Super Bowl LIII. Can this possibly be the fifty-third battle of the top two teams in professional football? Are the Patriots really taking the field again, while the Browns and the Bills are home, crying in their beer?
The NFL has had its issues in recent years, but even with the Patriots’ repeat appearance, the specter of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and the shadow of Kapernick’s bended knee, millions will settle in front of their wide-screen television on Sunday night. Will the wily old veteran in his signature hoodie outwit the wunderkind whippersnapper? Will karma allow the Patriots to rebound from the embarrassment of LII or will the Rams conquer all?
It’s likely that many viewers have more interest in the side stories: the first-time appearance of male cheerleaders, commentator Tony Romo’s uncanny ability to predict the next play, the halftime performance by Maroon Five, the Puppy Bowl, or Gladys Knight’s attempt to “give the anthem back its voice.” Still others will replenish their snack bowls during the football action, returning to their seats in time for the commercials, rumored to cost their sponsors a cool $5 million for thirty seconds of airtime.
Those commercials. Remember 1979, when Mean Joe Greene tossed his jersey to a kid as he drained the boy’s proffered bottle of Coke? Ray Charles sang for Diet Pepsi in 1991, and Cindy Crawford went a step farther in 1992 as she introduced a new Pepsi can, her young admirers responding, “Is that a great new Pepsi can or what?” In 1993, Larry Bird challenged Michael Jordan to a game of Horse, the winner rewarded by a Big Mac and fries. And year after year, the Budweiser spots manage to tug on our heartstrings with their patriotic Clydesdales and faithful canine companions.
Many ads are designed to bring laughter along with product recognition. Frito-Lay tops my list, with its snow globe/vending machine throw, the father-to-be and the ultrasound, the elderly couple who battle over a bag of chips, and the two-rule little boy: “Keep your hands off my momma, keep your hands off my Doritos.” Over the years, Snickers has engaged the talents of Betty White and Robin Williams, M & Ms went with bare-breasted dancing candies, and Morgan Freeman pitched Mountain Dew. A favorite of the 1984 Super Bowl was the eighty-one-year-old Clara Peller with her insistent, “Where’s the beef?”
Having watched clips of funny home videos earlier this week, and now viewing these Super Bowl commercials on YouTube, something nagged at me from the recesses of my high school memories. As the cobwebs parted, I thought of the reaction of Michael Valentine Smith, Robert Heinlein’s main character inStranger in a Strange Land. As a Martian, Michael came to earth with no concept of human thought or experience. As he tried to make sense of humor, he said: “Find me something that really makes you laugh, sweetheart . . . a joke, or anything else – but something that gave you a real belly laugh, not a smile. Then we’ll see if there isn’t a wrongness in it somewhere and whether you would laugh if the wrongness wasn’t there.” He later added, “I had thought – I had been told – that a ‘funny’ thing is a thing of a goodness. It isn’t. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. The goodness is in the laughing itself . . . a bravery . . . and a sharing . . . against pain and sorrow and defeat.”
While troubling me at the time, Heinlein’s observation hasn’t kept me from laughing at Super Bowl commercials or reaching for laughter even in tough times. As River Jordan understands, “Sometimes, in the midst of the darkest of situations, something funny is still funny.” But I hope it’s helped me be more aware of “the wrongness” when the laughter comes at the expense of another’s pain.
Maryanne Radmacher-Hershey finds the right priority in her blessing: “May your walls know joy; may every room hold laughter and every window open to great possibility.” When in doubt, choosing joy as the filter through which our laughter flows becomes a practical antidote to the temptation of shaming another, even on Super Bowl Sunday.
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