Human Interest

Too Big to Fail: Highlights from Shaquille O’Neal’s Cultural Contributions

September 15th, 2009

I caught an episode of Shaq Vs.—Shaquille O’Neal’s latest contribution to America’s cultural collage—a couple of weeks ago as I flipped through channels to find mindless background accompaniment for my evening meal. Shaq Vs. fit the bill perfectly, for it is nothing more than a shameless personality vehicle that comfortably seats Shaq and a series of celebrity athletes who half-heartedly compete against O’Neal in their own professional sport. The best thing about this show is that it typifies the kind of self-indulgent projects Shaquille O’Neal has put his name on over the years and proves my personal theory: The man is incapable of producing anything that bankrupts his advertising potential. Lord knows he’s tried!

Exhibit A: Shaq Diesel (Rap Record)

Shaq’s first record was released at the end of 1993 and it’s rife with goofy references to his professional basketball prowess and his general ability to be awesome at everything. Most rap records are full of recycled preening, but O’Neal makes his lyrics memorable with lines like, “I can flow like pee, coming out you know what / Or some dookey diarrhea coming out ya’ butt.” There’s enough golden rhymes on this record to gild an entire room in one of Shaq’s ridiculous houses. Novelty notwithstanding, it’s a terrible album that for incomprehensible reasons appealed to the awkward teenaged version of myself and managed to go platinum thanks to Shaq’s remarkable talent and continued success on the basketball court—music critics be damned.

Exhibit B: Shaq Fu (Video Game)

If Shaq Diesel was an affront to the art of record-making, Shaq Fu was a disaster that barely met the basic playability requirements for a video game released in the mid-90s. You can’t blame Shaq for the game’s technical inequities, but he surely deserves derision for attaching his name to this horror at the height of the 16-bit video game gold rush. The game itself was a pile-on attempt to cash in on the rash of quasi-story-driven fighting games that crowded the console market circa 1994. The narrative was remarkably terrible even for an obviously half-baked knock-off: Shaq visits Japan to play a charity basketball game, wanders into a junk shop where an old man ushers him into a room that is, inexplicably, a portal to another dimension, and must fight his way across unknown lands to save a boy that’s held captive by a mummy. For all of its faults, the most damning were the horrible control scheme and unpredictable hit detection that would ultimately earn Shaq Fu a place on numerous worst-of lists. As a saving grace, Shaq imbued this creation with more of his hokey wit in the form of pre-fight taunts: “I’m gonna rock your chair, grandpa” remains one of my favorites.

Exhibit C: Kazaam (Feature Film)

When advertisers and image-makers refused to stop throwing money at him, O’Neal completed the pop culture trifecta by taking a starring role as a whacky rhyming genie that is summoned from a dusty boombox in a film that managed to disappoint and annoy both the kids it was marketed to and the hapless fans who continued to spend money on his endeavors. Kazaam employed Shaq’s prior skills—rapping, other-worldly travel, and child saving—to help a young tough repair his relationship with his dead beat dad, but even that old heart-warming hollywood story wasn’t enough to overcome the fact that Shaquille O’Neal has no business being in a movie that isn’t about basketball. I may or may not have made it through to the end of this film, but I think Shaq eventually turns the kid into a stunted troll, vaporizes the dad in a spray of bloody mist, and tops the Billboard charts with a rap track about how hard it is to be a genie. (Note: not a spoiler).

And oh, there’s more: much more than I care to cover here in a single post. Despite overwhelming odds, America has yet to lose their hunger for this affable man’s exploits. He has done his worst, and yet somehow he is invited to return time and again for another lap around the endorsement track. Shaq Vs. is just the latest installment, no more compelling than O’Neal’s previous exploits and yet no less impressive for the way he is able to continue to turn himself into a valuable commodity. Shaquille O’Neal was one of the first to make a personality into a modern multimedia enterprise, and for that I applaud him. But please, Shaq: stick to playing basketball and posting Yo Mama™ jokes on Twitter—it remains your finest work.

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