Some random thoughts on the Super Bowl. First, I should say that I haven’t watched football seriously in more than ten years. It’s getting to be like Easter for the semi-Catholic: I watch the Super Bowl, and maybe a playoff game or two. I have better things to do with my Sundays. OK, I don’t have better things to do, but the game bores me, which is strange, since I used to be really into it until just after college. In any case, watching the very exciting closing minutes of this year’s Super Bowl, it occurred to me – as it no doubt did to many others – that I’d seen this game before, like, last year. So I wondered, Descartes-style, whether there might be an evil genius who scripts these things, and, if so, how the script works. Because there does seem to be a formula. So, first, what are the problems that have to be overcome by the Super Bowl script. The obvious first problem is the blow-out. Nobody but the fans of the winning team keep watching a game that looks like a blow-out, and many of the Super Bowls of my youth were just that. If the advertisers are paying so much money, the second half slots have to pay off. So, you need a close game, or at least one in which the possibility of a come back remains very real until well into the fouth quarter. Second, you want to promote football itself, while also including the sports channels and shows, which would have to be in on the con. So, it should be exciting, with numerous back and forths and big plays, and it should have two or three really serious highlights for the sports shows, preferably dazzling catches or impossible runs. Not only can these be run  on a loop as a “signifier” for the game, but they are also sought after by fans and others trying to relive the experience of having seen the event live. So the David Tyree helmet catch from the 2008 game or this year’s toe-tap game winner by Santonio Holmes will serve as little snippets of marketable code. The script, given this set of problems, becomes clear. The teams battle back and forth, but stay within two touchdowns for the first three quarters. Everything then loosens up in the fourth quarter. The then trailing team springs to life, just as we always knew they would, and suddenly takes the lead, preferably with a magnificent drive led by their legendary quarterback. The team that had been leading, that had sensed victory just minutes before, is crushed. They get the ball back with two to three minutes remaining. It all comes down to this! Everything seems doomed, but they claw back and push and push. The final drive – which ends in a dramatic touchdown with under a minute remaining – is either capped by or includes an amazing play that will be the pre-packaged “memory” for the viewer…I saw that catch live, sonny, etc. The team that had come back, but now trails again, gets the ball back with 30-50 seconds left, just enough to keep viewers watching and anxious until the final play of the game, and transitioning them into the post-game show. The last two Super Bowls followed this general script exactly. Diagnosis: sound stage in Burbank! (The innovation in this year’s script was the miraculous interception and run back to close the first half: why waste even a second of ad time, and why not give the viewers a treat to remember?)

Of course, I don’t really believe this. On average, if you watch a lot of football, I suspect many of the games play out in this way owing to the various forces at work through the rules, within the coaching tradition, and on the field itself. (Example: I’d still argue that a “prevent defense” is a terrible idea, though I’d bet that coaches have clear statitistics on how it works more than it fails.) But it is odd that the last two Super Bowls have operated according to what would seem a strict formula for maximizing viewership at all levels (current, future, and auxiliary programming such as ESPN and DVD sales).

On the commercials: meh. The first half featured the usual “Women are better naked” misogynistic crap. The Bob Dylan/will.i.am commercial was somewhat memorable (the graffiti evolution bit helped). But two struck a chord with me. First, the Denny’s “Serious Breakfast” commercial. The premise is that three mafiosi are sitting in a diner discussing a future hit on an informant. But just as the mob boss tries to order the hit, a waitress comes over and starts spraying a whipped cream happy face on his pancakes. The noise of the whipped cream container interrupts the serious discussion a few times, and then we cut to the catch phrase: Isn’t it time for a serious breakfast? Cue bacon close-up, etc. The commercial is funny in its own right, but it reminded of of a phenomenon I’ve been noticing on Facebook. Specifically, when I compare the friends I had growing up with the friends I’ve made since college, I notice the glaring imbalance of Italian names. When I was growing up in Queens, I just assumed that a prevalence of Italian names was common across the country. You had your Massimo’s and Vito’s and Angelo’s and Rocco’s, your Francesca’s and Concetta’s and Rosanna’s, and even where the first names were anglicized, they were anglicized in a certain way (no Dave’s or Gary’s, but all Mike’s and Joey’s and John’s), and you had the last names to get you through: the Mastaciola’s and DiPietro’s and Pallazzolo’s and Capparella’s. And when I look at my friends list, I see it, all those Italian names, and then I look at their friends and it’s even more so, with something like half of all names being Italian in origin. But not so much the friends from college and afterward. The names have all changed since I hung around, so to speak. And when I think about the people I grew up with, I notice that most – including me – had at least one parent who wasn’t born in the United States, who had an accent (Irish, Italian, Greek, Croatian), who arrived here in the late-1960′s or early 1970′s, or later. I thought this was normal. But, of course, it’s not. What I realized only later is that I grew up in what was essentially an “ethnic enclave,” a strange thing when you think on it, but not uncommon for big east coast cities. I’ve never really considered myself “Italian” or “Irish,” though my father is to this day an Italian national, and my grandmother emigrated from Ireland in the 1920′s, and kept her brogue until the day she died. I’m American, and I think I’ve always been a little embarrassed of the whole “claiming your cultural heritage” bit. I still am. I certainly don’t get all worked up about “images of Italians in the media” and other such issues, because I’ve never really thought of myself as Italian, and I always assumed that anti-Italian discrimination – in terms of actual life effects – was really an early-to-mid 20th century thing. But two incidents.

First, I was visiting a (midwestern) school while I was deciding on PhD programs, and one of the graduate students who was showing me around kept introducing me to people as “[insert stereotypical Italian first name here] from Brooklyn,” and he kept saying it with a really obnoxious Vinny Barbarino accent. He was thoroughly amused by this, and the fake New Yawkah accent grew thicker and more insulting as the day went on. He was a Southerner, from Alabama if I remember correctly, and he didn’t pull off the Barbarino bit particularly well, but the message was clear enough. I remember being annoyed, thinking it was disrespectful, though I just smiled along wanly, fuming. I was careful to eliminate any hint of a New York accent from my diction when I said “Hi, it’s nice to meet you” after his little performances. I bumped into the guy again at a conference in New Orleans last year, and one of my friends introduced me to him. He knew perfectly well who I was, but I used my full name, decidedly unanglicized, emphasizing its vowels. It was all I could do to keep from tagging the guy with a right hook on the fucking spot. Spread love: it’s the Brooklyn way. Second, I was at a job interview at another midwestern school, and I was on my last event, having breakfast with some graduate students. I don’t remember how the question came up, but one of the students asked, and I do remember it was out of the blue, whether my father was in the mafia. In the fucking mafia! In 2007! Needless to say, I replied “that’s right,” and kind of laughed it off. But on the plane back home, I grew increasingly agitated (I had da agita ovah dis fuckin’ bagiagaloop!) by the question. Like, what the fuck? In the mafia? Really? As an innocent question – playful or not – at a graduate student breakfast with the prospective professor? Ey, ya fuckin’ skootch, isn’t it time for a serious fuckin’ breakfast?

The second memorable ad was for Career Builder dot com. It starts with classical music playing in a lush office, obviously the well-appointed digs for some hotshot CEO. The camera then zooms in to the magnificent moosehead on the wall, an impressive trophy. Then, in a continuous shot, the viewer is led out of the executive’s office and around to another office directly adjacent, and here’s where we see the joke. The classical music transitions into the repetitive sound of a printer, and we find in the second office a man at work on the computer, trying valiantly to type away. It turns out the the stuffed moose’s head was not removed from the body, but merely stuck through the wall with the rest of the mooses body – to wit, the ass-end – residing in the poor man’s office, and, indeed, standing directly on his desk with the ass just above his head. He has to work with a moose ass in his face all day. He looks unpleased. The catch line is something like “Time for a new job?” Conceptually and technically brilliant ad, in my view. But, really, what a metaphor for class consciousness! The apparent splendor of the boss’ office mirrored on the back end by the misery of the working conditions, with the two intimately connected through the same device: the body of the moose. When you look “beneath” the luxury of moosehead (and a traditional signifier here), you get the cost of that luxury on the worker. If I wanted to start a propaganda outfit, I’d want the writer of this ad on my team. Just great.