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The Biggest Moments of the 2020 Super Bowl Halftime Show

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The Biggest Moments of the 2020 Super Bowl Halftime Show

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Here Are the Biggest Moments of the Super Bowl Halftime Show

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Let's recap the biggest moments from the Super Bowl 2020 Halftime Show featuring Jennifer Lopez and Shakira in Miami.

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There's nothing empowering or anti-Trump about wealthy women glamorizing raunch culture.

C an spectacle ever just be spectacle, an end in itself? Not at this year's Super Bowl.

In case you missed the halftime extravaganza, Latina popstars Jennifer Lopez, aged 50, and Shakira, aged 43, sang alongside children in cages while enacting scenes from a high-end strip club. Some argued that the routine had been a powerful anti-Trump statement of female empowerment (for what better way to avenge a president with a penchant for porn stars, than by presenting women like porn stars?). Others feared it was the mainstreaming of sexual depravity, the ruin of a nation's culture and the corruption of its children.

Since I'm foreign - and don't really understand the Super Bowl: sorry - I'll tell you what I saw. And that's a whole lot of leg, boob, stomach, and (this is a thing, apparently) "butt cleavage," belonging to two beautiful - if slightly overripe - women; who pranced, prowled, gyrated, and spread their legs on stage. On the one hand, it was a genuinely impressive display of energy and sex appeal.

First up was Shakira, whose extremely flexible hips (draped in cherry-colored pompoms), you recall, do not lie. After some impressive butt-shaking, the Colombian goddess lay on the floor, the cameras sneaking some close-up shots of her panties, whereupon she bounced back up for more (much more, in fact). Next up was J-Lo, who - boobs and butt a-flashing - slid down a pole with her legs wide open (like she did in Hustlers, remember?) before teasingly wiggling her bottom in front of a man's crotch.

Leaving nothing at all to the imagination, the performance was how I picture a pre-gladiator prostitute performance at the Colosseum. In Dominion, Tom Holland wrote that "In [Ancient] Rome, men no more hesitated to use slaves and prostitutes to relieve themselves of their sexual needs than they did to use the side of a road as a toilet." Modern attempts to enforce such "hesitation," without actually withdrawing the sexual invitation, have been largely unsuccessful. In The Madness of Crowds, Douglas Murray considers the male perspective in Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" music video as a particularly pertinent example of this. Having been told multiple times to "look at her butt," and Minaj having thrust said butt in his face, a young man initiates physical contact only to find himself having committed some terrible crime.

A similar incoherence made its way into the Shakira/J-Lo routine when an angelic chorus of young girls appeared: virginal, draped in white and silver American flags. They held hands, as a teen soloist - J-Lo's daughter - sang: "If you wanna live your life, live it all the way and don't you waste it." Is that so? "Every feeling, every beat, could be so very sweet you gotta taste it." The camera then zoomed out to the female gender symbol and the singing continued: "Let's get loud, let's get loud, come on turn the music up." Shakira re-appeared to deliver the punchline: "Ain't nobody gonna tell you whatcha gonna do. No, no."

And with that, the performance buckled under the weight of its own hypocrisy.

"How is resurrecting every stereotype of female sexuality that feminism endeavored to banish good for women?" asked Ariel Levy in her 2005 book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. "How is imitating a stripper or a porn star - a woman whose job is to imitate arousal in the first place - going to render us sexually liberated?"

At least the Romans had the decency to be upfront about it. For, truthfully, the Super Bowl's Latina-women-in-bed fantasy - attended by thousands and played before millions - was no more about Trump than it was about "female empowerment." Instead, it was about what these things are always about: (in order) vanity, sex, money, and power.

Of course, for superhumanly attractive popstars like Shakira and J-Lo, there is nothing to lose from caricaturing female sexuality in front of the nation. Actually, there's a lot of money and admiration to be gained. But if you aren't rich and famous, this kind of behavior is much less glamorous.

I once interviewed a stripper who told me what life in a club is really like. She'd be caked in cheap make-up, dripping in sweat, slamming down "shot after shot after shot" just to get through her shift. She also had deal with some extremely unpleasant characters. As for what happens when we mainstream raunch culture, for one thing, teen girls - who misguidedly pick cynics like Shakira and J-Lo as role models - take to Instagram, posting pictures of themselves in swimsuits, in tight dresses, and at provocative angles. They learn from a young age that their body, and a quick dopamine-hit from "likes" on their pictures, is their best shot at validation.

It's a trashy state of affairs. In America, the debate about the objectification of women is perpetually in circular motion, propelled by the competing forces of fanaticism and puritanism. But from the sidelines, I see something else: a whole lot of leg, boob, stomach, and butt cleavage. And a contemptible farce.

Madeleine Kearns is a William F. Buckley Fellow in Political Journalism at the National Review Institute. She is from Glasgow, Scotland, and is a trained singer.

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The Super Bowl Halftime Farce | National Review

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There's nothing empowering or anti-Trump about wealthy women glamorizing raunch culture. C an spectacle ever just be spectacle, an end in itself? Not at this year's Super Bowl. In case you missed the halftime extravaganza, Latina popstars Jennifer Lopez, aged 50, and Shakira, aged 43, sang alongside children in cages while enacting scenes from a high-end strip club.

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Shakira's Super Bowl halftime show tongue moment leaves fans puzzled

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Shakira's Super Bowl halftime show tongue moment leaves fans puzzled

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Shakira’s Super Bowl halftime show tongue moment leaves fans puzzled

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Shakira puzzled fans by making noise with her tongue during the Super Bowl LIV halftime show, but others noted that it may have been a wink to her Lebanese roots.

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Shakira and Jennifer Lopez get loud in their politically subversive Super Bowl show

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Shakira and Jennifer Lopez get loud in their politically subversive Super Bowl show

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jennifer lopez and shakira get loud in their politically subversive super bowl show - cnnpolitics

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Shakira and Jennifer Lopez get loud in their politically subversive Super Bowl show

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If the 2019 Super Bowl halftime show was a middling, agenda-less mess, this year's performance was its opposite: 15 straight minutes of political subversions.

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Inappropriate halftime show Roger Goodell's latest pandering display

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Inappropriate halftime show Roger Goodell's latest pandering display

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Reader Peter Kruimer has the floor:

"In all seriousness, can the NFL go any lower? She was spreading her legs giving the audience crotch shots! Pole dancing as Super Bowl LIV entertainment? Little girls should aspire to be strippers?"

Er, ah, well, it certainly seems that way. So let us now raise our cups to even lower standards!

Roger Goodell and Jay-Z - the NFL's new, N-wording, women-degrading, vulgarity-rapping Minister of Social Justice and transparent racial public relations - are already hard at work on next year's Super Bowl halftime:

A Salute to Lap Dancing, sponsored by Cialis.

"Budweiser Bucks" will be distributed so the customers can "make it rain!" or slip a few inside the thongs of barely clothed young nymphs as they gyrate and grind through the stands at the next, no one-under-18 Super Bowl.

Security and police will be replaced by bouncers.

It's still hard to fathom the why of what the NFL did Sunday. But one consistent truth remains:

The highly inappropriate, female-objectifying Super Bowl halftime show followed the path of the previous shows as conducted with the full approval and invite of pandering, gutless, $42 million-per-year guy Goodell.

Just four years ago, Super Bowl 50 featured a disturbing dance tribute to the murderous Black Panthers. To that, Goodell offered no excuses or even an explanation. He just took the right-headed in the audience for granted.

And he likely knew then that the absence of condemnation for such an act due to media fear of being labeled "a hater" or "racist" by ignorant fools allowed him and the NFL to keep at it.

Last year, the NFL presented two Catch of the Day rappers - I forget their street names, Dough-vah Soul and Herring Bone, perhaps - to perform.

The NFL knew in advance they'd shout or lip-sync vulgar lyrics, but that didn't deter it from the invite. As the rappers grabbed their groins, their stock-in-trade crudities were bleeped. Thus, this was no "wardrobe malfunction" ambush, this was the plan.

Sunday's halftime, by design, objectified women as hot, barely dressed, crotch- and rear-end-thrusting, unescorted boobs-bobbing sex kittens. As if the NFL doesn't have enough problems with how its players regard and treat women, the rank hypocrites. And as if Shakira and Jennifer Lopez don't know the score.

And of course, Goodell again escaped responsibility. He'd do to the kids in our lives what he wouldn't allow us to do to the kids in his. Not that we'd ever do what he did.

And once again, America's right-thinking but vastly underrepresented citizens - by my estimate, the silenced majority among both major political parties - went ignored, dismissed as unimportant and expendable.

And where are all those feminist protesters? Shakira and J.Lo - the latter had her 11-year-old kid on the stage, for heaven's sake - are too popular to take on?

Under Goodell, the Super Bowl has become Viewer Indiscretion Advised TV.

And to condemn Goodell as merely dismissive of those who would choose right over wrong would be a step up for him. Unless he's unaware of how prurient his halftime shows have become - as if he'd debate it, video attached, in public - he's purposefully negligent.

There was another Goodell-encouraged absurdity on display. With the 49ers up 20-10 early fourth quarter, the Niners intercepted a pass, and their defense determined that was the perfect time to pose for an end-zone group shot.

This once would have been a penalty for delay of game or unsportsmanlike conduct, but Goodell issued orders that displays of "genuine enthusiasm" - showboating, showing off, taunting - are good for the game.

That pose included 19 Niners, so Goodell's invite led to several coming off the bench to act like Goodell-certified, NFL-issue fools.

And now that "photo" has a well-deserved legacy, a prominent placement in the Museum of Dewey Wins! The Niners rushed to pat themselves on the back for a job undone and never completed.

It's the perfect keepsake as proof of the feckless, Nero Fiddles League stewardship of Roger Goodell. PSL, anyone?

Why should illegal turns be allowed on road to Hall?

So, in the tidal pool of more recent MLB cheating scandals, Pete Rose's elimination from Hall of Fame eligibility should be lifted? Several fresher wrongs excuse an old one?

Regardless, it's becoming too difficult to care.

George Steinbrenner, a twice-convicted felon, was twice banned from baseball but returned to be appointed to the board of directors of baseball's Hall of Fame.

Shoot, the nation's lead MLB TV analyst is Alex Rodriguez. Let 'em all in!

In retrospect, it's easy to ask why Chiefs running back Damien Williams, with 1:15 left and up 24-20, didn't pass the first-down marker, then just fall down, rather than keep running for a TD - something that went unaddressed by Fox's Joe Buck and Troy Aikman.

But that's more foresight and in-the-moment awareness than most humans can provide. And lots of folks, starting here, didn't think about it until asked about it.

Not that Fox was out to show how greed-stricken the NFL has become - it wanted to show that Jack Buck called Super Bowl IV, 50 years ago, while his son, Joe, was on this one - but the event's escalation of exclusionary excess was stunning.

The graphic showed a ticket to Supe 4 for $15 vs., gulp, $2,500 Sunday.

Players flake on handshake

It didn't dawn on any of the Sunday coin-flip captains - college men - to shake the hands of the elderly, medals-earned military heroes, several in wheelchairs, who participated?

No one from the NFL advised them that it's the honorable, gentlemanly thing to do? The NFL just let them sit there like props.

Then again, because everything's a con, in 2015 under Roger Goodell, teams were paid over $6 million in Department of Defense taxpayer money to conduct patriotic, on-field pregame ceremonies.

How about a swap of the SOI - sons of inheritance - Jeff Wilpon for Jimmy Dolan? What's the worst that could happen?

A Super Bowl pregame stat on the NFL Network noted that 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo is "2-0 in postseason starts." Reader L. Barravechia: "Um, ya think? Had he been 1-1 he wouldn't be playing."

To watch these soulful, sensitive commercials starring LeBron James as a kids' welfare advocate is to wonder if he's the same LeBron James who hosts HBO's "The Shop," regularly loaded with vulgarities from Gutter Street.

Oh, well, football's over. Now it's almost time to enter the On The Bubble, Punch Their Ticket to the Big Dance, Brackets-Busting, Road to Somewhere, What's in Your Wallet? student-athlete tournament.

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Inappropriate halftime show Roger Goodell's latest pandering display

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Reader Peter Kruimer has the floor: "In all seriousness, can the NFL go any lower? She was spreading her legs giving the audience crotch shots! Pole dancing as Super Bowl LIV entertainment? Little girls should aspire to be strippers?" Er, ah, well, it certainly seems that way.

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Watch: J. Lo and Shakira Dazzled at the Super Bowl Halftime Show

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Watch: J. Lo and Shakira Dazzled at the Super Bowl Halftime Show

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Considering the NFL's contentious relationship with stars like Rihanna and Cardi B - both Rihanna and Cardi, along with other musicians, have said they won't perform for the league because of its treatment of Colin Kaepernick - it's something of a marvel that the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show boasted kinetic talent in the form of superstars Jennifer Lopez and Shakira (especially compared to Maroon 5, who headlined the halftime show in 2019). The call to book the duo was facilitated by Jay-Z, through his still relatively new partnership with the NFL; the women made history as the first Latina artists to headline the Super Bowl halftime show.

Lopez's appearance was especially timely in light of her recent turn as the glamorous underdog Ramona in . Her performance as a stripper who just wanted to get even had a metaphysical edge to it as Lopez, herself an underdog as an actress and a musician, finally got the credit she's been fighting for her entire career.

And like she did in Hustlers, Lopez - with ample help from Shakira - slunk away with the entire thing.

The two delivered a joyous halftime show at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, bringing energy to a gig that frequently runs the risk of coming off as snoozy and being drowned out by the cavernous arena and occasion. The show combined both singers' best and beloved hits with indomitable hip-shaking and hair-flipping and some weirdly wonderful entertainment.

Shakira, decked in fiery red, opened the show howling to her languid hit "She Wolf," before somehow manifesting a guitar and whipping her crimson mane. I do not pretend to understand the world Shakira lives in, some kind of eerie space where there's always a guitar to play, ropes to pantomime bondage with, and a beat to wiggle to, but if caffeinated enough, I have no doubts I could have fun there.

Like it was ever in doubt, Shakira then performed her hit tune "Hips Don't Lie," accompanied by said truth-telling hips.

It's curious, though, that 2020 marks the 16th year since Janet Jackson's 2004 performance with Justin Timberlake and the infamous "wardrobe malfunction" that almost killed Jackson's career. (Jackson was burdened with the blame and was blackballed for exposing a breast.) A decade and a half later, Shakira showed how much times have changed. She was clearly in charge of her sexuality onstage and emboldened by her own agency, with few dudes to speak of among her backup dancers. (Though Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny accompanied Shakira for a song.) That feels a little like growth.

Lopez's "Jenny From the Block" marked the handoff from Shakira. And what a delicious transition it was.

Lopez, clad in silver and shining like a glamorous disco ball, descended from a lit pole not unlike the ones seen in Hustlers. Despite the film's critical acclaim, Lopez was ultimately snubbed by the film academy and didn't receive an Oscar nomination for her performance. So even though she had been planning to draw on her movie moves and lean into her pop culture moment for some time (the announcement of Lopez and Shakira as Super Bowl halftime performers came out in September), the halftime show felt like a reminder to Oscar voters of what a mistake they made.

Lopez, sliding to her knees at one point and performing a cheerleader-like pyramid stunt in heels, hit every beat while singing her biggest hits, including "Waiting for Tonight," "Love Don't Cost a Thing," and "Let's Get Loud." She also dueted with her daughter Emme and donned a feathered cape that had the Puerto Rican flag on one side and the US flag on the other. (Lopez was born in the US to Puerto Rican parents.)

Each hip pop, hair flip, and stomp elicited more and more energy from the crowd before she joined with Shakira for one final bum-shaking sendoff.

And in that moment, the football game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs became a footnote in a bigger story, a stark reminder that it's been J. Lo's year and we've all just been lucky to witness it.

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Watch: J. Lo and Shakira dazzled at the Super Bowl halftime show

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Considering the NFL's contentious relationship with stars like Rihanna and Cardi B - both Rihanna and Cardi, along with other musicians, have said they won't perform for the league because of its treatment of Colin Kaepernick - it's something of a marvel that the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show boasted kinetic talent in the form of superstars Jennifer Lopez and Shakira (especially compared to Maroon 5, who headlined the halftime show in 2019).