Before the Super Bowl could officially kick off in Los Angeles, someone had to raise the curtain on this distinctly post-Covid festival of American glitz and glamour – so why not the biggest movie star on the planet.
In a WWE-style teaser that played over the enormous video board that hovers over SoFi Stadium like a serpentine halo, the Rock set the tone for Super Gold Sunday, TV-speak for the cosmic-like coincidence of a Super Bowl falling during the middle weekend of the Winter Olympics – a first. Over the course of a two-minute monologue the actor-wrestler also known as Dwayne Johnson valorized the gladiators here as well as the others gritting it out under our flag in the Beijing Olympics. And he made sure to justify why we should stay tuned to the exception of all else. “It’s about the idea that this game [the Super Bowl] and these Games [the Olympics] can achieve one of the most precious feats of all – bringing us all together for a celebration of who we are.”
And as 70,000 fans at SoFi Stadium lost their minds when the Rock was revealed at midfield, a cordless mic in the grip of his anaconda-like right arm and a single eyebrow arched, you couldn’t help but wonder: Um, who are we exactly?
Set aside for a moment the fact that the Beijing Olympics have been less a celebration of human achievement than a panoply of human rights crises, free speech and press crackdowns and doping-aided cheating scandals; what’s more, the Games appear to be filling time until war breaks out in Ukraine. Here in Los Angeles, the Super Bowl followed the Hollywood cliche of a tale of two cities. Amid the star-studded confines of SoFi Stadium was a story of wretched excess. But the scene outside offered a sadder story of the city’s many unhoused citizens.
True, it’s a story as old as modern capitalism itself. And as a former Californian I was sadly prepared for the sight of people living in tents on downtown city streets just trying to survive. Still: there was something about the weekend’s juxtaposition of haves and have nots that was especially jarring. It’s one thing for a city to help erect a $5bn stadium less than an hour’s drive from Skid Row. It’s quite another for jersey-wearing fans, many holding four-figure tickets for the big game, to sidestep Angelenos pushing belongings-filled shopping carts or passed out on the sidewalk altogether along the route to the pregame carnival around the LA Convention Center.
The unhoused who weren’t totally left alone were shooed away by street sweepers and security forces on bikes. These Dickensian scenes unfolded amid near-90-degree temperatures, a reminder of yet another way in which one of the more hospitable refuges for the unhoused is becoming increasingly untenable.
It’s a class disparity that only figures to widen as LA builds itself up to host the 2028 Summer Games, both literally and figuratively. But of course the Super Bowl’s job isn’t to call attention to that. Its job is to entertain. It’s to stage a $9m half-time show headlined by a kid from Compton who parlayed his musical talent to pull himself out of inner-city poverty on the way to becoming a near billionaire. It’s about Sean Penn, Martha Stewart and other loaded A-listers rooting on the equally well-heeled celebrities on the field. It’s about suspending disbelief to properly immerse ourselves in entertainment. It’s about dreaming of who we could be instead of accepting what we are – one nation, under consumption, ever divisible. The only notable exception is the Rock. Everybody genuinely seems to like him.
The Super Bowl was supposed to be LA’s comeback party. But if anything, it showed just how much the place hasn’t changed. This is very much still a city in which staggering wealth and abject poverty coexist without ever really touching, like so much oil and vinegar. When it comes to all-American celebrations of who we are, in the end, the city was a perfect host.
