Stephen Marche pens a paean to the yearly tradition:
The Super Bowl offers the possibility of a new relationship with advertising, one that’s different from the game of hide-and-seek we usually play. It runs against the tendency for naked pleas to become grainy and peripheral. It puts advertising at the center and asks: Which are the good ads and products and which are the bad ads and products? And thus it serves the same function today as the great medieval trade festivals and the World’s Fairs of the early twentieth century: providing chances for the marketplace to indulge in fantasies of industrial possibility.
But much more than that, it’s a chance to develop taste. It’s a chance to see ourselves as we are and to confront our cravings and habits for what they are.
