Can we have a new spectacle now? Please?

The old one is about as tired as the power grid that serves the Superdome.

Somewhere in the middle of Sunday night’s 34-minute third quarter power-outage delay, as reporters on the sidelines scrambled to get anything resembling credible information, it occurred to me that this unusual drama was more engaging as “entertainment” than the super-polished, beautifully staged Beyonce performance just concluded. Not that there was anything specifically wrong with the halftime show – this morning’s reviews praise the singer as “electrifying” (haha) and on her “A game” (groan).  In the context of a normal Super Bowl, it was flawlessly rendered, with precise camera angles and lighting cues nailed down to the nanosecond.

But what followed wasn’t normal, and as soon as the TV commentators had to go “off script” and yammer to fill time, there opened up a moment to ponder, in a “is this all there is?” way, the megawatt extravaganza we’d just witnessed. A cast of thousands doing yet another update on the line dancing routines we’ve loved since Michael Jackson and Madonna. A star looking invincible in designer threads and heels while executing proto-robotic choreography. A perfunctory reunion of Destiny’s Child, Beyonce’s old act. Solid, once-engaging hit songs reduced to puree inside a whirlwind medley. Somehow, despite her beauty and starpower and abundant energy, Beyonce seemed trapped inside an utterly canned, inevitably contrived mode of performance. When, in conclusion, she said “Thank you for this moment,” it was less about whatever had just transpired musically – because, let’s be real, the needle on the Excitement Meter barely moved – and more about further validation, a crowning ego moment, another exclusive stamp in the passport of a megastar.

And that’s boring. The images of half a stadium in darkness held more suspense, sparked more curiosity – was it an accident or the work of hackers? A philosopher might argue that Americans, hotwired for movies with lots of explosions and music with blazing nonstop hooks, get the mass spectacles they deserve: This kind of relentless show might actually be the only remaining way to enchant numb, overly entertained audiences. Still, when the power failed you couldn’t help but wonder how far the spontaneity-free empty spectacle thing, with staging considerations clearly outweighing musical ones, can go.

There was no mystery, nothing even particularly human, about the halftime show. And what followed was all too human, riddled with an unsettling sense of “what happens now?” You know things are out of whack when the lights going off in half of a stadium turns out to be more compelling than a gazillion lights blazing to perfection, in dazzling computer-coordinated sequence, exactly the way they did in rehearsal.