M.I.A. caused controversy when she raised her middle finger during her Super Bowl performance, but the NFL is overreacting given its own tendency toward violence.
When I stumbled across news of M.I.A.’s ongoing $1.5 million legal battle against the NFL a few days ago, I reacted exactly the same as I do to well-timed headlines in The Onion — first with disbelief, then with a lot of laughter. Because, like most who watched the 2012 Super Bowl, I had long forgotten about that half-second the 38-year-old English-born artist raised her middle finger to the crowd.
While some have compared the situation to Madonna’s infamous 2004 nip slip, M.I.A.’s act of defiance was actually pretty tame compared to everything else that happened on the field that night (like when New York Giants players Jake Ballard and Travis Beckum tore their left and right ACLs, respectively).
Remember, this is the National Football League we’re talking about — an institution built on training some of the strongest, fastest and largest human beings in existence to overpower their competition. It’s simulated war, a demonstration in which the players are depicted as heroes and villains, the conquerors and the conquered.
It’s not as if the NFL has shied away from this image of competitive violence either. Without the help of Ed and Steve Sabol’s NFL Films, the production company that created the warrior storyline several decades ago, the league would probably never have achieved its current level of popularity. Viewers love the barbarity, and if a man gets seriously injured or possibly even paralyzed, that’s OK. It’s all par for the course.
To clarify, this is not a denouncement of the NFL. As a lifelong fan of the Baltimore Ravens, I understand football’s intricacies and recognize (as well as accept) my own appetite for its cruelty. Occasionally, I forget the players are normal people, too. But apparently, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is dissatisfied with the image that brought his league into mainstream culture.
Symbolically speaking, flipping someone off is no more disrespectful than driving them forcefully to the ground, a task many football players make millions for doing every week. Perhaps the gesture suggests that you’d very much like to tackle the recipient, but the action itself rarely happens unless a wildly volatile Chris Brown type is involved (in which case all bets are off). M.I.A.’s bird flipping may have actually been the most “football” thing anyone other than the players did at Lucas Oil Stadium that day.
Should the NFL make it known that it’s unhappy with M.I.A.? Sure. Should the league ask future performers to include a middle finger of their own during the act? Absolutely not, although it would be endlessly entertaining to see Bruno Mars follow suit in 2014. The problem with this lawsuit is that it’s hypocritical. The NFL is not representative of all the good, wholesome values of American society, and it never will be.
And while the league does not have to condone behavior like this at its mos- viewed event of the year, neither must it place a dollar sign on the cost of damages. Teaching young viewers to find the violence of the NFL entertaining is more detrimental than seeing an eccentric woman dressed in Cleopatra garb give the finger to the camera for a few moments.
The NFL, however, will never see its brand in this light. I’m connected enough to know this, and so is M.I.A. This lawsuit has allegedly been in the works for about a year and a half and is only now surfacing with her new album due to release in early November. Coincidence? Not a chance.
