Elevated sixty feet in the air, the nine-time Grammy award-winning artist Rihanna took the field--or rather levitated above it--at Super Bowl LVII for her first live performance in seven years.
Choreographed by Parris Goebel, Rihanna’s show was visually stunning. Surrounded by swirling dancers in white attire, Rihanna shone in layers of red on red. High tech platforms lifted and lowered performers into the air in a three dimensional extravaganza that some viewers compared to the Super Smash Bros video game. Howard Stern’s accusation of lipsyncing was just one of many criticisms that came pouring in assailing the show in all the ways we have come to expect. Other commentators expressed disgust over the show’s overt sexuality, a criticism with a long racist history of the exploitation of black women that has been aimed at any number of successful Black female artists from Beyoncé to Cardi B. Conspiracy theorists were intrigued when Rihanna briefly flashed a triangle allegedly signaling to the Illuminati. Meanwhile some voices from the Christian Right fulminated against what they saw as a satanic ritual enacting the fall of Lucifer and his angels in the middle of the nation’s biggest sporting event.
Despite that, the show was a celebration of Rihanna’s second pregnancy with her baby bump on joyful display throughout. Religion scholars Leah Payne and Brian Doak insightfully noted that Rihanna provided a moment of transcendence in the midst of the Super Bowl’s hyper-masculinity and violence. “Here she is, overlooking the entire crowd, churning with life” exclaimed Payne in an episode of their podcast Weird Religion.
Where others saw angels and demons, Payne and Doak’s commentary hinted at the deeper religious overtones of the show. Themes and images of Goddess religion were woven throughout the performance. In three different moments, Rihanna’s poses, songs, and costumes expressed classic images of the divine feminine, presenting Rihanna as a pop culture theophany of the Mother Goddess. As Carol Christ writes, “more than anything else the Goddess symbolizes a new and fierce love of women for ourselves that has the power to change the world.”[i] That certainly expresses the theme of this halftime show.
Rihanna Callipyge
In the segment, the camera moved along a platform lined with dancers. The choreography was highly charged and energetic, trios of dancers popping and flowing around the camera as it moved steadily through them with a sense of anticipation. Suddenly the last dancers parted, peeling off to the sides as Rihanna was revealed. She stood perfectly still looking over her shoulder at the viewers, the perfect image of the callipygian Goddess. The pose asserted a sense of confidence, sublime yet sexual even as the dancers continued their ecstatic choreography around her. The sexually charged song lyrics matched the dance–playful, inviting, flirtatious, even raunchy by some standards.
Rihanna Fertility Goddess
Several minutes later, 6:46–7:35 minutes into the performance, Rihanna sat down on a slightly raised platform--let’s call it a dais as if she was holding court, placing her body on view again, posed now to emphasize her pregnancy. In this seated position, her pose was strikingly reminiscent of the Venus of Willendorf or the Venus of Hohle Fels with her legs slightly open, her pregnant belly and breasts accentuated by a red bodice. The flirtatious callipygian Goddess had matured into a more profound presence, a Mother Goddess enthroned in her fullness and power, relaxed and resplendent. Like the Paleolithic Goddess figurines, this moment emphasized the life-giving dimensions of sexuality—the potential of fertility, pregnancy, and birth.
Rihanna Celestial
As the show arrived at its penultimate number “Umbrella” Rihanna had donned a red oversized parka-like coat. Visually, the coat symbolized a robe with its train of thick folds spilling out around her on the floor. Enrobed as a queen, her sexuality was not muted so much as transmuted into something regal.
As the final brash and confident beats of the “Umbrella” anthem faded, a brief hush fell across the stadium. Rihanna’s platform throbbed with light and began to rise upward. Her white-clad entourage stood still for the first time, beholding the ascension in orans posture, elbows held close to their sides, arms raised, palms up—the ancient religious posture of prayer, supplication, and adoration. The words of her song “Diamonds” resounded through the stadium, “Shine bright like a diamond”--a hymn to the possibility of human life transfigured by beauty and power. Resplendent in her solitude, she was elevated into the air above the crowd, the dark stands filled with specks of light like the stars in the night sky. She became a singular glittering figure, suspended in the heavens, crowned with light, celestial and transcendent, the Queen of Heaven in a starlight background. The drone shot of her ascending and levitating in the immense void of the stadium was truly stunning—a clear and powerful moment of pop culture apotheosis.
Rihanna’s show didn’t challenge gender identity. There was no moment of woke-ism or gender fluidity. Instead, she drew on long-standing images of the Goddess to assert a divine femininity. The show harkened back to Carol P. Christ’s essay “Why Women Need the Goddess.” As Christ writes in that essay, “The simplest and most basic meaning of the symbol of Goddess is the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of female power as a beneficent and independent power. . . . The strength and independence of female power can be intuited by contemplating ancient and modern images of the Goddess.”[ii] In the performance, Rihanna gives viewers a chance to do just that—contemplate a contemporary pop culture image of the Goddess and acknowledge her power.
While God, country, and football have long been the celebrated trinity of the Superbowl’s vision of American civil religion, Rihanna used the spectacle of the halftime show to insinuate the Goddess into that civil religion. For fifteen minutes, the militant imagery of war and masculine violence was muted by this appearance and self-assertion of the divine feminine, claiming the viewers’ respect, veneration, and worship. The clashing of male bodies on the field was briefly overshadowed by one woman ascending above the throng for a transcendent moment, holding out a vision of sexuality, fertility, and life.
In the Weird Religion podcast, Brian Doak asks “Is this the ultimate woman flex? To be like ‘I am pregnant. I am a billionaire. I am in the halftime show. I am doing whatever I want.” Carol Christ would agree that “as women struggle to create a new culture in which women's power, bodies, will, and bonds are celebrated, it is natural that the Goddess would reemerge as symbol of the newfound beauty, strength, and power of women.”[iii] As a pop culture halftime Goddess, Rihanna presented this new religious possibility to the Superbowl audience through song, dance, and camera angles. The show framed Rihanna’s own personal power, charisma, and autonomy in the images of the Goddess. The apotheosis of Rihanna beckons viewers into a world in which women’s sexuality is no sin, their fertility is assertive power, and their presence a proclamation of a new era of triumphant femininity.
All references and time-stamps for Rihanna’s halftime show refer to the official NFL video released on Youtube February 15, 2023, “Rihanna’s FULL Apple Music Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show” https://youtu.be/HjBo--1n8lI
[i] Carol P. Christ, “Why Women, Men and Other Living Things Still Need the Goddess: Remembering and Reflecting 35 Years Later.” Feminist Theology, 20(3): 2012, 242–255. https://doi.org/10.1177/0966735012436897
[ii] Carol P Christ. “Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological, and Political Reflections.” In Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow, eds., Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader on Religion (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979), 273-287.
[iii] Christ, “Why Women Need the Goddess.”
Rihanna Fertility Goddess
Rihanna Celestial
As the final brash and confident beats of the “Umbrella” anthem faded, a brief hush fell across the stadium. Rihanna’s platform throbbed with light and began to rise upward. Her white-clad entourage stood still for the first time, beholding the ascension in orans posture, elbows held close to their sides, arms raised, palms up—the ancient religious posture of prayer, supplication, and adoration. The words of her song “Diamonds” resounded through the stadium, “Shine bright like a diamond”--a hymn to the possibility of human life transfigured by beauty and power. Resplendent in her solitude, she was elevated into the air above the crowd, the dark stands filled with specks of light like the stars in the night sky. She became a singular glittering figure, suspended in the heavens, crowned with light, celestial and transcendent, the Queen of Heaven in a starlight background. The drone shot of her ascending and levitating in the immense void of the stadium was truly stunning—a clear and powerful moment of pop culture apotheosis.
Rihanna’s show didn’t challenge gender identity. There was no moment of woke-ism or gender fluidity. Instead, she drew on long-standing images of the Goddess to assert a divine femininity. The show harkened back to Carol P. Christ’s essay “Why Women Need the Goddess.” As Christ writes in that essay, “The simplest and most basic meaning of the symbol of Goddess is the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of female power as a beneficent and independent power. . . . The strength and independence of female power can be intuited by contemplating ancient and modern images of the Goddess.”[ii] In the performance, Rihanna gives viewers a chance to do just that—contemplate a contemporary pop culture image of the Goddess and acknowledge her power.
While God, country, and football have long been the celebrated trinity of the Superbowl’s vision of American civil religion, Rihanna used the spectacle of the halftime show to insinuate the Goddess into that civil religion. For fifteen minutes, the militant imagery of war and masculine violence was muted by this appearance and self-assertion of the divine feminine, claiming the viewers’ respect, veneration, and worship. The clashing of male bodies on the field was briefly overshadowed by one woman ascending above the throng for a transcendent moment, holding out a vision of sexuality, fertility, and life.
In the Weird Religion podcast, Brian Doak asks “Is this the ultimate woman flex? To be like ‘I am pregnant. I am a billionaire. I am in the halftime show. I am doing whatever I want.” Carol Christ would agree that “as women struggle to create a new culture in which women's power, bodies, will, and bonds are celebrated, it is natural that the Goddess would reemerge as symbol of the newfound beauty, strength, and power of women.”[iii] As a pop culture halftime Goddess, Rihanna presented this new religious possibility to the Superbowl audience through song, dance, and camera angles. The show framed Rihanna’s own personal power, charisma, and autonomy in the images of the Goddess. The apotheosis of Rihanna beckons viewers into a world in which women’s sexuality is no sin, their fertility is assertive power, and their presence a proclamation of a new era of triumphant femininity.
All references and time-stamps for Rihanna’s halftime show refer to the official NFL video released on Youtube February 15, 2023, “Rihanna’s FULL Apple Music Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show” https://youtu.be/HjBo--1n8lI
[i] Carol P. Christ, “Why Women, Men and Other Living Things Still Need the Goddess: Remembering and Reflecting 35 Years Later.” Feminist Theology, 20(3): 2012, 242–255. https://doi.org/10.1177/0966735012436897
[ii] Carol P Christ. “Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological, and Political Reflections.” In Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow, eds., Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader on Religion (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979), 273-287.
[iii] Christ, “Why Women Need the Goddess.”
No comments:
Post a Comment