You have heard it a million times before. Before every Super Bowl game and at every graduation the national anthem is sung. Every rendition is different and some are better than others; the good, the bad, and the ugly. Have you ever stopped to think about why you enjoy certain renditions more so than others? If you analyze different celebrity performances of the star spangled banner, you will see that rhetoric and the devices thereof play a vital role in your overall impression of each version. Transmission of affect, the preceding situation, and delivery are three components of a successful presentation of the national anthem.
Let’s begin with the ugly. On July 25, 1990, Rosanne Barr, Emmy Award winning comedian and actress, sang the star spangled banner at the commencement of the nationally aired baseball game between the San Diego Padres and the Cincinnati Reds at the Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego California. Baseball officials encouraged the comedian to “bring humor to the song,” with no expectations of a showcase of musical expertise. Rosanne did exactly what the officials asked, not knowing that her “humor” was sure to back fire. Upon the pitcher’s mound, she began to screech and scream the words of the national anthem as loudly as she possibly could. Midway through the off-key first stanza, she chokes back laughter at her obvious lack of skill. She finishes her performance by throwing open her arms, harking a loogie, spitting it on the ground, and grabbing her crotch before exiting the field with a huge smile on her face. That smile was soon turned upside down as a result of the overwhelming backlash weighing down upon Rosanne.
The controversy that spurred from this incident is a perfect example of the transmission of affect as discussed by Teresa Brennan in her book, The Transmission of Affect. Brennan believed:
Affects can be compounded by interactive dynamics that some groups will carry more affective loads than others will. Similarly, codes of restraint where the affects are concerned also vary, with emotional displays being looked upon favorably in some contexts while they are discouraged in others. (Brennan 51)
This belief shows that people’s emotions change when they enter a group and combine with others to form a new “group mind” or collective state of emotion. People might have individually found humor in Rosanne’s performance, like when I burst into laughter every time I watch a recording of this performance, but because the mix of emotions in the stadium that day created a sense of offense no one there laughed. Instead, people felt like Rosanne was out of line and disrespecting America. Many felt that crotch grabbing and spitting were inappropriate actions for a female to enact, especially in public. One by one, they began to boo. Immediately an emotional contagion took place. People saw other people looking around in disgust and heard other people booing which resulted in them doing the same (sight and hearing as the principle mechanisms in the communication of affect 56). Brennan describes this domino effect within a crowd saying, “The greater the number of people in whom the same affect can be simultaneously observed, the stronger does this automatic compulsion grow,” which explains the spread of disgust throughout the crowd and individuals watching the game on television (56). National Disapproval was ultimately solidified when President George H. W. Bush labeled her rendition as “disgraceful”.
Next, we’ll discuss the bad. On September 11, 2001 the United States of America faced one of the biggest tragedies in our nation’s history. A group of al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes. Two were crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City killing 2,606 victims along with the plane passengers. One was crashed into the Pentagon killing 125 people plus the plane passengers. The fourth plane was crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania killing only its passengers. The country was in massive mourning and injected with fear, but life went on. A few months later, officials postponed the Super Bowl in fear that terrorist may sabotage this nationally aired event. A week later, Mariah Carey was selected by NFL officials to sing the national anthem on game day with high hopes for the high caliber of her performance.
February 3, 2002, Mariah Carey sang her rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at Super Bowl XXXVI at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans for the game between the New England Patriots and the St. Louis Rams. In her strapless blue evening gown, she begins the song. Immediately, her prima donna mannerisms cascade over the lyrics. Spectators see one hand on the microphone with the other in a flat hand, spread fingers, 5 position waving back and forth as she periodically closes her eyes to complete one of her bountiful vocal runs. A little high octave, then she’s done.
` The performance wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t awe inspiring either. People were expecting a performance that would wow the masses and comfort those in grief, but they got just a typical recital of the national anthem. The moderate feelings towards this performance can be attributed to the choppiness of her delivery. Brian Massumi said:
Language belongs to entirely different orders depending on which redundancy it enacts, or it always enacts both more or less completely: two languages, two dimensions of every expression, one superlinear, the other linear. Every event takes place on both levels. (Edbauer 4)
He termed these two halves expectation and suspense. Jenny Edbauer claims that these two halves also apply to the body and not just language. She says:
A cultural theory of affect is a theory of the body. The affective body is an event; it is implicated in the doubleness of the event. Whereas many readings of the body begin in qualification and ideological realms- - in meaning- -we must not neglect the body’s total event. That is, we must not neglect both halves of the body: qualification and intensity (5).
This means Moriah’s body language and movements could have taken away from the impact of her performance because the jerkiness of her waving hand and disconnect from her closed eyes disrupt what the audience was expecting. They were expecting a smooth inspirational performance based on our country and the terrors of 9/11. She gave them a performance showcasing her vocal range with the emphasis on her instead of the country. This can be paralleled to the example of President Reagan’s speech and how his jerkiness hindered spectators from following his speech (8). Moriah’s body didn’t relate to her audience in a positive way, so some viewers failed to feel any emotion from her performance.
Finally, we consider the good. In December 1990 when Whitney Houston was determined to sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl, she knew that she wanted to add a jazz and soul feel to the song. Whitney decided to take the song out of its standard waltz tempo, three quarters time, and add an extra beat per measure. Many NFL officials, knowing that the Super Bowl would be aired worldwide for the first time in countries other than America and the UK, warned her that this approach was too flamboyant for wartime and feared viewers thinking her rendition was sacrilegious. However on January 27, 1991, Whitney Houston stood center field before 73, 813 fans, 115 million viewers in the United States, and 750 million viewers across the world to perform her rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. At Super Bowl XXV between the New York Giants and the Buffalo Bills, she wowed the masses. One week later, she released a vocal recording of the performance and it reached number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 list making her the first artist in history to sell their rendition of the national anthem as a hit single. The visual recording of her NFL performance was used as the music video for this single. Years later, Whitney's single continued to move audiences. After the September 11th attacks, Arista Records rereleased the single. This time it reached number 6 on the Top 100 Chart, became certified platinum, and peaked number 5 on the Canadians Single Chart. Now the big question is, “What made Whitney’s version so widely acclaimed?”
First and foremost, the rhetoric of this performance was in response to a rhetorical situation. Lloyd Bitzer defines the rhetoric as,
Rhetoric is a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action. The rhetor alters reality by bringing into existence a discourse of such a character that the audience, in thought and action, is so engaged that it becomes a mediator of change. In this sense rhetoric is always persuasive. (Bitzer 4)
The discourse he mentions comes into existence because of some specific condition or situation which invites utterance; the rhetorical situation. In this case, the situation is the start of the Gulf War. The country was torn on the issue of entering the war. Soldiers were being deported. A cloud of uncertainty and fear hung over America. Whitney, in the position of rhetor, utilized her performance to responded to this sense of uncertainty by reminding Americans of American pride and offering a message of unity. Her message was the rhetoric that brought about a change by giving viewers new hope and opened a discourse about the war that had been previously dreaded.
The other major component of success for Whitney’s performance was the transmission of affect for those present and those watching on TV. For those present at the stadium, the sea of American flags in the stands that almost every individual present carried, the posters and signs people had made reading “God Bless America,” the crying, and the empowering gestures of Whitney as she sang created a patriotic atmosphere that itself was transmitted into the individuals there. The fans were unified, comforted, and proud to be Americans.
For the fans watching via television the affect worked in a similar way. Houston takes the field. She wears a white hair band and white tracksuit with a red and blue print, an athletic uniform that refers to the national tricolor red, white, and blue. The announcer asks the audience to join in the honoring of "America" and "especially the brave men and women serving our nation in the Persian Gulf and throughout the world." While the athletes are notably absent on the field, the military personnel, dressed in various uniforms to signify the solidarity among different army units, display the flags of the different American states. Two male members of the military are singled out through the use of close-ups: an African-American officer and a white officer. The close-up of the African-American officer raising his hand in salute overlaps with the close-up of the audience. And the close-up of Houston dissolves into the close-up of the white officer, and back again. For a second, both Houston and the white officer are captured within the same frame. The American flag is omnipresent in all shots, either explicitly in the form of an actual American flag, or implicitly through the use of its colors red, white, and blue. In addition to the waving American flags, best visible when shot from a distance, on several occasions, the presence of the flag is emphasized through the use of close-ups in connection to the words Whitney Houston sings. When she sings, "...see, by the dawn's early light," a close-up of an American flag dissolves in and out of the close-up of Houston. Houston does not leave the frame, but for a second, the image of American flag is transparently placed over her image. At the point when Houston sings "through the night that our flag was still there," the camera cuts to a close-up of the American flag waving at the top of the stadium. Throughout the performance, there are medium shots and close-ups of the audience waving small American flags. With Houston throwing her arms into the air, as if she’s in victory and endowed with strength, the scene is made complete with four F-16 fighting jets from the 56th Tactical Training Will at MacDill Air Force Base flying over as the performance's grand finale. The imagery and special affects helps to constitue an image of a united America which caused widespread praise of this performance.
In conclusion, rhetoric plays a vital role with how individuals perceive different performances. When performing the national anthem it is beneficial to do so in response to some situation or tragedy, keep in mind the different ideals among your audience, and deliver the song in a manner appropriate for the occasion. Whitney Houston maintained all three of these components in her rendition of the national anthem which has lead her to be considered the best performer of the national anthem in America's history.
Work Cited
Brennan, Teresa. The Transmission of Affect. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. Print
Edbauer, J. (2004). Executive overspill: Affective bodies, intensity, and Bush-in-relation. The University of Texas at Austin.
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