[Orig to FB]
Bad Bunny’s halftime show is a masterpiece, and I’m not even slightly exaggerating. You like it, you don’t like it, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that it happened, that Bad Bunny made this particular thing happen — in this way, in this moment, with this platform and this medium (and I don’t mean some white category like “TV”), and with this message. Everyone will see it differently because we’re all diverse, even within ourselves, but from beginning to end it’s a river of references, of iconography really, almost all of it outdoors or public — many things seen by many people(s) in many settings, so there’s no one anything, not even BB. Lots of people — that is, lots of non-hispanic whites or NHWs — will say “uh, yeah, neah, it’ll pass like everything does” and quibble about causal mechanisms. And that’s true, indeed so true that it’s really a non-response. Everything must pass, and we don’t really understand how anything works. But this masterpiece isn’t really for NHWs, it’s for everyone else. Sure, everyone can watch it: but anyone who watches it and thinks same on any level — same spectacle, same capital, same ritual, same product, same career, same whatever — is telling everyone else what everyone else needs to know about them: same. When you decenter yourself, you can’t do ‘criticism’ any more: all you can do is appreciate, and the value of your appreciation grows with — really, through — its openness to others. Now watch this whole thing and see how BB decenters himself so much of the time. And not just technically: he passes through moments and settings, and they change his place with others, his perspectives, his gestures, his movement, his regard, his affect, all of his qualities.
See also neological things