Critics are panning The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince But Now Once Again Known As Just Prince after seeing a part of his performance at the Super Bowl halftime show (apparently there was a Super Bowl last weekend, but I’m still not able to find any evidence of this), specifically the part where he played a guitar solo (for “Purple Rain”, on a guitar shaped like the thing that used to be his name) while appearing in silhouette. According to said critics, the imagery shown therein is decidedly phallic, as he holds the guitar straight up at his waist. Wow! Really? Imagine that! Prince doing something sexual suggestive… Who’da thunk it?
If you are surprised by this, you fall into one of two groups: the first being people who are not familiar with Prince or his repertoire, and the second being people who are blithering idiots.
Regarding the act itself, it was most certainly intentional. Prince knew exactly what he was doing, and figured that most people would get it, and find it amusing that it made it onto national television. It’s kind of like all of those kids that posed for extracurricular activity photos for the high school yearbook while flashing the shocker (see also, Stuff I Think and Shouldn’t Say). Of course, most of us know that asking Prince to do to a performance completely devoid of sexual innuendos is like asking Rage Against the Machine to do a performance devoid of political statements, or asking Fred Durst to do a performance without sucking… Chances are that it’s remotely possible, but it’s not happening any time soon.
The NFL should have known what they were getting into with Prince. This is a non-issue and nothing compared to Nipplegate, which was also much ado about nothing.
The phallic connotation controversy was part of a trifecta of outrages from the supposed Super Bowl that I cannot recall. The other two were, respectively, a Snickers commercial where two guys pull A Lady and the Tramp with a candy bar and act all homophobic afterwards (trying to make up for it by doing something “manly,” which happens to be pulling out their chest hair), and a Nationwide commercial which shows Kevin Federline starring in a bling-bling-style rap video, where it is later revealed that he’s just daydreaming, and actually works at a fast-food joint.
The Snickers commercial has been slammed by GLAAD and other gay rights groups, and for the most part I can see why it would be offensive to homosexuals and/or crusaders/supporters thereof. It tries to get across the message that two men kissing (or being gay) is something to be embarrassed about, and does not fit in with the general idea of what is considered manly. Without going into diatribe mode (it really didn’t offend me personally, though I saw the potential immediately), I’d say this was the only one of the three that really warrants any legitimate elucidation.
The Federline commercial was f*cking hilarious. The guy has recently made a career of disparaging himself, and that’s worth a chuckle. Regarding the letter from National Restaurant Association President and Chief Executive Steven Anderson, saying that the commercial is a “strong and direct insult to the 12.8 million Americans who work in the restaurant industry,” let’s look at this for a moment…
Not all 12.8 million Americans work at fast-food restaurants, which is specifically shown in the spot. Moreover, it’s not Nationwide’s opinion that working in fast-food sucks; everybody knows it sucks. Nationwide is merely stating a widely known and accepted fact. How many times have you thought that your job sucked, but at least you’re not flipping burgers? People who flip burgers are not doing it because they like to flip burgers, or because they think that flipping burgers will make them look or feel awesome. They do it because they have bills to pay and have little or no useful skills. They know it sucks. I happen to know this first hand, as my first job involved frying chicken, waiting on dozens captious assholes per day, and making minimum wage to boot. I was 16, but it beat being broke.
God damn it, just when you think these P.C. thugs are getting out of hand, they go and show us that we’ve seen nothing yet. Welcome to the age of the big whiner.
Cheers
-JF2k7!
