The Gazette (Montreal) February 2, 2002
Football? What football?: Tomorrow, many millions of people will watch U2, Paul McCartney, Britney Spears - oh, yeah, and the Super Bowl game l
By Mark Lepage
One question concerning tomorrow's Super Bowl XXXVI: is Bono walking to the gig? Advance reports of game preparations in and around the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans reveal a super-emphasis on security.
"No one drives up to the game," NFL vice-president Jim Steeg was quoted as saying. "Paul Tagliabue is walking. If the commissioner is walking, everybody's walking." The Super Bowl has been declared a National Special Security Event, overseen by the Secret Service. There will be a no-fly zone over the stadium (which should make Iraqis feel better about being one of 180 countries watching), and 8-foot security fencing to keep all vehicular traffic several blocks away. X-ray machines, metal detectors, and nearly 2,000 police and security personnel on detail, many of them in street clothes, will maintain order over a crowd of 72,000. So is Bono walking to the gig?
The bet here is No. U2 headlines the Super Bowl XXXVI halftime show, although viewers might be forgiven for mistaking the extracurriculars for the main event. The first ad run by Super Bowl network Fox might as well have been a Beautiful Day video, with footage of Bono onstage in his leather tour outfits. Also included: some incidental shots of large men in their Patriot and Ram outfits.
U2, who will sing three songs, is only part of the entertainment cavalcade. Before the first fumble, Sir Paul McCartney will sing Freedom, the PSA jingle he wrote for the 9/11 benefit. Mary J. Blige and Marc Anthony will duet on America the Beautiful, Mariah Carey will duet with her sanity, and a Parade-O-Presidents will be wheeled out under the bunting and the balloons. By the time the last man has been concussed, No Doubt, the Barenaked Ladies and Led Zeppelin will have been heard from.
I know you're wondering: won't all the football get in the way? A more relevant question: does the football matter?
The answer is No, which is nothing new. This might surprise one or two undershirted Doritos addicts, but while the game might have been paramount when Bart Starr was playing in it, The Game has long since overtaken it. The Super Bowl remains the most-watched single-day sporting event in the United States, reaching at least 80 million U.S. viewers and 800 million worldwide.
There might be Al-Qa'ida cells in Yemen, but the rest of Yemen will be watching Fox.
While arteries clog with cheesy cornstarch snacks and toilets flush away an ocean of suds, fans of The Game will debate the merits of the new ads (if they do manage to see them - see Commercial, this page), fetch more cheesy snacks, and occasionally tune into the score - which, with the Pats as a two-TD 'dog, could be lopsided. Somebody has already lost, however, and that somebody is tradition. While the halftime extravaganza has precedence, this year's Super Bowl telecast is so skewed that it is changing what we watch, why we watch - and perhaps even who watches.
Halftime extravaganza precedents: last year's telecast completed the cartoonification of Aerosmith, when the band once renowned for the singular focus of its depravity found itself onstage with celebrities who have never had sex, Britney Spears and NSYNC, (as well as Mary J. Blige and Nelly, who probably have).
However, all the added security reminds us that this year is different anew. As the post-traumatic stress disorder of 9/11 settles into the American psyche (what other reason can there be for all that wobbly vengefulness?), the selection of U2 as headliner was no accident.
In 2001, U2 was as close to meaningfulness as our mainstream culture got. After 109 concerts for more than 2 million fans, and 10 million copies of All That You Can't Leave Behind, they once again function as the goodness barometer. And even after all that megastar activity, the Super Bowl rates as the biggest single event in their history.
In my favourite Fox ad, the network is actually selling a show questioning the security of its own Super Bowl telecast. America's Most Wanted - Super Bowl Edition tracks the efforts of Secret Service agents and cops to ferret out any potential terror threat aimed at the game, while the alarmist narrator almost mocks their efforts. With the rest of the alarmists reminding everyone else that some terrorists might actually have seen Black Sunday (1977 movie, terrorists threaten to blow up game day with Goodyear blimp), you reach for the U2 goodness talisman.
But perhaps it isn't about "meaning" after all. NFL security director Milt Ahlerich, a former FBI agent, has said "one goal is to make the games look 'normal.' " But they won't, because the Cartoon Economy has yet to recover. Why "Cartoon"? Consider advertising.
This year's Super Bowl rates have actually dropped, from $2.05 million in 2001 to about $1.9 million for a 30-second spot, but that's still almost double the going rate in 1995. Most of that revenue hype was generated in 2000, when 17 dot.coms gobbled up ABC's Super Bowl ads, some as expensive as $3 million. Ah, those were the day. And a short day it was: in 2001, only three dot.coms returned to the telecast.
Without imaginary companies buying virtual airtime, the era of the soaring ad rate is over (until the next scam).
At least two old-school products are seizing the crisis as opportunity. Cadillac, realizing it must get post-Boomers to buy - and buy into - the luxury gas-guzzler, has secured Led Zeppelin's Rock and Roll for a campaign directed by Scott Hicks (Snow Falling on Cedars). Britney will attempt to singlehandedly boost flagging youth sugar consumption with a "Joy of Pepsi" ad, featuring the minx dressed through five decades of fashion: bobby socks, tie-dye, leg-warmers, etc., until every fantasy has been covered.
It's all so postmodern, what with the demographics and such. The real numbers will only be known after the final end-zone taunt-dance, but hold onto this final irony. Fox might have finally found a way to capture the most elusive of football audiences: women.
The other networks having realized the game is an afterthought, they sense that male viewership is vulnerable; it can be swayed away from Fox. To that end, ABC will run a special edition of Fear Factor starring Playboy Playmates engaged in such age-old psychic battles as the freezing water bikini torture test, or the sucking of strawberries in a glass box filled with flies. While some men switch over to investigate these anthropological mysteries, many women might be left watching U2 and Blige.
Asked about The Game, a defence analyst named John Pike is on record as saying, "The point of terrorism is to get on television, to have the event seen by as many as possible." Wow - they really are just like us.
Copyright 2002 Southam Inc.
