For once, it's not The Weeknd's mug we're freaking out over. His Super Bowl LV face
was blood-free, bruise-free, bandage-free, and plastic-surgery free — in short: almost
shockingly normal. Then again, the secret's out. In the lead up to his outrageously expensive
halftime show performance, Abel Tesfaye, himself, told the world what his bandages really meant.
As he finally admitted to Variety,
"The significance of the entire head bandages is reflecting on the absurd culture of Hollywood
celebrity and people manipulating themselves for superficial reasons to please and be validated."
Got it? Good, because The Weeknd's moved on. It's not that Tesfaye's let go of his obsession
with the bizarre, or the uncomfortably jarring. He didn't spend 7 million dollars of his own
hard-earned money on his Super Bowl halftime performance to give his audience something
traditionally spectacular.
Different from the VMAS and the AMAs, however, the new performance piece Tesfaye's got everybody
whispering about has nothing to do with his face, and everything to do with his Super
Bowl backup dancers. As several viewers pointed out, The Weeknd seemed to have hired enough
dancers to fill Raymond James Stadium.
According to USA Today, he hired 55 dancers, to be exact, for Super Bowl 55. And they were
all his clones. His dancers copied Tesfaye's iconic look to a tee: dressed in black down
to the gloves on their hands, their dark profiles accented by a signature red blazer. Any facial
dissimilarities were covered up with mummy-like bandages. They were at once captivating, terrifying,
and oddly comical.
Prior to his halftime show performance, The Weeknd told Billboard that he was attempting
to create "a cinematic experience" for virtual viewers. Tesfaye's backup dancers, alternately
freestyle dancing, swarming around him, and marching in perfect, military unison helped
him get there. Twitter users had some theories. Were The Weeknd's halftime backup dancers
a spoof on Staples Center security guards? Or were they blatant reminders of social distancing
and our collective, face mask-wearing obligation? Were they, perhaps, evil hyenas, marching
Lion King-style?
Or Maybe Tesfaye's dancers were the embodiment of the "Blinding Lights'' singer's fascination
with movies. One fan noticed that Tesfaye's dancers' bandages looked eerily similar to
those worn by the mother in the horror film, Goodnight Mommy. For those of you who aren't
as in to terror as The Weeknd is, Goodnight Mommy is about a mother who has face reconstruction
surgery and turns into a completely different person. Which sounds just about in line with
Tesfaye's "people manipulating themselves for superficial reasons to please and be validated"
critique, right?
Other fans picked up on another cinematic reference. Was The Weeknd paying tribute to
the character Pluto in Jordan Peele's movie, Us, when he created the look for his backup
dancers? If you've seen Peele's masterpiece, you'll recall that Pluto wears a red jumpsuit
and white face mask, to hide hideous burn scars on his face.
We know that Tesfaye enjoys Jordan Peele's work as a director. Case in point? He once
rented out a movie theater in Toronto to watch Get Out with Selena Gomez. Stands to reason
he'd have watched Us, too. Although perhaps not with Gomez, as their relationship fizzled
out in 2017. Maybe he saw it with Bella Hadid?
Regardless, if The Weeknd did mean to make carbon copies of Pluto, then his masked and
bandaged commentary runs deeper than a 13-minute Super Bowl halftime performance would let
you properly explore. As Peele once explained to NPR,
"Whatever your 'us' is, we turn 'them' into the enemy, and maybe 'we' are our own worst
enemy."
Which, in our estimation, would make The Weeknd's bandaged backup dancers "us" or "them" or
"we", or "us" and "them" and "we" all at once. Not to go too far down the rabbit hole, but
are they meant to be Tethers? Or are they real people? Or are they both?
"If y'all want to get crazy, we can get crazy!"
Or, if you prefer a simpler version, to borrow the words of one impressed fan,
"Emotionally I am one of the Weeknd's backup dancers, just vibing, spinning, looking like
an alien, not really sure why I am there 100% but there anyway."
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