As Bad Bunny walked into the endzone with a band and many “American” flags behind him during the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show Sunday, he made his biggest political statement of the night. The jumbotron behind him read “The only thing more powerful than hate is love,” a message broadcast to nearly 125 million fans watching the show.
On Feb. 10 during Common Hour, the School of Communication Diversity Committee hosted the second session of their “Unfiltered Comm-versations” series to discuss the performance and the importance of the man behind it.
The first session of the Unfiltered Comm-versations took place last semester, as the committee discussed Jimmy Kimmel Live! being taken off air amid controversy surrounding comments the comedian made about President Donald Trump.
The Diversity Committee consists of five professors across the School of Communications, all representing different majors. The event was emceed by Associate Professor of Journalism Margarita Diaz and Associate Professor of Film, Television and Media Arts Mary Schmitt, with Professor of Public Relations Hilary Fussell Sisco, Associate Professor of Interactive Media and Design Ewa Callahan and Associate Professor of Media Studies David Kocik assisting in guiding the discussion.
Held in the open-air studio in the Communications, Computing and Engineering building, students, faculty and Q30 Television grabbed coffee and cookies before beginning the discussion.
About 20 students and six professors attended the event.
The discussion began with Diaz asking the group for their initial reaction, which seemed to be mixed. Some students were very pleased with the performance, while some claimed he could have done more compared to his tours.
“I was a big fan of the show and I thought the performance was very good,” Edison Tan, first-year sports communications major said. “I thought, as a TV viewer, it was a great spectalce.”
After, Kocik asked what surprised people the most, to which many students mentioned the surprise guest appearacnes of singers Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin, along with the on-stage wedding and Puerto Rican culture laid throughout the performace.
Diaz herself grew up in Puerto Rico before moving in her early 20s, so many details in the performance were meaningful to her.
“Seeing some of the symbols of what I associate with my culture, taken out of that context and put into the Super Bowl, and then presented to this amazingly large audience was a really powerful experience for me,” Diaz said.
One question that evoked a large discussion was when Diaz asked “What does it mean to be American?” This led to many students discussing hot button issues in the news today, including the discourse behind ICE and the recent murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
That conversation then pivoted into some of the students and professors talking about how they carry around their passports, as a failsafe in case ICE were to ever approach them in public. This realization was daunting for the entire group, as everyone sympathized with said students and professors.
Nearly every person contributed something during the event, cracking jokes and building off others’ points, which helped lighten the mood and made the conversation flow better.
One of the last questions asked was about music artists’ role in today’s generation, to which many agreed that the responsibility of unifying the country should not fall solely on Bad Bunny, but instead every artist that has a platform to speak out.
As the event wrapped and people started to pair off, the importance of holding open discussions became evident to many students.
“I think it is important to always have a dialogue,” Aslin Argueta, sociology and Latin American studies major said. “This impacts us all, regardless of what anyone says, and it’s important to call attention to that.”
In the future, Diaz hopes to host more of these events, and invites students to attend and speak up about many of the issues facing the U. S. today.
“I hope people see the value of these events, and that if they hear about it from their friends or see if on a flyer, they come and check it out,” Diaz said. “They might get something really good out of it.”