Should NYU faculty and their dependent children receive full tuition remission?
Like millions of Americans neither proficient nor interested in sports, I spent my Sunday watching Puppy Bowl VI on Animal Planet. For the uninitiated, the Puppy Bowl is a contest of strength and wit in which a handful of puppies are dropped into a miniature football stadium and filmed elaborately. It's like the Super Bowl in that it's a maniacally overwrought and overstimulating spectacle with not much in the way of real substance; it's unlike the Super Bowl in that it has neither rules nor a point. This year, the historic broadcast featured bunny cheerleaders, a handful of scuzzy-looking hamsters in a "blimp" and a French bulldog named Yums. It was a show for the ages.
It's pretty amazing how far the show has come from its meager roots. Nowadays the Puppy Bowl copies nearly every Super Bowl embellishment, including instant replays, sparkly slo-mo, nonsensical diagrams and absurd levels of commercialization. (In preparation for the Bissell Kitty Halftime Show brought to you by Bissell, the referee had to vacuum the stadium.) But my favorite innovation continues to be the grotesque Water Bowl Cam, which gives us a privileged view of lapping tongues, saliva bubbles and googly eyes. Someday, Darren Aronofsky will use this angle to illustrate drug abuse.
I kind of feel bad for that referee. If I were an aspiring actor looking to break it big on basic cable, I wouldn't want to find myself kneeling in a felt arena, picking up a beagle and calling him out for "unnecessary ruff-ruff-ruffness!" The guy can't possibly have been sober when he took those Kit Kat™ breaks.
It's also weird how the Puppy Bowl openly and shamelessly creates animal analogues for gender and class. While the puppies were all about boyish action, the kittens — accompanied by sleazy jazz, glitzy neon lighting and scratching poles — were apparently supposed to be Vegas strippers. Sometimes the broadcast cut to a bunch of puppies "tailgating" outside the "stadium" — all of whom were noticeably older and uglier than the puppy athletes. That's messed up.
But you know what? I think the Puppy Bowl — with all its adorableness, all its bizarreness, all its iconoclasm — is even more American than the Super Bowl. It's a fundamentally democratic institution. As deliberate counterprogramming to a sacred national ritual, it dribbles in the face of homogeneity. Sure, you could watch the Puppy Bowl before or after the Super Bowl, but that's not the point.
Christopher Hitchens has often accused Christmas of being a fascist holiday. Why? Because it's everywhere; you can't walk anywhere without hearing and seeing "the image and music of the Dear Leader" thrust out at you. Whether or not you believe Hitchens is a Grinch and an asshole, you can sort of see his point. Ubiquity is annoying.
That's why the Puppy Bowl is magnificent. It's a blissfully sarcastic affront to the notion that every American TV should be tuned to the same channel, the same contest, the same mindset. It's the adorable howl of diversity.
The national anthem is playing. An American flag is waving. Each puppy is featured in patriotic close-up, eyes directed toward the heavens. Sure, they're probably staring at a piece of rawhide dangling from the ceiling, but I like to think they're staring into the light of liberty itself.
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