All Jennifer Lopez Asked Was to Be Treated Like a White Man

After I left the premiere of Jennifer Lopez’s Halftime on the Tribeca Pageant, the very last thing I anticipated was to observe movie critics turn out to be NFL apologists. Nonetheless, right here we’re.

Within the documentary Lopez struggles to create the set for her 2020 Tremendous Bowl halftime efficiency, a 14-minute spectacle she break up with coheadliner Shakira. Viewers watch her develop annoyed as she boils her decades-long profession right down to beneath six minutes, leaving time to make an announcement about ICE detention facilities on the U.S.-Mexico border. The scenario deserved extra phrases than anybody particular person could possibly be anticipated to ship thoughtfully in just some minutes, which prompts the star to name the present “the worst thought on the earth.” As quickly as these phrases hit Twitter, customers spread them like wildfire, no context included.

“They need to’ve let Shakira do it alone,” learn one viral tweet. One other noted that this yr’s Tremendous Bowl headliners—Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent, and Eminem—didn’t publicly complain about splitting their 15-minute set. Each tweets, plus a whole lot of others accusing Lopez of “diva” habits, have been posted earlier than Halftime’s official June 14 launch on Netflix. Having seen the movie, I discovered it painful to observe.

You don’t have to like Lopez to know she’s a large enough star to headline on her personal. So is Shakira, and so was 2022’s whole lineup. What issues me concerning the discourse round Halftime isn’t the baseline stage of trolling feminine celebrities will all the time obtain—it’s that the web is mad at Lopez for asking for a similar privileges given to white, non-Latina artists because the Tremendous Bowl’s inception. “Sometimes, you could have one headliner at a Tremendous Bowl,” Benny Medina, Lopez’s longtime supervisor, notes within the documentary. “That headliner constructs a present, and, ought to they select to produce other company, that’s their selection.” Consider the 2016 halftime present, when Coldplay invited Beyoncé and Bruno Mars to carry out as a part of their bigger set.