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Jennifer Lopez Getty 2.jpg

Jennifer Lopez Is (Not) in Her Flop Era

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | June 3, 2024 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | June 3, 2024 |

Jennifer Lopez Getty 2.jpg

Last week, Live Nation announced that Jennifer Lopez’s Summer tour would be cancelled. The singer released a statement on her website explaining the decision, saying that ‘it was absolutely necessary.’ She is ‘taking time off to be with her children, family and close friends.’ The news was shocking but not necessarily surprising. Lopez’s private life has been back in the headlines non-stop as rumours swirl that her marriage to Ben Affleck is in jeopardy, stories that this latest announcement won’t quash. More than that, however, Lopez’s tour had notably not been a top seller. Intended to promote her latest album, ‘This is Me… Now’, it was rebranded as a greatest hits tour once it became clear that tickets weren’t flying out the doors. In the era of the Renaissance, Eras, and Celebration tours, Lopez just didn’t seem like a must-see show. The accompanying album and self-funded film didn’t set the world alight either.

This all came at the same time as Lopez’s latest film, the sci-fi action Atlas, premiered on Netflix. Reviews were bad, with most critics noting how derivative and cheap the entire thing felt. While the film has topped Netflix’s charts, it’s hard to take the streaming service’s own shoddy efforts at data transparency seriously. The overall impression of the film is that it’s disposable, which is not what any actor wants to hear about their own work.

This convergence of stories and problems has led to this prevailing idea that JLo, who has been famous for far longer than she hasn’t, is in her flop era. It’s something a lot of people seem positively giddy about, a chance to knock down a major celebrity who has withstood much media hassle but also has a diva reputation she’s never been able to entirely shake off. As far as some people are concerned, Lopez has always been a product of hype rather than talent. For them, seeing her cancel her tour and deal with marriage problems is more enjoyable than her creative output.

The idea of a flop era has been around for a while, but it’s gained steam over the past few years thanks to several prominent pop culture examples. If a singer’s latest album underperforms, it’s a sign of their flop era. Your favourite actor’s on a streak of bad movies? Flop era. That acclaimed TV show’s final season is a disaster that undoes all the goodwill you had for it? Big-arse flop era.

No celebrity is on top for the entirety of their career. Even the most critically and commercially acclaimed figures underperform once in a while. In some ways, it’s desired. Having the freedom to experiment and push yourself beyond the oft-limiting confines of a major audience is what keeps the work interesting. I’m not sure, however, that this is part of the flop era definition. It’s a term concerned with the mainstream and how trends come and go through the scope of a major figure’s career. You expect Neil Young to reject marketable appeal now and then, but less so with Lopez. When you’re a megastar, you have to maintain that bigness and either move with the trends or be such an undeniable force that audiences flock to you regardless of changing tastes.

And make no mistake: Lopez is a megastar. She’s JLo, Jenny from the Block, the multi-million-selling singer who’s also an actor and a businesswoman and a TV presenter and a producer and much more. She has endured in a way that most celebrities don’t. The common trajectory for fame is a short-term period of celebration, decline, and then moving on to something else. For every Madonna, there are far more Paula Abduls.

What differentiates Lopez from many of her contemporaries is that she’s always moved from field to field and made herself malleable enough to be more than just one thing. She started as a Fly Girl on In Living Color and then moved into acting, garnering strong acclaim for indie films like Selena and Blood and Wine. Then she moved into music, which became her primary occupation, although she remained a box office pull as a rare Latina leading woman in leading roles. Her JLo perfume Glow, which is still a big seller, is credited with sparking a new era of celebrity fragrances. Then there was her time as a judge on American Idol, her producing credits on series like The Fosters, her endless brand endorsements. When her box office power began to wane, she moved to TV, starring in an NBC cop drama, Shades of Blue, for three seasons. Lopez has often been heralded for her workaholic tendencies and it’s clearly paid off. She’s never gone away.

She’s also never stopped being a tabloid magnet. She’s on her fourth marriage and was also engaged to baseball player Alex Rodriguez for a few years, all of which has made her the target of mockery. While she’s denied being a ‘diva’ type, those stories have followed her for most of her career. Only recently, there was an increase in TikToks resharing old gossip about her alleged stinginess with tips, demands for all-white furniture at hotels, and of being a ‘nightmare person’ with airport employees. Whether or not you believe these stories is up to you but it’s also true that it’s tough to walk back being a d*ck to others, especially underpaid employees who just want to get on with their day. Celebrities can get away with a lot in terms of woo-woo behaviour but not so much general cruelty or arrogance towards us mere mortals.


But it’s the romantic entanglements that fuelled some of Lopez’s harshest coverage. When she first got engaged to Ben Affleck, she was frequently positioned by the press as the diva bitch fiery Latina woman who ensnared America’s hunk. She was blamed for sinking his career, as though she forced him at gunpoint to make Gigli. Despite being a big star in her own right at this time, the narrative was still that of Lopez using Affleck to become a more legitimate Hollywood star. She had a small role alongside Affleck in the Kevin Smith film Jersey Girl, but after negative test audience reactions who balked at even more Bennifer on their screens, her screen time was cut in half. In 2021, Affleck told the Hollywood Reporter how awful the experience was for Lopez. He said, ‘People were so f*cking mean about her; sexist, racist, ugly vicious sh*t was written about her in ways that if you wrote it now, you would literally be fired for saying some of the things you said.’

Certainly, I would argue that Lopez weathered the Bennifer split better than Affleck. Her career seemed sturdier, her albums sold well, and she married Marc Antony, creating a power couple that the public more fully embraced. It didn’t stop the conflation of her personal and professional lives, with many reviews of her work finding it tough to separate the two, but it spoke to her willingness to just get on with things even if nobody else wanted it. There were flops during this time - a movie here, a single there - but there was always something else around the corner. It made those critical peaks all the more satisfying, such as her career-best performance in Hustlers and the genuine industry outrage that she didn’t get an Oscar nomination for it (she should have!) People also seemed to be overwhelmingly pro-Bennifer once she and Affleck reunited, giving us a fairytale-esque narrative of a second chance at love with the one who got away. They seemed older, wiser, hotter, and a strong fit in a way that many didn’t see over 20 years ago.

So, why do so many people seem eager to have Lopez shoved into a flop era? For every person who sees Lopez’s celebrity as a flexible force, there are others who dismiss it as a sign of mediocrity. She’s never been the best singer (although Ashanti is!) and there are more than a few terrible performances in her filmography. Lopez creates works for the masses but they don’t seem to be hungry for more from her these days, a contrast made all the more evident by the stratospheric heights being reached by the likes of Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. Having her tour flop as her marriage becomes another chapter in the story of her life as a public exhibition makes it all the juicier for skeptics.

The difference between now and the Bennifer break-up of old is that there’s a greater media awareness of how Lopez got the short end of the stick for stuff that really had nothing to do with her. Variety published an op-ed on the furor, writing that ‘it does make one wonder whether the guilty pleasure of schadenfreude and our role in furthering it is a problem that goes beyond a few “harmless” clicks.’ They see the backlash as another symbol of society’s disgust for strong women and the need to see them taken down a peg or two. I think that’s obviously a part of it, although the strength of the woman involved is irrelevant. Mostly, however, I think a lot of people just like to see huge celebrities flop.

Even if this is Lopez’s flop era - and to describe her personal strife as exhibit A in a public spectacle where we’re intended to root for her failure feels icky - it won’t last for long. She’s proven time and time again that she won’t stop. There’s a new movie on the horizon, the musical adaptation of Kiss of the Spider-Woman, a few more producer gigs, and a ton of stuff behind the scenes we probably won’t hear about for years. If nothing else, a flop era paves the way for a comeback, and Lopez is an expert in getting the world back on her side.