Because you shouldn't need to understand somebody's language to understand their value or their culture's value.

I love Josh Johnson - he is, easily, one of the best comics out there today. I also really love the Bad Bunny halftime show. I’ve watched it nearly a dozen times at this point, mostly just to enjoy it, but also sometimes to analyze it, and sometimes to appreciate the camerawork and create & technical genius that made it possible.

Josh Johnson posted a video yesterday with his take on the halftime show. It’s funny, it’s touching, and it’s eye-opening. The full video is below, but I want to highlight one portion (starting at about 22:54):

And then you see Bad Bunny after he dances with Gaga, sings — this dude does like a trust fall off the top of the building and gets caught by the people underneath him. As far as symbols and images go, that’s a pretty amazing one for your community always having your back. You know? It was really cool to watch.

That was one of the biggest complaints that people had: “I didn’t understand a word that he said.” And I don’t know, this is just my take, but I really do think that it’s important that Bad Bunny did the show the way that he did it, that there were no subtitles or anything. Because you shouldn’t need to understand somebody’s language to understand their value or their culture’s value. You shouldn’t need to know exactly what they’re saying, because one of the best and coolest things that Bad Bunny did is he just showed — even though the imagery calls for something very dark — he showed how beautiful all that culture is, all over the Latin world, all over North and Central and South America.

And it’s a very important image to watch, seeing all these people. Because whenever you’re like any minority, usually when you’re on a big stage or it’s time for, you know, Oscar nominations and everything, the stories that get told about different groups are usually just about tragedy. It’s usually like, bad. You know? How much can you make us feel with all of your pain? It’s a very different direction to go to only show joy, to only show family, to only show this beautiful blossoming culture. Things that people feel like only they understand, only they see, that are never really on a world stage.

It’s definitely a choice. I think it was the right choice, because when you watch something like that, you see something that you can’t possibly combat. You see that these are the people — these people dancing right now, these people having this wonderful time, these people getting married, these people just expressing joy to the highest degree — these are the people being terrorized. These are the people being hunted and harassed by ICE. These are the people being locked up. It’s these people. For one, you don’t see any monsters on that stage. You don’t see any criminals on that stage. You see regular, beautiful people, and those regular beautiful people are the people who have to stress every single day about their own government coming after them.

You know, so many times people have said, “Why couldn’t an American do the halftime show?” Never mind the fact that Puerto Rico — I can’t stop saying it, because the thing that Freudian slip should tell you is that it was always about culture and race. It was never actually about someone being an American. You know?

The rest is amazing, it’s funny, and it’s thoughtful. Worth a watch.

Now “kiss my fish” is stuck in my head.