2026-06-01T02:06:25Zhttps://riuma.uma.es/rest/oai/request

oai:riuma.uma.es:10630/453452026-02-11T00:48:33Zcom_10630_2254col_10630_37953

Media event and Latin performance: Bad Bunny at Super Bowl LX and the symbolic reconfiguration of "America" (2026). Pérez-Rufi, José Patricio Televisión y deportes Televisión - Aspectos sociales Latinoamericanos - Estados Unidos - Cultura This paper examines Bad Bunny’s (Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) televised halftime performance at Super Bowl LX, broadcast on 8 February 2026. Drawing on the theoretical framework of media events, media rituals and the culture of spectacle, it interprets the performance as a device of visibility and memory that reorganises the ritual of the major sporting event. The staging unfolds a symbolic grammar centred on Puerto Rico and the Latin diaspora: the opening amid sugarcane fields activates a colonial memory; the little house condenses home, community and cultural pride; the live wedding and the neighbourhood party advance a politics of affect; and the sequence focused on electrical infrastructure positions the island’s material precarity within the global public sphere. In its closing movement, the re-signification of the formula “God bless America”, through the enumeration of countries across the continent and the display of flags, constructs an inclusive pan-Americanism that challenges the appropriation of the term “America” as an exclusive synonym for the United States. The analysis argues that the spectacle offers a counter-narrative of citizenship: against contemporary discourses of fear, criminalisation and exclusion directed at Latin migration, Bad Bunny articulates recognition, self-esteem and continental fraternity without resorting to belligerent rhetoric. 2026-02-09 journal article Pérez-Rufi, J. P. (2026). Media event and Latin performance: Bad Bunny at Super Bowl LX and the symbolic reconfiguration of "America" (2026). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18560580 https://hdl.handle.net/10630/45345 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18560580 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Universidad de Málaga