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Hulu’s “Pam & Tommy” explores the whirlwind romance between actress and model Pamela Anderson (Lily James) and musician Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan), detailing the 1995 controversy of their stolen sex tape.
While Pam and Tommy’s tape stirred up unprecedented turmoil, theirs was not the first celebrity sex tape, and the show reminds us that other celebrities such as Rob Lowe and Sylvester Stallone dabbled in porn. Yet, “Pam & Tommy” positions the unintentional release of the Anderson-Lee tape as a watershed moment in celebrity culture because it reshaped the public’s consumption of sex entertainment.
Anderson and Lee strongly embodied their archetypes: she was the hypersexualized vixen and he was the bad-boy rocker. Anderson got her start modeling for Playboy before graduating to television, although both works profited off the display of her body. “Pam & Tommy” accentuates the magnified gaze of the model-actress during her time on “Baywatch.” The third episode, “Jane Fonda,” includes a thirty-second scene of crew members dictating the coverage of Anderson’s bathing suit to gain the maximum exposure while complying with TV ratings.
But the show also highlights Anderson’s awareness of misogyny and the small battles she fights to combat it. In one scene, she approaches her director to request that he include a monologue that showcases her acting talent, although to no avail. “Pam & Tommy” sympathetically displays Anderson’s desire to be respected and appreciated for something other than her physicality.
Stan portrays Lee as an uninhibited rebel who marries Anderson only four days after meeting her. The drummer of Mötley Crüe struggles with his fading fame as the grunge scene of the 1990s replaces the heavy metal rock of the 1980s. Lee was clearly the initiator behind the tape, as he wanted to capture the possible conception of a child. The audience receives a reminder of the power of recording devices and their variety of uses in the season finale when Lee tapes the home birth of his firstborn with Anderson.
“Pam & Tommy” shares the perspective of Rand Gauthier (Seth Rogen), a carpenter, ex-porn actor and robber of the tape who hoped, yet failed, to profit from its release. Seeking revenge on Lee for mistreatment, he creates a website in the primitive days of the internet to sell copies without facing the consequences. Deemed warm-hearted but dysfunctional by his ex-wife (Taylor Schilling), he realizes too late that the person suffering the most is not his bully but his bully’s wife. An unfortunate consequence of Gauthier’s actions is Anderson’s unwarranted public scrutiny. Although titled “Pam & Tommy,” James steals the show with her spot-on depiction of Anderson as a tragic hero. Donning a prosthetic forehead and chest, she captures the inflections and mannerisms that made Anderson a bombshell hit but also dives into her character’s nuances as the scandal unfolds.
The drama builds itself upon the hypocritical perspective of sex in the 1990s. The tape was scandalous, but each participant felt the fallout differently.
Anderson mentions throughout the series that the public will shame her while congratulating Lee. Episode seven, “Destroyer of Worlds,” details the social reality of the situation. In a legal battle to prevent the magazine Penthouse from sharing private photos of Anderson and Lee, a judge ruled that the newsworthiness of the tape allowed for its publication. Anderson vocalized that the decision is rooted in restricting the bodily autonomy of “sluts,” or women who have openly displayed their sexuality.
The extensive media display of her body, such as donning the iconic one-piece suit in “Baywatch,” weakens Anderson’s control over what can or cannot be seen by the public. Her work in media teetered on soft-core porn, and the intimate videos of Anderson and Lee affirmed the public’s perception of her as a sex object. Explicit clips of Anderson was a progression on the expectations of her as a sex symbol. Anderson is not afforded respectability because she is deemed to have had very little in the first place, and the decision overrides her consent in the tape’s release.
Society’s double standards leave Lee untouched as fans praise his expression of virility with one of the hottest women in Hollywood. Sexism still ran deep in the decade that gave us the “Girl Power” movement and the Year of the Woman. Just two years after the robbery of the Anderson-Lee tape, the media would find a new target in Monica Lewinsky following the revelation of her affair with President Bill Clinton. In our present day, where individuals can either gain network deals or humiliation from their leaked sex tapes, “Pam & Tommy” subverts the cautionary tale as a re-examination of intolerance toward “provocative” women.
