Watching the Super Bowl, An American Ritual

Super Bowl Sunday is arguably a most observed holiday for American people. The essay defines the annual Super Bowl as a major media event with various social consequences, and uses an analytic framework developed by Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz (1992) to explain its influences. Then it discusses the possibility of various interpretive communities existing for this seemingly simplistic event (a football game) as elaborate planning and marketing activities appear to have made the Super Bowl telecast what John Fiske (1987; 1998) would call open text. In conclusion, the essay calls for more studies analyzing the viewing experience, as well as the discourse following the event, to understand truly the entire scope of the event's influences.