'Pamela, a love story' declines to learn
Netflix
First: Pamela Anderson has endured a lot of hardship, to say the least. This includes being molested by a babysitter when she was a child; raped at 12 by a 25-year-old; treated exclusively as a sexual commodity by an American society (as feebly represented by late-night talk show hosts) that removes the personhood from female sex symbols; and exploited when the tape from her honeymoon with Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee was stolen and became the first video to break the internet, back when it took like 11 page views to do that (though the sex tape probably received closer to 11 billion).
All that said: A documentary that (theoretically) attempts to provide insight, not just facts, shouldn’t merely browse its way along a list of traumas and weddings. But that’s mostly what director Ryan White provides in this underwhelming chat with the ‘90s icon, which pretty much just hears from its subject, her adult sons Brandon (who’s credited as a producer) and Dylan, and a smattering of archival footage. Many questions are created, and few are answered. For example:
Anderson identifies that the horrible incidents in her childhood, combined with the bad-boy behavior of her dad and her parents’ rocky marriage, warped her own perception of love. But it doesn’t explain why someone who seems to live with such resolute optimism and empathy — including becoming a PETA activist — has dated so many arguably horrible people with intolerant beliefs. What, if anything, does the star have in common with guys like Scott Baio, Dean Cain and Kid Rock?
Furthermore: What were any of these relationships actually like? Did Anderson bring knowledge from any past relationships to any ones that followed? She notes that she didn’t feel the necessary sense of euphoria with Kid Rock or safety due to the alleged drug use of Rick Salomon, and she comments about her struggle to be with anyone other than the father of her children (Lee, who she divorced due to abuse). But there’s not nearly enough detail about why Anderson has chosen to get married so many times or why she has chosen any of the people she has chosen. Who is she as a person in the context of the people she has aligned herself with? “Pamela, a love story” isn’t trying to understand this. (In her book, “Love, Pamela,” she writes, “As I matured, I noticed most of my boyfriends were bad—and progressively got worse. I often wondered why. Did I turn them into assholes? Was I doing something wrong? Did I make them crazy? They would turn violent, mean, cruel, so quickly.” There’s so much to unpack here. The book doesn’t really do it, and the movie, not surprisingly but still unfortunately, isn’t the place where that happens either.)
Likewise: Her sons appropriately praise her boldness, embracing challenges and sticking to her convictions. But the film fails to unearth the kind of stories that would bring viewers into the lives of the subject or her kids in an honest, impactful way. Beyond the headlines and a broad memory of how as a kid it felt the world perceived your mom, what do any of these people remember, specifically, about the last 20 years-plus? Especially considering Anderson refers to the boys’ first 18 years as being difficult in terms of co-parenting with Lee. Can you please elaborate?
It’s meaningful to note savvy decisions like only agreeing to do the Comedy Central roast if the network donated $250,000 to PETA. Surely there were countless decisions Anderson had to make about her vision for her career and what she was being offered as controversy soared and opportunities diminished. What were they?
It is absolutely Anderson’s prerogative not to watch “Pam and Tommy.” No one should be forced to relive a traumatic experience in their life, no matter how much the Hulu show arguably succeeds at educating viewers about the story behind the infamous sex tape and identifying the ways that the media treated Anderson horribly while she tried to carve out a career for herself. But anyone who saw the series will already know a lot of what’s included in “Pamela, a love story” and will recognize how White mostly just gestures broadly in the direction of the many threads to Anderson’s life.
Anderson repeatedly identifies herself as someone who loves to be in love. But her perspective rarely seems to understand love as anything more than delirious infatuation. (She notes in her book that she recognizes her own impulse toward fairy-tale love over something more realistic and sustainable, but this doesn’t really come through or receive analysis in the film.) This is incredibly sad when cross-referenced with her past. But to tell the story of her long list of romantic peaks and failures without actually exploring them isn’t really telling the story at all. It’s like making a documentary about the World Series and just rattling off, “Wow, Game 1, that was a great game. Game 2, that was a bad game. Game 3 …” Especially when a person’s career has been defined by surface-level sensationalism, you’d think that the goal here would be clarity.
Instead, we get a lot of Anderson laughing at her own jokes and strolling in the sand, saying things like “Thinking is overrated,” us knowing she’s mostly kidding but longing for more proof.
C
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