The Great Sadness of Ben Affleck – pity the Alpha in these days of retribution
My morning was lit by the New Yorker evisceration of the privileged white male everyone needs to mock. Ben Affleck, easily the absolute apotheosis of desire when it comes to gifts of the flesh and spirit is bumbling around looking disconsolate. Tortured by the people-of-color gossip sites, abandoning his wife, Jennifer Garner who is loved by movie-going soccer moms everywhere, addicted to gambling, addicted to drinking, and no doubt cocaine and pot, Affleck was also outed in a minor way during Pervnado, minor yet distinct. He pandered to Harvey Weinstein for the “art”. Result? We get to observe in full, his Dark Night of the Soul. 
Let’s let the New Yorker writer, Naomi Fry have it:
“The resulting pictures have become reliable meme-fodder. A series of images of Affleck vaping in his car, his eyes shut in seeming resignation, made the rounds; so did another picture, of the actor smoking a cigarette, his face a mask of exhaustion.”
Poor Ben. Academy Award winner, reliable male star and superhero, unfathomably rich, three children, a sparky new gal pal, and he’s miserable.
SO, more from the New Yorker:
“His gut is pooching outward in a way that, in a more enlightened country like, say, France, would perhaps be considered virile, not unlike the lusty Gérard Depardieu in his prime but, in fitness-fascist America, tends to read as Homer Simpsonesque. A blue-gray towel is wrapped protectively around his midsection—recalling a shy teen at the local pool. Staring at the water before him, his gaze obscure and empty, Affleck is a defeated Roman senator, or, perhaps, the most anti-Romantic version imaginable of Caspar David Friedrich’s 1818 “Wanderer in the Sea of Fog.” The image suggests not just the fall of Affleck but the coming fall of man. There is something about this exhausted father that reflexively induces panic. We’ve been living in a world run by Afflecks for so long, will we even know ourselves when they’re gone?
I don’t know why but I. Can’t. Stop. Laughing. Here are some more pics: Sing it brother.
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