Why is the photo of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez on a yacht so compelling?
Helen, I am seeing an image on the internet that reminds me of a time long, long ago, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it means.
You must be talking about singer, songwriter, actor, fragrance mogul and philanthropist Jennifer Lopez’s 52nd birthday pics and in particular, the pièce de résistance: Ben Affleck affectionately touching her butt.
That’s the one. Why does it give me a sense of deja vu?
Well firstly, it is familiar to you because it is a recreation of a scene in J Lo’s 2002 music video for the song Jenny from the Block, in which Lopez argues that despite her success and considerable material wealth, she is still the same down to earth woman who grew up in Castle Hill, the Bronx.
The lyrics include the lines: “Can’t forget to stay real / to me it’s like breathing”; “I stay grounded as the amounts roll in”; and “Don’t be fooled by the rocks that I got / I’m still (I’m still) Jenny from the block”.
The music video is a stream of scenes made to look like paparazzi footage. In one scene, Affleck strokes
Lopez’s butt adoringly as they sail on a yacht.
Art critic John Berger teaches us that a photograph “isolates, preserves, and presents a moment taken from a continuum”. In this case, that continuum begins with Affleck and Lopez’s relationship, starting in 2002. In 2003, they called their wedding off with just days to go, due to “excessive media attention”. This is poignant because: see above music video. In 2004, they broke up.
But in April this year, nearly two decades later, their romance was rekindled (though it only became Instagram official this weekend). I don’t normally care about pictures of celebrity couples, so why does this one warm my heart? Because it encapsulates hope. We can pretend, for a brief moment, that all the bad things that have happened since 2002 – the great recession, Trump, Brexit, Covid – didn’t actually happen at all. Lopez’s body has not aged. She is with Affleck, about whom she sang – on the album that included Jenny from the Block – “I love you, you’re perfect / A manifestation of my dreams / … / You will always be / My lust, my love, my man, my child, my friend, and my king.”
2002 was also the year Ben Affleck won People Magazine’s sexiest man alive. What has he been up to since then? It’s a long, sad story, so I’ll focus on recent events. In late 2019, he started dating actor Ana D’Armas. This was arguably the beginning of a comeback from many, many years of messy sadness. But the relationship itself was short-lived. They broke up in January this year. You may remember that the artefacts of their romance included a life-sized cutout of the actress that someone was seen throwing out, and a photo of Affleck drinking from a Dunkin’ Donuts cup balanced on top of several packages. Wait, tell me more about the messy sadness. If I may return to Berger: a “great artist is a man whose life-time is consumed by struggle: partly against material circumstances, partly against incomprehension, partly against him
self.”
In no artist who has ever lived is this more clearly represented than in Benjamin Affleck. He is the poster-boy for smoking and being sad. He has done this while wearing a face mask over just his nose, with one hand in his pocket and his eyes closed, inhaling, as the Cut put it, “through the pain of his existence”, and while looking thin, on a balcony. He is also sad when he vapes.
He has stared out at the sea while wearing a towel high up on his torso. But he turned his back on that sea, and tried again. “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster,” wrote Nietzsche. Affleck has gazed into the abyss, but he looked away before it could gaze back at him.
“Every exceptional work was the result of a prolonged successful struggle,” wrote Berger. “The phoenix must burn to rise from the ashes”, wrote someone on Twitter. Affleck walked so we could run.
What does the Bennifer image mean to you, personally?For me, it is all about J Lo. In a series of pics from her birthday, she shows off her insane body. I am seven months pregnant and the chances of me having anything close to an ab any time soon are zero. And yet, J Lo makes me feel like it is all too possible, some day. Unrealistic expectations? Well, they’re real. She’s real. “I thought I told you,” etc.
So, is it art?
I leave you with this: “The uniqueness of the original now lies in it being the original of a reproduction. It is no longer what its image shows that strikes one as unique; its first meaning is no longer to be found in what it says, but in what it is.”