Every year, millions of American Football fans across the globe tune in each February to watch the Super Bowl. Since 1967, this running tradition features the season’s two best teams in a grand finale, and includes a performance during halftime. The following is a comment regarding the 2026 Halftime Show.
“The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence,”
…
These are the words from current United States president, Donald Trump. He posted this comment regarding Super Bowl LX on his social media platform called Truth Social. So if the president hates the Bad Bunny Halftime Show, then it must have been really bad…right?
Before we (society) assume anything, let’s take a moment to ask ourselves
“Why was there controversy?”
Gauge the conversation
This year, 2026, the Super Bowl hosted the world’s number one most streamed artist, Bad Bunny. The 31-year-old Puerto Rican rapper/singer orchestrated and executed arguably the most controversial halftime show in history. With the news changing daily, many stories lose relevance and are swept under the rug, only to shrink into a minute side tangent in future discussion. But before anyone takes a stance, here are some statistics of the show to consider to understand how big this event truly is.
According to TheMusicUniverse.com, Bad Bunny’s Halftime Show Performance…
This goes to show that Bad Bunny is relevant not only in The United States, but in the rest of the world as well.
“Besides the buzz, what is this conversation really about anyways?”
Bad Bunny made history as the first artist to headline the Super Bowl with a set including music exclusively sung in Spanish. While Lady Gaga did make a cameo with her english song “Die With A Smile”, the rest of the set was primarily in spanish. The rest of the show highlighted latin-american culture, as implied when Bad Bunny stepped up to the big stage.
“Mi nombre es Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasión, y si hoy estoy aquí en el Super Bowl 60, es porque nunca, nunca dejé de creer en mí. Tú también deberías de creer en ti. Vales más de lo que piensas. Confía en mí.”
This roughly translates to
“My name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, and if I’m here today at Super Bowl 60, it’s because I never, ever stopped believing in myself. You should also believe in yourself. You’re worth more than you think. Trust me.”
The performer then ended his performance with a parade flags from all countries in North, Central and South America shouting “GOD BLESS AMERICA!” and showed a jumbotron with the the phrase
“The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
All these remarks are simple and powerful. Each and every one giving a message of unity and love; why give backlash to such a heartwarming message? Many haters of the Halftime Show LX have disliked the fact that Bad Bunny delivered most of the lyrics in Spanish because they couldn’t understand it.
I got the chance to sit down and chat with Allison Cobian, a 23-year-old, Mexican-American woman and chat about the Super Bowl. This was part of our conversation
Slowinski: “If any, what parts of the Half Time Show do you believe called for backlash or extreme criticism?”
Cobian: “I don’t think any part of it called for backlash or extreme criticism. I know people didn’t like how it wasn’t in english or lacked subtitles. I think it was okay since it was featuring a latin-american artist and sometimes the translations get lost or dont make the most sense in english.”
Slowinski: “Yeah I noticed how a lot of backlash was about the language, and also the (air quotes) “provocative dancing” was under fire. What did you think about that part?”
Cobian: “I don’t think it was the dancing that bothers people, it was the context of the show itself…It was found offensive again, just because it was in Spanish. The song when the provocative dancing was happening is no different than CardiB, Nicki Minaj, Glorilla, and umm SexyyRed… it’s just twerk music. And even though those women are [racial] minorities as well, the fact the [Bad Bunny] music wasn’t in english fueled people’s criticism.”
–
This part of our conversation highlights some hypocrisy from Bad Bunny haters who didn’t like the dancing. Dancers have gyrated in Super Bowls years before Bad Bunny. Beyonce, Katy Perry, and Rihanna have all showcased more adult-leaning dancing, but didn’t receive nearly as much hate. Cobian’s upbringing in Mexican Culture helped Super Bowl LX feel significant, as she was able to connect on a personal level to Bad Bunny’s language, references and messages to the audience.
After considering the stats, personal anecdotes from a few opposing viewpoints like Trump’s and Cobian’s, the fog around this Bad Bunny conversation clears up and we can understand how extreme this controversy is.
What Cobian mentions is how people’s criticism was fueled by the show being in Spanish. Isn’t Spanish the second most spoken language in the United States? The disdain for Bad Bunny’s show results from more than just people not understanding his primary language. After all, Bad Bunny did warn non-spanish-speaking Americans “you have four months to learn Spanish” before his grandiose performance.
The hate is coming from a place of fear, and ignorance.
Ignorance is just a mask, and fear is the person behind it.
People against Bad Bunny’s performance seem to mainly hate how it was nearly a spanish-exclusive show. But why is a foreign language so scary? And why don’t more Americans learn more than their first language; english.
Many people against the Bad Bunny Halftime Show seem to have what is called…
Xenoglossophobia (Zee-no-gloss-uh-FOE-bee-uh). Broken down the components, xeno – (foreign), glosso – (language), and phobia – (fear of) means “fear/anxiety resulting from foreign languages”
Around the 1960s the Journal of Abnormal Psychology released a statement saying xenoglossophobia and the anxiety around it “stimulates avoidance behavior and disrupts cognitive processing” and “is associated with the classic “fight or flight” response, where cognitive resources are diverted away from language learning tasks toward managing the emotional threat.”
This piece of psychology gives reason to believe that Bad Bunny haters were simply in the aforementioned fight or flight mode when they were faced with the Spanish performance. The fight response has been seen on social media platforms like X. Braeden Sorbo, a 24-year-old actor, commented on this distasteful statement against Bad Bunny.
“If we can learn anything from Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance, it’s that we should be deporting even more people.”
This post clearly alludes to the current political climate in the United States, with ICE and immigrants.
Others portrayed the flight response by watching Turning Point USA’s All-American Halftime Show that attempted to take Bad Bunny’s viewers and be a “better replacement”. But in comparison to the Halftime Show LX, the performance said to “celebrate American Culture, faith and freedom” only received 25 Million views on all platforms within the first day after airing; dwarfed by Bad Bunny’s 4 Billion plus views.
The root of this hate comes from a long history of discrimination and conflict between white, European-American, and Mexican-Americans. Erin Blakemore wrote an article for History.com breaking down the events that lead the U.S. to be in the situation it is in today. After the Mexican American War in 1848, the United States annexed part of Mexico and therefore received the people living in the land.
“Though Latinos were critical to the U.S. economy and often were American citizens, everything from their language to the color of their skin to their countries of origin could be used as a pretext for discrimination. Anglo Americans treated them as a foreign underclass and perpetuated stereotypes that those who spoke Spanish were lazy, stupid and undeserving.”
This sentiment described in Blakemore’s article has unfortunately partially stayed in the United States and is the cause of a large portion of the hate surrounding latin-americans – like Bad Bunny –and latin-american immigrants.
From the history books, to psychology studies, the fog of hatred clears up as some of the causes are brought to light. If people find themselves criticizing Bad Bunny and his performance, they should reflect on these causes to possibly find out if negativity is actually called for. (Hint: It’s not!)
We should emphasize the importance of other cultures
After some thought, I concluded that many times people are often not being properly educated on other cultures that aren’t their own. Some might not be exposed at all!
According to Hanna Park and Kit Maher, authors for CNN,
“About 41.8 million people in the country speak Spanish at home – roughly 13.5% of the population – according to Census Bureau data from 2019. Some studies estimate the number of US Spanish speakers could be closer to 48.6 million.”
With the United States not having a federally recognized language, it leaves citizens feeling open to speaking any language, even though a majority of Americans will only speak English anyways.
I think with more exposure in schools, such as pushing for better classes of foreign language or global history will broaden the minds of students. This would also likely boost people’s tolerance towards others who are different from them.
The Association for World Language Professionals released a statement stating that, “Most students in the U.S. graduate high school knowing only one language—making it the only developed country in the world for which language learning is not a recognized priority.”
This further emphasizes the importance of learning a foreign language. Since not all students are required to learn a foreign language in school, they are not guaranteed much needed exposure to help fight prejudice – leading to the ignorance and hate seen at Super Bowl LX.
When my interview with Cobian came to an end, Cobian left me with two strong statements regarding tolerance and fear.
“We also think about the word “immigrant” with a negative connotation. When we need to realize that America is and has been a melting pot everyone at some point they themselves or family came here whether it was from Europe or not.”
“Do not be scared of the unknown. I feel that goes for everybody. The criticism and hate comes from a place of “we don’t understand this, we don’t know what to do” and on the opposite side there are immigrants coming to the US and they could fear not knowing the language or culture”
Beautifully put. The sooner some European-Americans realize there are more people to appreciate than their own and that the word “immigrant” shouldn’t be scoffed at, the sooner we can be united and learn about one another.
The most powerful thing is our education, which is why I think we should emphasize more cultures in American schools.
What did we learn?
The topic of the Bad Bunny Half Time Show is opinions-based, but I think some opinions were skewed due to some bias and prejudice.
There is always someone else who knows something you don’t already know. So I beg you to open your eyes and ears and just sit for 14 minutes. Enjoy a performance about love and community.
At the end of the day, just try to learn something new every day. Take time to appreciate others who are different and their culture, so situations like this Bad Bunny controversy doesn’t happen again. The only thing more powerful than hate, is love. So just choose love.
