When the FCC released its annual cache of Super Bowl complaints earlier this month, it was, unsurprisingly, filled largely with reactions to Bad Bunny’s halftime performance. The agency tasked with policing broadcast standards received over 2,000 complaints this year, many of the featuring the outlandish pearl-clutching we’ve come to expect from halftime show grievances.
Words like “vulgar,” “disgusting,” and “indecent” popped up hundreds of times in reference to some of the dancers’ moves (fun fact: at least three people spelled “twerking” as “twirking”), as well as Bad Bunny’s lyrics. Many who complained about the latter did have the decency to acknowledge they spoke no Spanish, but that didn’t stop them from insisting they were still appalled after looking up Bad Bunny’s translated lyrics online. (As if he didn’t obviously perform censored versions on live national television.)
Of course, this year, too, there were more than a few straight-up racist complaints, like the submitter of this grim-as-hell ticket: “There are illegals on my TV screen. I don’t understand Spanish, but I think I heard inappropriate language.” (Despite complaints from members of Congress and President Donald Trump, the FCC never found any potential violations worth investigating.)
But before people even had a chance to get up in arms about Bad Bunny, the Super Bowl broadcast offered up something else just as disturbing. No, it wasn’t the incredibly boring game between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks. It was the Scream 7 trailer.
The clip for the latest film in the horror franchise aired early in the broadcast, right after the performance of the National Anthem. As such, many parents were left with petrified children during what many assumed was a “family-friendly event.”
“My children are now scared and huddling on my lap because we couldn’t turn the channel fast enough,” one person wrote. “[P]eacock has dropped a nightmare bomb in our house by airing trailers for ‘Scream 7’ during family prime time viewing hours,” said another.
“The violent and frightening imagery was completely unexpected and inappropriate for a program widely understood to be a family-oriented event with many young children watching,” complained a third, who, we guess, was nevertheless alright with their children watching grown men slam into each other with body-destroying, brain-degrading force.
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One person even complained about the Scream 7 trailer — “which normalizes psychopathic evil, the likes of which parents strive to protect their children from” — in the same breath as… a commercial for the inclusion of flag football in the 2028 Summer Olympics. The spot showed Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts “lighting a football on fire,” then tossing it into the Olympic torch atop the L.A. Memorial Coliseum.
“A dangerous idea that children are sure to emulate,” the complainer wrote.
