In this episode Trent reflects on the overuse of nostalgia at the Super Bowl last weekend.
Transcript:
Trent Horn (00:00):
If you listen to this show long and if you know that I have a bad case in nostalgia for the nineties, early two thousands, but even I know when nostalgia gets to be too much, and I really felt that way on the Super Bowl last weekend. That’s what I want to talk about today. Decompress a little bit about. So yeah, Monday’s, Wednesdays here on the Council of Trent. We talk apologetics and theology. But Friday, hey, we talk about whatever I want to talk about and today is the Super Bowl and it was an okay Super Bowl Seahawks versus the Patriots. I think we kind of, it’s always hard when you watch a game and you feel like you see the end coming in the first five minutes of the game. I know the Seahawks were favored. I’m glad that it at least wasn’t a shutout and there were at least touchdowns and things freed up a little bit more later in the game. (00:43):
I mean, I didn’t end up finishing the last part of the game. So when you have kids, you’re just like, ah, I’m tired and the kids went to bed. I’m going to go to bed too. That’s the life when you get a bit older. But I mean, I would’ve stayed if it was more of a Nailbiter game, but it definitely moved a lot slower. Both teams, their defense was just really high. So I mean, the Seahawks only, they were only to get any points just with field goal kicks, not even, it took a while. I mean, you get to, this was the fifth Super Bowl where nobody had scored a touchdown by halftime. So it’s like, okay, it’s not moving that great. So yeah, I was thinking about just watching it and it was fun. We just had a little family party, just got the kids together to watch. (01:30):
But it was really an interesting contrast, especially when you have kids and you’re really paying attention to the Super Bowl versus when you don’t have kids or you’re not married and you go to a Super Bowl party. It’s a lot different because when you go to a Super Bowl party, especially before you’re married, or especially if you go to a party where all the kids are running around, if it’s a big thing, everybody’s running around and talking, you’re actually not watching the game that much. I saw a clip online of somebody who during the Super Bowl, they were playing a recording of an old Super Bowl instead is like a joke and nobody noticed. And it was a lot of young women who were in the crowd at this party, so they might’ve just been wanting to be at the party anyways, and the game is just an afterthought. (02:09):
So there is that element when you go to a big Super Bowl party that the game really takes a backseat. So it’s a lot different. We wanted to have just a nice little family, just immediate family, just my wife and our kids. They’re ages 11, nine and five. It was still fun. We got little decorations, got the buffalo dip, my wife put out a little spread. It was delightful, it was exquisite, but it’s a lot interesting. Then when you sit down, especially with your kids and you’re focusing on the game, rather than having chit-chat walking around and always getting excuse to go back up for more of that seven layer dip. So when you watch with kids though, you’ll notice things like, oh, the commercials, and you’re a lot more on high alert, by the way, for the commercials before you have kids, you can laugh at whatever, but then when they got the horror movies coming on your five-year-old’s, like that’s too, that’s too scary. (03:03):
Like, oh gosh, why did they put in this horror movie thing? Is this supposed to be for families? So it’s always hard. Then when you watch kids, I’m clenching the remote in my hand just waiting for something family and appropriate to pop up and I want to see a good commercial, right? I remember back in the day, I remember you could watch Super Bowl commercials and they would be hilarious. The What’s up guys, what’s up? Or just a lot of ones that would just come up and you’re like, oh man, that was great. Some of them relied on nostalgia, but a lot of them did it. They were just funny or kooky or zany or well
thought out. But in watching this year especially because what do you watch with the Super Bowl? The game, the commercials are big. The commercials are supposed to be like, oh yeah, this is the biggest thing or the biggest commercials they’re going to show up here at the Super Bowl. (03:56):
And then you watch and it’s just like one, a lot of them are for gambling websites. It’s like, oh, this is depressing. Almost like dystopian all of these crypto and gambling commercials. But then I thought about it, but I was making a list of the commercials that I could remember from the Super Bowl this year, and there’s only four that pop out of my mind. And the four that I remember, it’s just because of nostalgia and they’re just mining nostalgia. Hopefully you’ll think like, oh, remember this South Bark has the member berries, remember Chewbacca? And it’s like, remember this? And I was like, oh my goodness, is that what we have to rely on now? Well actually two of them had funny moments to them that I liked. So one was the T-Mobile Backstreet Boys commercial where Backstreet comes and they’re doing T-Mobile and singing about that. (04:47):
And my wife was a huge Backstreet fan back in the day because she was like, what, nine? So of course that’s a big kick for her. And I guess if you’re trying to get people, millennials with disposable income who are buying a bunch of cell phone lines or land or whatever, you’re probably going to pick music from the late nineties or early two thousands to get your target demographic. And so I just lighten that commercial they’re performing. And there’s the one black guy, he’s crying, he’s got tears running down when he sees Backstreet Boys. I mean, I’ll admit that was funny, but it’s a very shameless nostalgia plug for that. The other was the Dunkin Donuts commercial. I actually liked this one. The idea behind it, I’ll play just a short clip of it so you can get a sense of it. But the idea is that there’s a info before as the commercial starts is instead of Goodwill Hunting the movie with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, instead of the movie Goodwill Hunting, there was a sitcom made before that with the real geniuses. (05:46):
I can’t do the Boston accent for it. And it’s basically, it’s like a cheesy sitcom riff set in a Dunkin Donuts with Ben Affleck as Wheel Duncan, like a misunderstood genius. But then there’s a ton of other sitcom stars there. Ted Danson, Alfonso Re, who plays Carlton on freshmen of Bel Air, Julia White, who’s Urkel, Matt LeBlanc, who’s Joey, obviously from Friends and you’ve got all of them together and Jennifer Anderson shows up and Tom Brady. So a ton of celebrities. So I’ll just play a short clip of it. Hey, did you arrange the munchkins in the Fibonacci sequence? I got a genius weapon from me. He’s such a genius. And why did he put ice in his coffee here? Come on, Chucky. I’m just will hunting. I’m not a genius. I will marry the first man that can help me with the Fibonacci sequence. (06:41):
Oh, you knew it. Oh, and I forgot that Jason Alexander is the manager of this Dunking Donuts. It’s a whole commercial instead of goodwill. Hunting, hunting, hunting, it’s goodwill, dunking Dunking Donuts, and it got a lot of hate online. I was surprised by so many people just despised this ad and they called it AI slop. They were like, I can’t believe we’re doing AI ads like this. This is so unreal. But it was a real ad. They got those people in there to film them. Now they used aging technology. So you’re using AI in that sense to de-age these people to look like they did in the mid nineties, but it was a real ad that was filmed and like, oh, it was an AI script. I mean maybe, but the idea of the dialogue being stilted or weird, it’s just supposed to draw back to those sitcom tropes of not the greatest dialogue. (07:33):
And so I liked it. So you’ll have weird criticisms if it’s going to be Dunking Donuts and it’s back east, you have to call it donkeys. If you’re in Massachusetts, go donkeys. Well, yeah, but it’s goodwill hunting, so it’s goodwill dunking. I see what the trend, I’m not saying this ad was a masterpiece by any means. I’m not saying that, but I thought it was entertaining. It made me laugh. It wasn’t offensive. I liked watching it with my kids and it was memorable. So it’s like, okay, that’s good enough for me. But yeah, just so many people hated it. So now I wonder, am I just like the out of touch older person who thinks the minions memes on Facebook are funny when everybody else knows that they’re not funny? Which makes me think back to The Simpsons, the episode where Bart is a truant and Skinner’s trying to track him down. (08:17):
And he goes, where would a kid who’s skipping school go to? I know the four H Club. And he goes there and it’s all abandoned. And he’s like, am I so out of touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong. And that’s how I feel. Am I so out of touch? No, it’s Gen Alpha and Gen Z who are wrong. So yeah, people just absolutely blast this commercial, but I liked it. The thing I don’t like though is that all these commercials, the other ones I can think of that are memorable was the crypto coin commercial that was, now I will admit that it was original. It was the one where they just had the karaoke screen and it was a Backstreet Boys song and it’s just going through and it has the background music, but it has the text. And we started singing along to it. (09:00):
And so I thought, okay, that was minimal and creative because you just see as the karaoke words in the music like, Hey, no one’s singing. Why don’t we start singing? And so I thought that was good. And then the other one I remember, which wasn’t a great commercial, but I’m like, oh, Bon Jovi’s in. This was the one for State Farm. But notice what they all have in common though. It’s like to get you invested, it’s like, remember this back in the day. So I really worry that it’s like is the only thing that we as a culture enjoy with stuff that was from 30 years ago? What are we going to do 30 years into the future? I mean, now nostalgia is something people have always had, right? In the seventies, people were nostalgic for the fifties. So had shows, that’s why shows Happy Days were so successful. (09:38):
Or in the nineties, people were nostalgic for the seventies. So you had that seventies show, they did the Brady Bunch movie, you had a lot of callbacks things from there. So now it makes sense. Now we’re in the 2020s, people are nostalgic for the nineties and the early two thousands maybe it’s just like when you grow up and you’re in your middle age. The middle age people are nostalgic for the things of when they were young in their twenties. But then what are we going to do 20 years from now, or in 20 years from now? Is Super Bowl 2046, are they going to have a commercial like look, it’s Mark Applier and Bad Bunny. Oh man, that’s crazy. I don’t know. With the Death of Monoculture, which I talked about previously for All Friday with Matt Walsh, I have no idea what it’ll be like 20 years from now. (10:22):
I’m ready if the Lord lets me live that long, I’m ready to buckle my seatbelt in for what could be a really wild ride. But yeah, but that’s just sad to me that it’s like the only things people could come up with are interesting are reboots, reimaginings, prequels, legacy sequels, this kind of stuff. And so the Super Bowl commercials really shown out to me in that respect. So I’d love to see, I wish it was more creativity in that regard. The other thing that really stuck out to me was the halftime show. Now, we didn’t watch, I watched some clips of it online, and that’s what’s sad too. You have your kids and it just would be nice now, I mean, this wasn’t a recent thing. For a long time, football has had inappropriate elements in the commercials or cheerleaders or whatever it may be. (11:06):
So it’s not always the most family friendly, but at least it didn’t super cross the line. But yeah, I just saw clips of the halftime show. And the thing that was honestly saddest for me in looking at the halftime show was that it was really a show for the television viewing audience rather than those who are attending the game live that the Bad Bunny halftime show. And I admit that the set design was really creative with the sugar cane and the shacks and just all the other stuff there. I certainly don’t agree with all of the message and politics behind it, but I mean, that element was just creative. But you can tell the Super Bowl halftime show now, it just becomes, oh, it’s an elaborate live music video. Whereas in the past it was something where you were watching and everyone in the Super Bowl was having this awesome time on their feet rocking out to a cool, and the television viewing audience at home wanted to feel like you were a part of that vicariously living through them. (12:00):
But now the Super Bowl is weird. The cheapest seats of the Super Bowl, I think they’re like $5,000 to be up in the bleachers. Why would you do that? And I feel like it’s just for status to be like, just say, oh, so where are you going this weekend? Oh, I, I’m just going to the Super Bowl. But it seems so utterly unenjoyable the people who are there. It’s a status symbol to be able to say, yeah, you went to the Super Bowl. Or it’s like people now who pay $150,000 go climb Mount Everest, even though they’re not mountain climbers. They do it for the clout and the status not to really go and enjoy a game. And so I feel like it’s so corporatized that who cares? Those people, it doesn’t matter about pleasing them. They paid their money. All they want to do is be able to say they went to the Super Bowl. (12:38):
They don’t even have to have a good time. So you watch, if you watch the videos, people are hardly dancing or doing anything or singing along to the bad bunny performance and everything. And plus, with that sugar cane field and the set, you can’t see what’s going on from the stands at the Super Bowl. So you’re just watching like, okay, that’s cool. And instead it’s just everything for the television viewing audience. And it wasn’t like that in the past. Probably the best Super Bowl halftime show of all time. There’s a few that stand out. I did like the one with Dr. Dre and Crew a few years ago. I thought that was pretty awesome. What were some other ones? At least the ones that I remember, Michael Jackson, 1993 was amazing. I was too young to really remember that. I was only eight years old, but that one, it had, I think a billion people were watching that on television around the world. Rolling Stones was cool. I think probably the best one though. And you ask a lot of people online, they’ll say this too. It was Prince, I think in 2007, just Rock the House totally. But having something like that, that’s just what I wish we had. And so it’s really sad for me is we didn’t watch Bad Bunny. (13:47):
We said a few decades of the Rosary, but then we clicked over to the T-P-U-S-A halftime show. It’s like, okay, I want to give him a chance. I want to give him a chance. Alternative programming, family friendly, and well, I wouldn’t say it was family friendly. I miss the Kid Rock part, which the lyrics, I would honestly say are not that family friendly. But the rest of it, the stuff we did sing, it’s just like one country music act after another. And it’s like, look, conservatives Republicans, the alternative to a degenerate culture does not automatically have to be country music. It’s not like, well, it’s either degenerate hip hop or country music. Take your pick. Which by the way, a lot of country music is degenerate when you listen to the lyrics and the things they promote. It’s like, oh, wait a minute. Yeah, it may not be all the stuff that rappers say, but they will promote themes that I would say, oh, actually this is not quite appropriate. (14:38):
But the halftime show, my kids are watching and they just kind of got bored with it. So I give them credit. At least they were trying so good on them for giving it a try and still getting a lot of viewers. But I would encourage you, if you’re going to make family friendly things, it does not have to be a bunch of country music. It doesn’t have to be that there’s really good family friendly ska bands, rock bands, hip hop. Let’s have a medley of that and let’s be creative with set design and interesting funny elements to it. It can be done people, it can be done. I hope that in the future, I hope T-P-U-S-A keeps up that tradition, but I hope they break out of the mold and feel like, no, they don’t have to just stick to one thing where it’s like, it’s not like the Republican National Convention. The Democrat National Convention has all the big stars in Hollywood is are all super liberal. And the best that the Republican National Convention can get is always just like country music and Roseanne Bar. And that’s, that’s the best you can do. We can do better. Let’s just put on our creative hats. So that’s my rant. That’s all I wanted to talk about today. I hope you enjoyed your Super Bowl weekend, and I hope you have a very blessed weekend.