"The Great American Game": Examining Kendrick Lamar's 2025 NFL Super Bowl Halftime Show as a Videogame Trailer

Abstract: Although Black joy has no universal definition in academic literature, it is broadly understood to refer to actions and behaviors of happiness, joy, and pleasure which could be used to resist anti-Black racism and oppression. The authors assert that Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl halftime performance via lyricism, choreography, and staging are symbolic representations of the ways Black joy can challenge dominant narratives of Whiteness that often pathologize Blackness. To elucidate these connections, the authors analyze Kendrick Lamar's performance through the medium of a videogame trailer—which the authors position as a meaningful lens for interpreting and understanding Black joy as a mode of expression. By conceptualizing Kendrick Lamar's performance as a videogame trailer, we can investigate each performer's role within the trailer. Kendrick Lamar's halftime show performance demonstrates the creative ways Black Americans negotiate and challenge, and/or refuse imposed societal limitations, and not simply fixating on the blights on Black lives