This Is Me...Now
On Delusion
My favorite film of the year is J Lo’s This Is Me..Now. The autobiographical musical, which came out exclusively on Amazon Prime, chronicles the pop star overcoming her past romantic trauma and reconciling with her on again/off again lover Ben Affleck. The movie can be best described as a shameless ode to delusion. It features a wide array of characters spanning from a council of astrological elders (Post Malone, Keke Palmer, Jane Fonda, and some self-help guru all received checks) to fictional depictions of J Lo’s exes. Things kick off with Lopez working a shift at a heart factory and conclude at a steampunk wedding. Somewhere in the middle we are treated to a contemporary dance number at a Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous meeting.
This is ayahuasca autofiction. It’s absolute bliss. And given recent events, it will likely be the one cultural artifact I’ll remember from this very cursed year of 2024.
Months after Amazon Prime released the musical-movie, which cost Lopez $20 million dollars, she divorced Affleck.
This is a textbook case of schadenfreude: a very wealthy celebrity self-funds a passion project about how she got back together with her ex, who just so happens to be Hollywood’s most notorious bad boy, and then, after the film and its accompanying soundtrack commercially and critically flop, TMZ announces that her fearless pursuit of love has hit yet another speed bump. Here comes Lopez, the ultimate girl boss, melting right before our eyes.
Let’s gather around the town square with pitchforks and laugh!
But I won’t partake in that demonic ritual. Unfortunately, I can empathize with Lopez. Why? Because this also was my year of delusion.
On Substack, I published absurdly confident predictions about how the presidential election would play out. I mistook an ability to summarize insomnia-induced media consumption as clairvoyance and cited various polls to formulate a theory about what would happen. I thought that Republican party’s suburban collapse would accelerate and Trump’s “bro vote” strategy was too farcical to successfully materialize.
Breaking News: I was totally freakin’ wrong!!!
I didn’t think that it was impossible for Trump to win, but I didn’t anticipate the size and scope of his victory. And, now, here comes the blame game.
We can blame Biden for staying in the race for too long. We can blame social media platforms for allowing an endless stream of disinformation that’s clogging our collective consciousness. We can blame the price of eggs. We can blame the semiotics of “brat.” We can blame Team Kamala for believing that Jennifer Lopez’s endorsement would actually sway someone’s vote. We can blame “vibes” over “substance.”
But, in the poignant words of Sky Ferreira, “I Blame Myself.”
Last weekend, at a party, a friend told me that he also felt disappointed in his own delusion. He explained that despite all of the red flags — the Kamala campaign thinking that it could draw Nikki Haley voters with the help of Liz Cheney and the vacuous core of its “opportunity economy” message — he chose to believe that she’d pull off a narrow win. Similarly, I ignored the Cheney stuff (“country over party!”) and the disingenuousness of a San Francisco liberal ever-so casually mentioning to Oprah that she owned a firearm.
A few weeks ago, I attended Fran Lebowitz’s talk in Irvine. During the Q&A segment, the iconic New Yorker expressed disdain for Kamala’s warm embrace of conservatives. Lebowitz argued that even though every four years, countless ink is spilled over undecided voters, they don’t actually exist and even if they did, it’d be impossible for Kamala to win over gun-obsessed Republicans. I ignored the “acerbic” speaker’s opinion. I convinced myself that Nikki Haley voters could help defeat Trump.
My arms were firmly wrapped around Affleck as he rode into the abyss on a motorcycle, ominous warnings be damned.
If I had enough time, I’d break down all the data that I got wrong. But I’m trying to get some cardio in for the day so I will just take a second look at The Des Moines Register’s poll which dropped shortly before the election.
If you’re unfamiliar with her mythology, J. Ann Selzer’s final presidential poll of the great state of Iowa is treated as a “canary in the coal mine” for how the rest of the Midwest will vote. In 2016, The Des Moines Register’s poll warned that Hillary Clinton was losing steam with the white working class. And, in 2020, Selzer showed that despite the other polls, the race between Biden and Trump would be a lot closer than expected. Since those polls were spot-on, this random Iowan assumed the role of MSNBC prophet.
Within the lead-up to a stressful election, obsessively checking polls offers some semblance of control. And the Selzer poll is bait for those of us who consider ourselves more knowledgable than the rest. It’s a little obscure, but backed with a legitimate track record, and so when you bring it up in an heated argument about how she totally has got this, you sound like you know what you’re talking about.
Well, Selzer’s last 2024 poll of Iowa showed that Kamala was ahead of Trump by three points. Since Iowa had delivered him “solid victories” in 2016 and 2020, this was considered fantastic news because it seemingly meant that the Evil Orange Man was screwed in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
Low and behold, Selzer was very wrong. Trump won Iowa by 13.2 points, an improvement from previous performances. He also swept the Blue Wall more decisively than he did in 2016.
During the weekend before the election, after I learned about the poll, I got carried away in the hype. I went cruising with Affleck into This Is Me…Now land, totally believing that despite other polls showing the race as a toss-up and the fundamentals favoring Trump, Selzer was right and Kamala would win and democracy wouldn’t die in the darkness.
Looking back on it, there was a red flag I ignored.
During an election season in which poll after poll showed that the economy and immigration were voters’ top concerns, the Selzer poll claimed that Kamala supporters were motivated by “the future of democracy” and “abortion” and not only that, these people outnumbered Trump’s supporters…in Iowa.
I’m not claiming that Selzer made this up or respondents lied to her. But in retrospect, this data seemed too much of a fantasy, too aligned with the narrative espoused by naive Democrats who assumed that most Americans would overlook inflation and side with them on abortion (democracy did rank high in exit polls, but both Republicans and Democrats see the opposing side as existential threats to America’s political system).
For the record, my boyfriend, who isn’t obsessed with politics like me, said that he was highly skeptical of the Selzer poll. He pointed out how after ditching Biden, the Democrats were left with a candidate no one really wanted or genuinely liked. On other hand, he argued, Trump’s fandom was enthusiastic. And that’s why Trump was going to win.
“Sorry,” he said.
I ignored him and went for a walk to grab an overpriced maca banana smoothie.
As Ken Klippenstein humorously noted, while the pundit class largely got the election wrong, Moo Deng, an internet-famous hippo, accurately predicted that Trump would win.
So, what did we learn here besides the fact that this random hippo is smarter than most of us?
I can’t really tell you.
Delusion is seductive. It’s self-soothing. Charts and data models and academic-sounding concepts like “low propensity voters” may briefly distract us from facing the great unknown. Picture this: Affleck is at your doorstep, with a bag of Dunkin’ Donuts and iced caramel coffee, pleading for another chance. You know it won’t work out. But, why not give it a try?
This Is Me…Now is a fable about choosing optimism over cynicism. Although Lopez has a Talmud-length list of romantic resentments, she stubbornly yearns for love.
In the film’s most chilling scene, she is reclining on a gaudy, J Lo monogrammed couch, luxuriating in misery as she watches Barbra Streisand’s The Way We Were . The singer somberly recites lines alongside Streisand. Like a moth to a flame, Lopez can’t help but be drawn to a cliche. And within the glitzy chambers of this ridiculously phony, sprawling CGI castle, the queen is one with her artifice. There is no real J Lo. She’s a pixelated spectacle.
She’s just pop culture.
After accruing millions singing about love, she now finds herself heartbroken with the whole world chomping at the bit for more salacious details. She’s a victim of her own success and yet, aspirational; something to gawk at and mock but also an object of envy because her sorrows are more beautiful and grandiose.
Towards the end of the musical, Lopez forgives her inner child for abandoning her.
Similar to countless MFA students, Lopez discovers that autofiction’s true purpose is to heal the festering wounds of youth.
Yes, the film hasn’t aged well because she is no longer with Affleck and so the third act seems misguided and frankly, sad. But as a snapshot into a tender moment in time, it’s perfect. This Is Me…Now belongs within the kitschy romance canon alongside Kanye West’s “Bound 2” video, starring his ex-wife Kim Kardashian, and Jeff Koons’ “Made In Heaven” exhibition, which celebrated his love for the Italian adult star Ilona Staller (the exhibition is too graphic to share here, but it consists of sculptures and fantastical photos of Koons and his ex-wife making love).
In a 2013 conversation with Pharrell Williams, Koons said that after divorcing Staller, he destroyed some artworks in “Made In Heaven” series. According to The Guardian, this was triggered by a custody battle with Staller over their child.
“I would say that [with that] work, I was trying to communicate to people, again, self-acceptance and embracing yourself and I was using the body because I think people distance themselves through their own body, instead of embracing who they are,” the conceptual artist told Williams (a topless waitress is serving the two men water throughout this conversation for some inexplicable reason).
West, now known as Ye, won’t delete “Bound 2” from YouTube. Meanwhile, Lopez, after canceling a This Is Me…Now tour due to poor ticket sales, awkwardly has to promote her latest collaboration with Affleck, the wrestling drama Unstoppable. According to People, she is set to star in a remake of Kiss of the Spider Woman, another collaboration with Affleck. And, meanwhile in the Hawkeye state, Selzer said she’s “reviewing” the data that led to her hilariously wrong poll about Iowa turning blue.
Where does that leave me as I confront my delusion? Should I nuke my Substack posts smugly predicting a Momala sweep?
Well, I’m not deleting anything.
I made a bet with a friend about the election and now I’m legally obligated to buy him dinner (he said Trump would win; I clearly disagreed).
This dinner is going to be at a Silver Lake wine bar famous for its fancy hot dogs so I’m basically burning sixty dollars because I was wrong about the 2024 election.
And that’s what I deserve.
I wish I could have some advice on how to move forward. Every day Trump announces a new cabinet pick that confirms my worst fears. So, let’s focus on the practical.
RFK Jr. might soon lead our nation’s health, so if there’s a vaccine you really want to get, now is your time to do that. Go to CVS as soon as possible.
The bubble has been popped. Reality is violently clear.
In other words, this is me now.
