For a show that lasts roughly 13 minutes, the Super Bowl halftime performance has fueled decades of conversation.
Sometimes the spark comes from a single moment — as it did when Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” triggered a broadcast reckoning. Other times, it arrives through imagery and intent, from Jennifer Lopez’s 2020 caged children staging that critiqued U.S. immigration policies to children at the U.S.-Mexico border to Kendrick Lamar’s carefully layered Black storytelling, delivered as Donald Trump watched from his seat inside the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
