate to leave early. The vibe was funereal and aggrieved, just one song after another about how (apparently) you’re not even allowed to be from a small town anymore. Multiple artists brought up the topic of fishing, as if that’s a pastime under threat by roving bands of leftist anti-fishing militias. There was some drive-by transphobia, because jeez of course there was. It was notable, when Kid Rock burst on stage to perform one of his early career party rock numbers, how out of place a good time anthem felt in that space. He stopped that song short, by the way, before exiting the stage. A man dressed in Amadeus cosplay dirged the hell out of a cello for a bit, and then Mr. Rock returned, this time to play a song that was not very fun at all. It was about mortality, about how you need to worship either Jesus and/or Charlie Kirk before it’s too late.
It sounded, for all the world, like the sound of something dying. The lighting was dark, alternating between Death Star blacks and reds and the kind of heavy spotlights you’d expect at a high school student play about suicide.
This sadness speaks to the core limit of fascist attempts to craft shared human experiences. Fascism is antithetical to community. It cannot welcome, only warn. Its only offering is the hollow camaraderie of a common enemy. We are together, the fascists preach, not because we actually like each other, but because we both hate and are hated by the people on the other side of the door.
You all, what an opportunity! The fascists are incapable of throwing great parties, which means they’re definitely incapable of organizing childcare collectives, or intergenerational game nights, or workshops where we learn each other’s stories and come out stronger for it. Their movement was never built to welcome people in, only to stew together with the previously converted.
The revolution, of course, will not be televised. But it will be, and always has been, birthed in a thousand folk schools and happy hours; in church and synagogue fellowship halls and punk basements; in summer cookouts with rib smokers and bounce houses and, yes, street parties where the old men play dominos and the vendors hawk coconuts and piraguas.
On Super Bowl Sunday, Bad Bunny threw a party. It was both very fun and, more importantly, very deliberate. It knew what it wanted to make you feel. It knew what (and who) it wanted to celebrate. It knew what it wanted you to do when you walked in the door (dance!) and how you should feel when you left (joyful, full of love, focused more on interconnection than division). Not surprising, I suppose, coming from an artist still in touch with the more collectivist culture that raised him.
And yes, it was sponsored by a corporation, and embedded in a broader pageant that sure as hell isn’t liberatory, and of course it won't bring about the beloved community of our dreams. It was not enough, because any single action, under capitalism and fascism and white supremacy and patriarchy is not enough. Do you think any single event got us into this mess? Then let us not put that load bearing weight on any isolated action we take in response. A million experiments, you all, in a million different places. That’s the name of the game.
The question, in this frightening, emergent, sacred moment, is not whether any one party will save us, but whether we can waste a single moment not hosting as many parties as possible, and making them feel like the kind of spaces to which people want to return.
I have made this call to action in the past. It’s a lovely sounding refrain. I mean, who’s against good vibes? But I also know that, all too often, those of us who dream of a better world prioritize something other than making our spaces just feel good. We get sidelined by ideological puffery, or internal political and ego wrangling, or the siren call of showing off rather than welcoming in. More often than not, we have an event focused solely on accomplishing a task rather than loving the people who showed up. We have a meeting because it’s the second Thursday of the month and that’s when we always have a meeting. We don’t show up to the event, because last time we went there was a a crowd of cool kids who all knew each other and we feared that we’d always be on the outside looking in.
We love to quote Toni Cade Bambara’s line about making the revolution irresistible. But that’s not a bumper sticker. It’s a choice you have to make, over and over again.
But goodness I hope we make that choice. Because you all, whatever your take on whether a Super Bowl Halftime show can change the world, you can’t deny it— you wanted an invite to that party, didn’t you? And I honestly can’t imagine that many stalwart conservatives who’d earnestly enjoy themselves at that Kid Rock show. They’d go, out of obligation and a sense of movement piety, but not forever. Hate and fear, unlike love, isn’t actually a renewable resource.
The fascists don’t know how to party because they don’t know how to care. And if we truly are a movement of love, then that means that nobody can party as hard as we can, nobody can dance with as much abandon, nor extend a hand more joyously.
We can win, you all. But not if we don’t throw those parties. A million of them. Some quiet, some loud. Some with a raucous dance floor, others with a cozy circle of knitters on couches. A fair number of potlucks, I hope, but also plenty of food and diaper delivery spreadsheets. Not every party will be for you, and thank goodness for that, but if enough of us raise a hand, everybody will get an invite to the one they’ve been craving.
It’s never about one night. It’s never about one performance. It’s never about heroes or saviors, be they the pop stars with microphones or the most radical anarchist at the protest. It’s about remembering that, before we hated fascism, we loved each other. And we’re gonna keep loving each other, on the streets, in our cluttered living rooms, and on so many dance floors. We’re going to love each other until we win, and then we’ll throw one more party, the best one of our lives.
End notes:
Just a reminder that Minnesota remains under siege. I’m still donating to this rent relief fund and invite you to continue doing so as well. Also, have you checked out loveletterstominnesota.com yet? Have you added yours in? What a beautiful we we’ve woven together.
I apologize in advance, during a moment when I know there’s high demand for trainings, that I’m not currently offering any Barnraisers courses. I will soon, I promise. I’m working on a very exciting project that’s about to launch (and that may take me to some of your communities, actually). I’ll announce that soon, and then once we’re on the other side of that launch I’ll be able to catch my breath and figure out the course schedule moving forward. In the meantime, are you on the interest list? I hope so! And stay tuned!
As always, a friendly reminder that unlike the Super Bowl halftime show or the Talking Point USA sadness spectacular, this space does not have corporate sponsorship or any big money behind it at all. It exists because you all support it! Thank you! And then, as thanks for supporting it, I give you all sorts of perks, including free merch, like this jaunty heart shirt whose message has not stopped seeming super urgent.
A repeat SUPER FUN ANNOUNCEMENT: PORTLAND, OREGON. I’m finally coming your way. And I’m offering two public events. Both at Trinity Episcopal (in the heart of downtown). Please come. Please invite friends, or organizing partners, or strangers you only sort of know. What a good excuse to practice putting the invitation out, right? Register for both at trinity-episcopal.org/sacred-learning
Last week, I told you that I was doing a Substack Live with the absolutely wonderful Celeste Davis. Well, I did that, and it was great! And she then wrote an even better essay inspired by that conversation, and you should read it, I think!
Are you listening to This Week in Breeders, the podcast I host with Sarah Wheeler about gender and friendship and parenting and ANTICS! I hope, because our movie episode is about to come out this week and it’s gonna be so fun.
"The fact that the left had the massive party with the celebrity cameos helps the MAGA fiction that they are not, in fact, the regime in power, but instead a stalwart group of rebels under siege by a hostile liberal world." This is such a great point. I'm so sick of their victim mentality.
FWIW my 80+-year-old (white, non-Spanish-speaking) parents loved Bad Bunny and watched the halftime show twice! They were even looking up explanations of some of the visual symbolism. I wonder if the fact that the game itself was so boring helped make BB stand out even more.
Wow this is so beautiful, thank you so much for this.