Super Bowl's middle finger shown by Tamilian Mathangi

When M.I.A. — the British-Sri Lankan Tamil artist born Mathangi Arulpragasam — extended her middle finger at the camera during her appearance in the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show in February 2012, she produced one of the most discussed moments in Super Bowl halftime history, and eventually a legal dispute that illustrated the gap between the scale of broadcast media and what any individual gesture actually communicates.

The performance featured Madonna and included Nicki Minaj and LMFAO. M.I.A.'s moment — finger extended, camera catching it live — was broadcast to an estimated 111 million viewers in the United States and hundreds of millions more globally.

In March 2012, the NFL filed an arbitration claim against M.I.A. seeking $1.5 million in damages, citing breach of her performance contract and reputational harm. M.I.A. fired back, arguing the league had benefited from the attention, and refused the NFL's demand for a public apology. In March 2014, the league upped its demand to $16.6 million — prompting her to tweet Madonna asking to "borrow 16 million."

The legal dispute dragged on until August 2014, when the two sides reached a confidential settlement. The FCC, for its part, received all of 222 complaints about the broadcast. But the cultural conversation it sparked was in some ways more interesting than the legal one. M.I.A. — an artist whose work engages with Sri Lankan civil war, diaspora identity, and political violence — had a great deal to say about the gap between the outrage her finger provoked and the silence around the content of her music and the stories it told.

Whether the gesture was calculated provocation or spontaneous expression, it produced exactly the kind of disproportionate response that, in retrospect, seemed almost designed to prove her point.

Sources

• NFL settles with singer M.I.A. — ESPN