Any advertiser worth their salt knows nostalgia is a powerful tool. You know who else wields nostalgia more powerfully than Don Draper? The summer of 2021’s horniest and most powerful couple, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck. Reunited at long last, these two have been rebooting decade-old source material for their relationship rollout, pandering to their audience with what’s essentially the real-life version of Easter eggs. Their primary text: the music video for “Jenny from the Block.”
It started with Affleck’s Franck Muller watch, which featured heavily in the video and which he wore throughout their initial two-year relationship, after J.Lo gifted it to him. The watch reappeared on his wrist sometime back in May, still customized with the same Chrome Hearts bracelet from all those years ago.
Now, on the same weekend that J.Lo not-so-subtly slipped a Benifer makeout snap into her 52nd birthday Instagram post, the two crafted another visual homage to their glory days. Behold: J.Lo and Affleck, lounging on a yacht deck in St. Tropez, Affleck with his hand firmly on J.Lo’s famous butt, just like the legendary scene from the “Jenny From the Block” video. Affleck, it must be noted, looks significantly more world-weary than he did in the original shot, in which he untied J.Lo’s bikini with a flourish after kissing her. Now he gazes off wistfully into the middle distance, befitting an older and possibly wiser man. And, lest you missed the message yesterday, J.Lo made sure to don a “BEN” necklace earlier this morning, which, though not specifically ripped from an aspect of their relationship, certainly channels a lot of 2002 energy.
The levels of self-consciousness and artifice here are difficult to fathom. Affleck and Lopez must know that people of a certain age are obsessed with their relationship, and that rekindling it sparks cultural nostalgia on a mass scale. Celebrities are alternately hounded by paparazzi and courting them—who can say whether and to what degree the early photos of the couple driving in cars and making out in restaurants were staged? What would the conversations about this between them even be like?
And of course, adding another layer, the “Jenny from the Block” video is about J.Lo’s relationship with her fame, so a lot of the imagery from the video does resemble tabloid features from the past few months: a balcony shot from below, canoodling at an outdoor restaurant table, the couple attempting to find some privacy in a car. Whatever the case, this weekend’s Instagram reveal and throwback reference surely represent a new level of self-conscious celebrity image-making—Affleck and Lopez don’t even need to make another movie together, because they’re doing it in real time.