For everyone saying only Black people can understand the meaning behind Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show, you’re sadly mistaken! It seems many white folks are dissecting the show and its significance, and you might be pleasantly surprised by the theories they’re coming up with.
On Instagram, @chicanaguera505 became emotional while talking about the part of Lamar’s show when fifty ‘leven background dancers crawled out of the GNX on the stage. According to her, this part of the show symbolizes the Middle Passage— the stage in the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade when captured Africans were cramped inside slave ships to be transported to the Americas. “This mode of transportation, everyone’s packed in,” she said.
Guera furthered her theory saying “Before those men and women even set foot on this land, they were already wearing the red, white, and blue.” The woman reflected on the connection between the dancers wearing the colors of the American flag, and how this country was essentially built on the backs of Black people. “U.S. history presents Black history as slavery, period. But he’s also demonstrating that they are U.S. history,” Guera continued.
Another white creator, @nicky.reardon, focused his interpretation on one of the most important parts of Lamar’s set: having Samuel L. Jackson portray Uncle Sam— the national personification of the country. “Great art has always been political, and Kendrick Lamar just gave you a dissertation,” Reardon started.
He doubled down on this by giving the historical context of Jackson’s role during the Civil Rights Movement. For those that didn’t know, Jackson “has been a prominent Civil Rights activist since the 1960s,” Reardon said. “It creates this irony of becoming this physical embodiment of the establishment that he [Jackson] has spent his entire life trying to resist,” he pointed out.
Speaking of irony, Reardon noticed K. Dot’s “game” motif throughout the show. This “great American game,” as the creator pointed out, doesn’t only refer to football— which is why most people tuned into the Super Bowl in the first place— “but referring to this systematic oppression of Black people and how they have to play in this system that is gamed against them,” according to Reardon.
The most memorable part of Lamar’s show— outside of the whole audience screaming “A minorrrrrr”— was the dancers forming a perfect American flag around the Compton rapper. Similarly to Guera, Reardon made the connection between the use of Black dancer to physically create the flag and the history of Black bodies literally being the backbone of the country.
He even mentioned Serena Williams crip walking on Drake’s grave by pointing out how “In 2012, after winning the Olympic Gold, she celebrated... by doing the crip walk.” We all remember Williams faced blacklash following her tennis court dance, so the athlete bringing back her iconic crip walk on the biggest stage in the world is beyond meaningful.
On TikTok, user Jess Dennison said “if you hear somebody say the Super Bowl was trash, they just don’t get it.” For her, Lamar using a “game” to not only attack Drake but also call out the hypocrisy within the country was “diabolical.” She continued saying “The thing about Kendrick Lamar is the more you listen, the more that you’ll hear, and the more that you watch, the more that you’ll see.”