Reflections on the Super-duper Bowl

Let’s talk Beyoncé. Was it singing? (and I’m not talking about whether she was lip syncing); was it dancing? (in thigh-high boots with 5 inch heels I’d call it stomping); was it an excuse for pyrotechnics?; was it spectacle? Was it . . . 75,000 tweets for CRAP?

I didn’t know until recently that she can really sing because I always dismissed her as a entertainment package, not an R & B singer in the tradition of Aretha, Etta and Laura Nyro (who was finally inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame) who stood up on the stage or sat at the piano and sang with their souls. Now we have Beyoncé and Lady Gaga and Destiny’s Child (with Whitney Houston, RIP, kind of in the middle) who prance around the stage in a little bit of satin or leather and it’s really hard to know what they’re doing.

Michael Jackson and Prince, our androgynous links from the Detroit, Philly, and Memphis R & B days, also crossed over to pop but they made it clear they could actually sing and dance. In his new book Telegraph Avenue Michael Chabon, in the voice of one of his characters, also laments the loss of R & B talent, not to pop but to rap: "But face it, a lot has been lost. A whole lot. Ellington, Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, we got nobody of that caliber even hinted at in black music today. I'm talking about genius, composers  . . .  knowing how to play the fuck out your instrument."

I think it was Madonna, though, who really fucked things up. When I went to Wikipedia to peruse her profile—one of the longest I’ve ever seen on that site—she’s quoted as saying she wanted to grow up as a “black kid;” Prince was one of her idols. Apparently she also wanted to be a gay one: my friend Terri says she thinks Madonna’s early style derived from the New York gay bars before AIDS. So the lack of her talent as a singer/dancer/actress converged with desires of who she wanted to be and voila, crossover R & B as pop spectacle via MTV was born: shake your booty and you can be whoever or whatever you want.

Some academic feminists (and men) would be aghast at my assessment. Many have found that Madonna is the perfect political icon talked about by the famous Judith Butler in her book Gender Trouble because of her reconstruction of identity. The infamous Camille Paglia wrote that Madonna liberated sexuality from its Puritanical roots. That is, until she also wrote about how old and plastic Madonna was looking and how unseemly it was that she was still shaking her booty. And then there was the critic who asked the question, “Is Madonna a glamorized fuckdoll or the queen of parodic critique?”

But really, what the whole thing reminds me of is Elvis, minus a few pounds. We watched him rise from a rockabilly white boy to a soulful crooner of love songs to a icon of Las Vegas glitter. Only now the glitter isn’t confined to Las Vegas; it’s at the Grammy’s, the Emmy’s, the Oscars, and, of course, the Super Bowl. I wonder if it all could have gone anywhere else, what with MTV, rap producers who have shoved aside the likes of Jerry Wexler, and the fact that making millions of dollars is the common denominator of 21^st century modernity.

I thought about watching the Grammy’s to see if they could prove me wrong until I got my Sundays mixed up. If I’d known Amy Winehouse would have been there . . . maybe I would have remembered.