I’ve sung along to more than a few J-Lo songs in my lifetime, but I don’t own any of her albums. Similarly, I think Ben Affleck’s a terrific actor and film-maker, but I haven’t seen all of his movies.
These Hollywood A-listers are a couple I’m never likely to even meet, and yet over recent months the pop culture trash demon that lurks within has insisted I pore over every tabloid mention of their relationship.
When news broke on Sunday that Jennifer Lynn Lopez and Benjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt had wed the day before in Vegas, I burst into happy tears.
The “genuine love” Lopez described of their connection is a chaotic force for most, and often it’s quite messy.
When they announced their first-time-around engagement in 2002, “Bennifer” was a phenomenon of movies, music and music videos and perhaps the first truly multimedia celebrity love story. “We fell in love, we were excited and maybe too accessible,” reflected Affleck in 2008. When the movie Gigli turned out to be a creative misfire, the public hunger that accessibility had tantalised turned cannibalistic. “They were young, impossibly good-looking, fabulously wealthy, and clearly hot for each other,” this publication explained, “so it seemed like a good time to knock them down a peg.”
Knocked down they were. Four days before their planned 2003 nuptials, the couple found themselves “seriously considering hiring three decoy brides for three different locations” and called off the wedding. Soon after, they broke up.
Frankly, at the time, I wasn’t paying much attention. They swiftly moved on to other partners, others marriages, children, divorces, and news of either or both of these complete strangers was something garnered only from magazines in doctors’ surgeries, a walked-past TV, a pop-addled, gossip-minded pal.
Yet 18 years have now passed, in which I – now more or less an adult – have experienced and witnessed so much of the messiness of both love and broader humanity that the story of J-Lo and Affleck reuniting has inspired in me an all-too-rare modern feeling of hope.
Writing a column obliges me to follow the news, which, at present, is no rosy experience. My internet diet this week consisted of learning about “coffin payouts” from the Russian government to the families whose sons have been sacrificed to Russia’s brutal, pointless war in Ukraine. There’s the details of how Australia has become an extinction machine in the horrific details of the state of the environment report. A Texas Democrat made a terrifying speech describing his party as “the only thing standing between this country and fascism” – and he’s right.
These are the macro problems. The micro of missed connections, difficult relations, poor choices and regret beset us all at some point in our lives.
So forgive me if my eyes have repeatedly strayed towards a happy celebrity story of two people who did, actually, sort themselves out and overcame what kept them apart, and traced a path across the bricolage of large, complex relationships with so many others, and the past, and time, and scars and damage and disappointment and the pressure of their unique fame and scrutiny to find their way back to one another.
When the world overwhelms, it’s the courage to pursue what means most to us that builds the strength to face that world. That’s why joyous human rituals like marriage endure.
In announcing her marriage to Affleck, J-Lo explained the experience of them lining up to receive a marriage licence between a gay couple and a couple with a young family, “all of us wanting the same thing – for the world to recognize us as partners and to declare our love to the world through the ancient and nearly universal symbol of marriage.”
On the other side of the world, in Australia, my partner Ben and I hardly knew we engaged that ancient symbol at the same time. With my mother’s health in decline, we postponed our planned big celebration and on Saturday – with a $99 dress and a handful of chairs – had a tiny quickie wedding on a nearby beach while my mum could still be there.
I may never meet J-Lo or Affleck, but we’ll always have that in common. My wishes to the happy couple are sincere.
Van Badham is a Guardian Australia columnist
