Jennifer Lopez’s new documentary has been gaining a lot of attention on the behind-the-scenes practice of creating her and Shakira’s one of the most iconic halftime shows. These two icons came together to perform on the football field at the Super Bowl in 2020. They only had six minutes of performance time, still, the crowd-loaded show gathered considerable gratitude from fans across the globe, many viewers applauding the women for showing their Latin origin so gracefully.
Yet, her brand new documentary discovered many backlashes, which will hit Netflix on June 14. Jennifer Lopez was already very frustrated with the NFL for reserving two headliners and preparing them to share the same amount of time that any solo performer would get and disagreed with giving the women extra spotlight.
Jennifer Lopez Gets Trolled for Insinuating That Shakira’s Belly Dancing Lacked “Substance”
If we take the example of the solo headliners like Beyonce and The Weeknd, they have been distributed upwards of 14 minutes to themselves, but Jennifer Lopez was hurt that she and Shakira who are the first Latina artists to take to the halftime stage together are expected to compromise their stage time.
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In their performance video, you’ll see that Jennifer made a sharp announcement when she was joined by her daughter, Emme. The stage concept was encircled by children sitting inside glowing rounded “cages.” Then we can see her daughter who was onstage seated inside the same cage-like structure and begin singing and giving an emotional performance of her mom’s track “Let’s Get Loud.” Many of the viewers concluded that the children inside the glowing structures were aimed to be examples of the immigrant children being seized in crowded cages at US custody centers along the southern border.
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Later the artist calls NFL producer Ricky Kirshner to express her frustration directly to the audience and said:
“We’re here every day trying to make this work, and every day I turn around with somebody giving me some negative energy about, ‘Oh, we can’t have this! We can’t have that! It’s such a big stage, and it’s such an important show … and it’s been a nightmare since we started!”
“I’m trying to give you something with substance, not just us out there shaking our f–king asses and f–king belly dancing, I want something real. I want something that’s gonna make a statement, that’s gonna say we belong here and we have something to offer.”
In new documentary, JLO compared bellydancing to just shaking the ass. She said this type of dance and what Shakira offered wasn’t culturally relevant enough to be shown on stage.
This comes after she said she was not happy to share the stage with Shakira. Bitter, loud & wrong. pic.twitter.com/utQkalP6x9
— Cautionriah (@ProceedWithShak) June 14, 2022
But to imply that belly dancing = ass shaking, is reductive. Aside from the skill it takes, performing middle eastern art in the US, of all places, is massive and has substance.
— Arian (@adranislv) June 14, 2022
After the documentary was released, a particular topic was shared across Twitter, with several fans putting forward concerns about what she might have been expressing about the art of belly dancing. For information, belly dancing has long been related to Middle Eastern cultures, and is believed to have first originated in Ancient Egypt. But some others even accused her of having an ethnocentric attitude, which means that a person who believes their own culture feels to be superior. Although, Jennifer Lopez hasn’t spoken yet to clarify her statements, nor has Shakira reacted to the backlash.
