Director: Ryan White
Genre: Documentary/Biography
Duration: 112 minutes
Cast: Pamela Anderson
Now streaming on Netflix
Pamela Anderson has always fallen into a category created by the media –a non-flattering category oozing with misogyny. Thankfully, for many people, constantly looking at women as just sex symbols is becoming tiring. It is no wonder that the last mini-series that was released about Pamela Anderson, Hulu’s Pam and Tommy did not receive rave reviews. Where the mini-series concentrates on Anderson and her ex-husband Tommy Lee’s leaked sex tape, trying to show the negative impact its release had on Pamela, the documentary goes in a different direction.
In Pamela, A Love Story, Anderson shares her life through all her home videos and notes about her life. In it, she relives some of the memories on tape and in notepads while bringing us along. Where we judged her romantic relationships through the lens of media reports in the past, we now see them through her eyes. The documentary humanises her in a way that she has not been before. We see the woman who joked away sexist questions from talkshow hosts, the woman who keeps herself accountable for the mistakes she made and therefore has no room for self-pity, the doting mother, the woman who is not afraid to try something new and gives it her all, and so many other facets.
We are seeing more stories being retold about celebrities, mostly women, who were always negatively portrayed by the media. So you might be tempted to overlook Pamela, A Love Story as another one of that trend. That would be a mistake. Anderson jokes in the documentary that she should shoot a scene naked, with only a pillow as her cover. She imagines that the headlines will read something like ‘Pamela: Bare’, ‘Pamela: Raw’. Pamela, A Love Story is a raw and bare side of the celebrity. We see the person on the other side of abused privacy, even when the public believes it is not deserved. It also leaves room for discussions on the power media has over public figures’ private lives. This is worth the MBs.
–Grace Kenganzi
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