The halftime show of Super Bowl 50 was filled with lots of controversial concepts that were open for interpretation. One was the rainbow-filled performance by Coldplay.

Coldplay recently released its album “A Head Full of Dreams,” which has a rainbow-themed cover. When the halftime show started, many people assumed that the rainbow was just a fun part of the show and was meant to connect with its album and its recently released indy-based music video for the song “Hymn for the Weekend.”

However, once a few different elements appeared at different times throughout the show, some people started to make a connection to the LGBT community.

“I think the thing that I first noticed was when they were doing some closeups of the crowd, there was somebody with a rainbow flag,” said Emma Molls, librarian at Parks Library and member of the LGBT Faculty Staff Association on campus. “At first I thought somebody just kind of snuck that in, but then it started showing up on screen multiple times, so clearly the camera people weren’t trying to avoid that being on the screen.”

The second element that came into play came at the very end of the show. As the show was coming to a close, audience members held up colored and white signs, with the white signs spelling out “Believe in Love.”

Many people were not expecting this, but Molls expressed that if that was the message that they were trying to relay, then it wouldn’t be a surprise to her.

“This is the first Super Bowl since the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage, so I think seeing something that looks like this, you can’t ignore the fact that a lot of people will think of the love campaign that was going on for marriage equality.”

Abraham Bischof, freshman in mechanical engineering, agrees that his mind went to the LGBT community once he saw the phrase “Believe in Love” with the rainbow colors surrounding it.

“I don’t know if that was the message that was intended or not, but when I saw it I instantly thought of the rainbow filter that appeared on Facebook a while,” Bischof said.

Bischof thought the message was a bit out of place at an event like the Super Bowl.

“The Super Bowl is everything to do with football,” Bischof said. “If it was intended to send a message, it probably wasn’t the right place because the Super Bowl shouldn’t be a place for political messages.”

Many people have different opinions about the Super Bowl halftime performance, and the message of the show is still up for interpretation.