Ben Affleck, secret dramavore
that which nourishes him, etc etc
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Noted Dunkin’ Donuts spokesmodel Ben Affleck recently sat down with GQ to give one of his signature interviews. He really does give good interview; the man has always been uncommonly reflective, chatty, and funny. He’s also very good at seeming like he’s shared more than he actually has, which is an important part of playing the celebrity role. And he should know—he’s been playing that role for 30 years now, despite seeming very reluctant about it. Honestly, the reluctance is very much part of the role for him. To me, it’s the most fascinating and frustrating thing about him.
Last year, the single most dramatic celeb couple you know1 gave us a masterclass in mess. They opened the year with a triple whammy—This is Me…Now: A Love Story, a new album of love songs from Jennifer a “new cinematic experience” of the album from the heart/soul/dreams of Jennifer, with Ben as a vividly reluctant co-star; and a Making the Video-type documentary about the making of said cinematic experience, called The Greatest Love Story Never Told. But after all that, come May J.Lo was attending the Met Gala alone, and the people were in a frenzy over divorce rumours.
Now, the narrative about Bennifer has always been that their differing approaches to/comfort with fame is what drove them apart. J.Lo, ever the classic Leo, seems to love performing the role of a diva 24/7. Ben, on the other hand, seems to love performing the role of a man who has been forced out of his cave 24/7. He even raises this in the GQ interview:
Like I mentioned to you before, there are a lot of people who I think have handled celebrity more adeptly and more adroitly than I have, Jennifer among them. My temperament is to be a little bit more reserved and private than hers. As happens in relationships, you don’t always have the same attitude towards these things. And so I thought, Oh, this is interesting because how do you reconcile that? Because exactly what you said is true. I love and support this person. I believe in them. They’re great. I want people to see that. And I think the thing that I said in that documentary or the piece that they used was where I said, You don’t marry a ship captain and then say, “Well, I don’t like going out in the water.” You’ve got to own what you knew going into any relationship. And I think it’s important to say that wasn’t the cause of some major fracture. It’s not like you can watch that documentary and go, “Oh, now I understand the issues that these two had.”
But so many people did watch that documentary and come away thinking that they did get perfect insight into why this relationship can’t maintain for more than a handful of years a time. At one point, J.Lo and her team reveal that she had given them love letters that Ben had written her over the years, and told them that she wanted to use said letters as inspiration.2 Ben then raises that he was taken aback to learn that the letters he thought were private were made available in this way, to his wife’s employees. This juxtaposition very neatly fits the narrative that Ben is an artistic, romantic recluse who would rather have gotten married on a beach in the middle of nowhere, while J.Lo is addicted to the spotlight.
And you know, maybe that’s true for J.Lo. But that love of the spotlight is true for Ben, too, despite how carefully and consistently he insists otherwise. His “I’m a serious tortured artist who can’t help but keep attracting attention” game isn’t as hilariously transparent as, say, Bradley Cooper’s. But anyone who lived through his phoenix back tattoo era can see him for what he is. And, as
righteously and rightfully points out, Ben is a Leo too.This is a man who not only showed off his pull-up game in The Town, a Boston crime thriller that warranted no such display; but also managed to get his tits out in Argo, a movie about the CIA exfiltrating six U.S. embassy workers from Iran during the hostage crisis. I’m not even going to mention his nude scene in Gone Girl, though now we’re all thinking about it together.
This is a man who led his lockdown lover Ana de Armas on one of the most entertainingly self-conscious paparazzi tours of the era (though nothing can compete with Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello, just for the anti-performance they’re giving). And, infamously, left his giant cardboard cutout of her displayed prominently in the trash after they broke up.
Like, not for nothing, but how much do you hear about Matt Damon’s marriage?3 That’s a man who actually avoids the spotlight and keeps his personal life pretty tightly under wraps. Ben can apparently only be with other celebrities, or with people on a dating app specifically to match with celebrities.
Only Dunkin’ knows his heart, but he’s getting a lot of mileage out of people inherently believing white guys when they say (1) anything, and (2) that they’re just a regular guy; and inherently mistrusting brown women, especially ones who are openly and unapologetically ambitious. Why are we so determined to believe that Ben is, as J.Lo herself noted, “the beleaguered man”? Yes, I’ve seen all the clips of the two of them fussing at each other at an awards show, and of him opening the car door for her and then shutting it frustratedly, and so on. So, because he expresses seemingly every emotion that flutters through his head, he’s trapped in a relationship? Is Jennifer the one who told him to dip his beard in a pool of Good Dye Young and do a whole GQ photoshoot dressed like a horny film exec from the early 80s?
We can even take it back to This Is Me…Now, a visual album that is utterly bombastic in its vulnerability. The whole thing is her slightly fictionalized account of the work she needed to do after her breakup with Ben in order to love herself on her own, without needing to be in a relationship. It is Jennifer at her theatre kid peak, expressing her need for validation through overwrought choreography, ugly green screens, and a deep commitment to those clip-on bangs. Ben Affleck’s highly identifiable jawline makes two appearances, though his full face is always obscured. And, absolutely bizarrely, he dons a goatload of prosthetics and a chicken-fried accent to play some kind of talking head who pops up from time to time.
As a cameo, it insists upon itself, Lois. It’s entirely incongruous with the tone J.Lo is trying to strike. And it’s pointedly weird, that in a visual album that is so clearly about how he is the true love of Jennifer’s life, this was the only way he wanted to participate onscreen. This woman is in almost every frame of the joint, and it’s her face onscreen. It’s her heart factory dream. But it seems Ben could only show up as a joke.
I’m just saying. He can protest and grimace all he wants to. I can also see the choices he’s making, and they don’t match the narrative. I’m not saying a celebrity isn’t allowed to have a complicated relationship with their own celebrity. Fame genuinely seems like a prison, even as it seems increasingly necessary to be a part of any creative environment. (Hello, Substack leaderboards!) But it’s worth paying attention to how that complication is managed and performed, and to who benefits from the performance and why.
I don’t think you knew Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton like that.
The team started calling him “Pen” Affleck, which I think is a great example of the level of inspiration they’re capable of.
Besides his spiritual one to Ben, of course.
from the first line this was golden, I can’t even pick a favorite part 😂😂😂thank you for this gem
Not "good dye young". So great, I laughed and said Yes! all the way through. Every word of this is truth.