Why we still want to believe in Bennifer

You can't say they didn't try.

After 20 years since their first public break-up, Jennifer Lopez has filed for divorce from Ben Affleck.

The public has responded strongly to this particular couple's reunion since they were first spotted rekindling back in 2021. So, what is it about Bennifer that makes people want to believe in love again?

Today on Commotion, culture critics Bee Quammie and Julianne Escobedo Shepherd join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to track the rise and fall of Bennifer 2.0, and unpack what our cultural fascination with their relationship tells us about our hopes for love.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Look, the year is 2021. We're still in the middle of a pandemic. And then suddenly, the paparazzi photograph Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez on a yacht together. What's your reaction to this photo?

Bee: To borrow from Omarion, I will say that the icebox where my heart used to be started to defrost a little bit. I was like, "Wow, love is back."... It really hit me: here are these people who had such an infamous story, like, 20 years ago, back to give us more. I was intrigued at that. I was taken aback.

Elamin: It was kind of the last thing that people expected, Julianne — the idea that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez would get back together. At this point, I would say neither Ben or Jen are at the peak of their fame. Why do you think their reunion got all that public attention?

Julianne: Well, I think that first of all, it was the pandemic and we really needed something to root for. But I think that also we were ripe for this fairytale. Those of us with the privilege to sit at home during the pandemic, we're thinking about our exes often, and here it is materialized: you get back with the one who got away. So, obviously we were transfixed because there wasn't a whole lot of other stuff going on that was positive.

Elamin: Absolutely peak "I should call her" moment, you know?... Bee, what do you remember about the reaction to them getting back together in 2021?

Bee: Oh, they became the poster children for spinning the block successfully. You know, you come back around and you call that person that you used to have a little thing. They just keep us fed that way. We the public like to create a story even when there's one in front of us. So taking the memes of the two of them descending down the stairs of the yacht and other memes of Ben smoking a cigarette, looking a little bit despondent, and people wondering what that means, or the video of them walking to the car, and he opens the car door for her, and he slams it back very exasperated, it just feeds us to continue. Whether it's right or wrong, we like to put our stories on top of the story that's already been given to us.

Elamin: Julianne, to me it feels like the Bennifer story is basically shorthand for how you feel about love or how you feel about who gets to find the right one, or the idea of "the one that got away." It's like an entry point into all those conversations that people have on a day-to-day basis; you get to take all those conversations and then project them onto figures like Ben and Jen. What do you make of our obsession with this story?

Julianne: I think you're right. We transpose our own feelings about ourselves, our own relationships and love onto celebrity, and they in particular felt unfinished. They broke up, possibly because of a bad movie. It's unclear.

Elamin: 'Cause of Gigli. It got really bad reviews. That's one of the rumors that they broke up, because … Ben is on this incredible trajectory in his career, and then he does Gigli and then we go, "Yikes." Anyway, continue.

Julianne: Yes. So, I think we were rooting for them because we thought that maybe in our lives we could have this classic fairytale romance, and that's what it was. It was entirely a fairytale, and we all know that J.Lo loves her princess narratives. And Affleck is like the dirtbag prince who rolls back through. So it was a fairytale that we could believe in.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jane van Koeverden.