Love, loneliness and Bennifer 2.0

Some things bracket an era Bennifer was one of them In 2002 Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck riding the crest of a thrilling wave of success and talent became the couple Bennifermdashinaugurating an era where celebrity couples were serialised by a rising tribe of paparazzi for a public ready to consume and judge in an unending cycleThere was a cinematic excess to Bennifer or as my friend R said ldquothey were muchness and morerdquo So much good looks so much success so many diamonds on rings on toilet seats a romance so fecund it birthed a whole JLo album and the unforgettable video of Jenny From the Block featuring Affleck kissing J Lorsquos famous butt making us gaspNow the two are rumoured to be back together an event dubbed Againnifer Consistent Pragmatics donrsquot caremdashthey are oblivious to popular culture Anthropologetics begin with caveatsmdashguilty pleasure distraction in pandemicmdashthen justify their interest in anthropological terms the politics of gender race media cultures and new anthropologies of permissible relationships parsing them for addictive cycles rebound dynamics vagheraConfronting these with sad faces are Hardcore Romantics yes I am in that party who are like ldquoBut have you considered it could be loverdquo Some of my Hardcore Romantics category friends object to JenBen ldquoNo yaar he is not good enough for herrdquo echoing many But I ask who has made this rule that amazing women must further validate their amazingness by snagging a partner who is their equal in amazingness Doesnrsquot this feel a little matrimonial a little too status conscious Whatrsquos better than a bigenergy highachieving creative woman with a slightly dheela partner who provides good hugs passionate intensity respectful admiration fun times and allows her to focus on being awesome instead of being competitive or constantly judging her by BoreMatKarYaar ideas of achievementBy their own admission Bennifer could not weather the tabloid storm and the result of endless scrutiny Sometimes doesnrsquot it feel like we too have turned this judging scrutiny of tabloids to our own intimate lives As we swiftly assess matches on dating apps analyse the suitability of relationships on a grid of appropriateness neatness templates of selfimprovement wokeness we have inhabited a time of what I like to call emotional efficiency We want to know the meaning and worth of a relationship before we enter it an emotional equivalent of arranged marriage We foreclose fertile political conversations about difference contradictions eroticism emotion discomfort with slightly sanitised politically correct templates creating an apirational emotional life that fears vulnerability that judges so much it is terrified of being judged making mistakes found imperfect or engaging with anotherrsquos imperfectness We have unlearned some bad political habits but also made ourselves a little lonely But we have had a lot of alone time this past year to contemplate the wisdommdashand notmdashof our waysAs Bill and Melinda Gates on the one hand and Kim and Kanye on the other split Bennifer feels like it brackets that era of productive coupledom transitioning us to a time when relationships arenrsquot necessarily cool idealisable or lastingmdashnot efficient Maybe as Bennifer cycle back to each other after 17 years with new learnings we too are entering a time where our learnings of the last decades will give us confidence to embrace messy and vulnerable loves againParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at paromitavohramiddaycom