The United States during the Reagan years in the 1980s was proud, loud, and unabashed. Americans wore diamantes to bed and ten-gallon stetsons to dinner. They drove gas-guzzling sedans, watched MTV on cable, and boasted a president who owned a white Arabian stallion called El Alamein. It was America resurgent with brass knobs on.
Last week, for her NFL half-time Christmas Day concert, Beyoncé gave this long-discarded America its first public airing in nearly forty years. All the familiar elements were there: the bedazzling, the strutting, the clunky Yank Tanks — even the gleaming white horse which she rode into the stadium.
Netflix reportedly paid $150 million for the exclusive airing rights to the NFL’s Christmas Day games for the next three years. A significant
