The commercials, though, were interesting, two in particular.
I was very confused by the one for Groupon. In case you missed it, here’s a summary. Timothy Hutton speaks of the tragedy of Tibet against a backdrop of beautiful images: a starkly elegant snow-capped mountain, a Tibetan elder. Then Timothy Hutton announces that in spite of the tragedy, the Tibetan’s sure do dish up some phenomenal curry, and thanks to Groupon, we can enjoy it for next to nothing. Was this a parody of whiney, suburbanly earnest white folks’ adoption of Tibet, back before we fell deeply, hopelessly in love with Africa, as their cause célèbre? If so I’d have to say Groupon made a touchdown. But if the idea the marketing team was trying to shove across the airwaves was that Groupon brings you the world, locally, then they’ve taken Internet-driven cluelessness to an entirely new level. I guess you’d call that a fumble.
My favorite commercial was about Detroit. I think Detroit was, is and will one day again be our greatest urban accomplishment. As a city, in embodies pretty much everything: Blind ambition, optimism bordering on outrageousness, and then, in adherence to the script we’ve been following since Eve picked her afternoon snack from the tree, thanks to the lure of short-term gain, collapse. Detroit is the closest we’ve ever come to Athens, and on Sunday afternoon the ruins were on spectacular display. I’m going back and forth on what I thought was the oddest part of the commercial: It was narrated by Eminem. In fact, the commercial concluded with him walking into a grand old theater in the midst of a performance by an all-black choir. Eminem sort of gestures to them and says something along the lines of “This is how we do it in Detroit.” Put another way, the black music that emerged from that city, the black music that put not Detroit on the map but put, arguably, the U.S. on the map, is being introduced by a white rapper? I did a bit of a flip flop inside of my mind on that one. If the airwaves are willing to indulge my fetish for industrial cities for a minute or two, I can almost overlook the injustice of Eminem’s top billing. But, in fairness, if the marketing team knows nothing else, its expertise when it comes to understanding its audience and all of its limitations is exemplary.
The best part of the Super Bowl, though, came via the radio on Monday morning: The greed is getting the best of the grunts, so there may not be a football season later this year.
