Every cliche in the book

After every Super Bowl, we all get a chance to look back at the spectacle and laugh and laugh at the human tendency to reduce our experiences to the lowest common denominator and at the same time share the joy of a communal experience.
The problem is that the experience itself is a cliché, a world-weary and frankly tiresome exercise in gluttony, meaningless revelry and sanctimony all wrapped up in the American flag.
This year’s annual pilgrimage to Madison Avenue was a triumph of the human spirit over adversity, the turning of a grim page in our nation’s recent history, or some such sentimental hogwash (and I’m not referring to the kind that Frank Capra mastered). Then again, the conventional wisdom doesn’t always hold true – Manning wasn’t perfect, the ads were not the best part of the show – and that in itself is a small, good thing we can all hold up as a gleaming virtue. Without listing in numbing detail all the shortcomings of our federal and state responses to the devastation of hurricane Katrina, suffice it to say that the Gulf region affected is in large part still in desperate shape. No number of drunken women flashing crowds on Bourbon Street is going to make a damn bit of difference to someone who is still fighting with FEMA, the insurance companies and the overall shrunken economy to simply get back to a tenuous lower-middle class (or lower) standard of living. So as happy as we all may be to see a perennial loser come out on top, it may bear remembering that the victory is only one of sport and not some clarion call to a blessed new day for New Orleans and yes, all of the good old U.S. of A.
When thinking specifically about the supposed cultural relevance of the Super Bowl, one can’t help but discuss the advertising. This year we got treated to new, more acidly cynical takes on the age-old battle of the sexes (spineless guy dragged through a shopping mall, for one) and surrealism in the service of mass consumption (those poor dolphin people begging for salty snacks) and along the way a couple of comments about how lesbians are really cool as long as they excite heterosexuals. That, along with a pair of ancient Englishmen croaking their way through a greatest hits reel and pretty good football game constitutes just about every cliché in the book.

8 February 2010, Brooklyn.
1.41 pm