No sleep til Houston
February 3, 2004
Going to the Super Bowl isn’t so much like going to a football game as it is like visiting a Potemkin village. It's a carefully staged performance of a football game.
Not enough sleep, too much everything else. A few jumbled notes:
- What Baudrillard called “the precession of the simulacra”: the dominance of the projected image, the broadcast. You and the other 77,000 people in the stadium are, essentially, a giant prop.
- Up in the nosebleed section, you find more actual fans than you'd expect, all possessed of a certain media-self-consciousness: with their brand new team jerseys, their funny hats and camera-mugging bonhomie. The fans are more than just fans; they are cultural archetypes.
- The uncomfortable social chasm between the white wine-sipping, collar-shirted corporate VIPs and the beer-guzzling, face-painted fan proletariat.
- Janet Jackson's malfunctioning wardrobe was more readily visible from a Beijing living room than from Reliant Stadium, section 629, row M, seat 5.
- The streaker owned the halftime show.
- Finally, as Bill put it, the Pats may just turn out to be the East Coast 'Niners.
File under: Personal
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