More Reflections on the Movie Lovelace (Content Warning: rape, abuse, trauma)

So I had been reflecting on the movie Lovelace, and I’ve lately found it helpful to contextualize films using the Buddhism I practice as a framework for thinking about them. In the Buddhism I practice, Nichiren Buddhism, everyone’s life is respect-worthy because everyone is a Buddha, or someone with innate courage, wisdom, compassion and life force. So when thinking about all the mass shootings these past few weeks in the U.S. (and in past years, particularly 2019) I reflected and talked with people in my sangha community of practitioners, and we agreed that at the root of violence is a lack of respect for the dignity of a person’s life. So when I remembered this, I realized that Chuck disrespected Linda because he didn’t respect the inherent value of her life and moreover didn’t respect the value of his own life. If he respected her life, he wouldn’t feel the need to force her or manipulate her into doing something for the sake of boosting his profits. Reflecting on my own struggles with low self-esteem, I realized that in order to understand the violence in society I had to understand the violence in my own life, and this violence occurred in the form of negative self-talk and not seeing my own potential. By not loving myself, I couldn’t truly love other people, so it took a lot of human revolution, or inner transformation, to finally get to the place where I can appreciate my life and subsequently appreciate the lives of those around me. While self love is a struggle I know that I’m going through it in order to encourage those around me struggling with loving themselves. I can’t of course assume anything about Chuck Traynor’s life, but judging from the way he mistreated Linda he must have not been able to see the inherent worth in his own life.

In Buddhism, we believe in the Ten Worlds, which are ten states of life that each person can experience at any moment. The six lower worlds are hell, hunger, animality, anger, humanity and heaven. I reflected on the film and it made me think about the life state of animality. If these life states do not serve as impetus for improving our lives, they can be destructive, and in particular while watching Chuck abuse Linda in the film I thought about the life state of animality because when a person is in the life state of animality, they, as Nichiren Daishonin says “threaten the weak and fear the strong” (“Letter from Sado”, WND-1, 302). When people are in the world of animality, they see life as a struggle to survive and are willing to hurt other people in order to protect themselves. In reality, non human animals an exhibit qualities such as loyalty and selflessness, and play a key role in supporting human life, but human beings can exhibit baseness and cruelty that surpasses even that of animals. In the interview with Howard Dando, Linda says at the beginning that Chuck first came off as this charming man, the kind you’d want to bring to your parents, and at first they had a platonic relationship but then in retrospect Linda realized that he only came off that way because in order to experience arousal, pleasure, or fulfillment of some kind, he felt he needed to devalue other people, and Linda was one of the people he felt would give him this kind of fulfillment (as I write this, I’m not sure if it’s my period or the thoughts of a human being hurting another human being that’s making me queasy. Pretty sure it’s the latter).

There is also the world of Hell, where one feels like there’s no way out of suffering, that even life itself is a torment, and when we’re in the life state of Hell we believe that everything we encounter causes us to suffer. Whenever I have manifested the life state of Hell I rely on destructive impulses, and this has not just hurt others but hurt myself because I felt there was no way out of my despair. In Lovelace Chuck manifested the life states of hell and animality when he hurt Linda; he felt that if she left the pornography industry he would have nothing, and that he wouldn’t have anyone to control or make powerless. He wanted money and power, and believed Linda was going to make him rich and famous. He relied on abusing and coercing Linda into doing things for him to bolster his sense of self-worth, but in the long run it actually didn’t do anything to boost his self-esteem. So when she finally left the industry, and he can’t trace her or track her down, the film shows him crying and getting upset, and this shows him in the life state of Hell. He feels hopeless about life now that he is no longer in a position to take advantage of Linda. In Buddhism we also talk about fundamental darkness, which happens when we can’t see the inherent Buddha nature, or value, in our lives. Chuck felt that he had to hurt Linda because he could not see his own Buddha nature, and because he couldn’t see his own Buddha nature he couldn’t see hers.

At the beginning of the interview, Linda says that Linda Lovelace is actually not her real name, it’s a fictitious character that Chuck invented for her. This reminded me of I, Tina, Tina Turner’s autobiography, because she talks about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her manager and husband Ike, and he came up with the name Tina Turner for her even though her real name is Anna Mae Bullock. He trademarked it with his last name so that if she left him like his previous singers had, he could replace her with another “Tina Turner” (“Tina Turner, Ike and Tina Turner: Origins, 1957-1960, Wikipedia.org. ) In I, Tina, Tina describes in vivid detail the violence Ike perpetuated towards her: physical violence, psychological violence, emotional violence. When she tried many times to get her own music career going and divorce Ike, he threatened her repeatedly with violence and abusive language. Like me, Tina Turner is a Buddhist and she found that when she chanted nam-myoho-renge-kyo, even though she still got abused by Ike, she was able to tap into the innate courage and wisdom she already had within her life to address Ike’s abuse and not let it take away her sense of self. She also was able to see Ike for who he really was: someone who acted powerful and all-mighty, but really was just doing it to impress others. He didn’t value and respect Tina’s life and worth as a human being because he didn’t value and respect his own life and worth as a human being. He felt that he would lose his power and social standing if Tina asserted herself and left him, and so like Chuck Traynor in Lovelace, he was in the life states of hell and animality. Both the descriptions of Ike’s repeated abuse of Tina in I, Tina, and the depictions of Chuck’s repeated abuse of Linda in Lovelace, show how bad the life state of animality is when people let it control them. Like I said, in order to root out the destructiveness in my own life, I had to see the value of my life. I mainly accomplished it through my Buddhist practice, which helped me see my inherent worth and caused me to appreciate my life more over time. Similarly Linda found joy in her relationship to God, and He helped her heal from the trauma she experienced.

Of course, as I’m reading more and more I’m understanding that anti-pornography activism also can be dangerous, particularly to sex workers who work in porn and sex work industries that practice sexual consent. I wanted to know more about the violence done to women in the pornography industry, and I came across a report by Vice News about how some people who are anti-porn and anti-sex work espouse violent views against women and other minorities, and is trying to abolish Pornhub and the porn industry instead of addressing social justice and equal rights for sex workers. Sex workers deserve respect just like any other profession, and taking away their profession or criminalizing it would put their livelihoods in jeopardy. The problem isn’t sex, as Nicholas Kristof emphasized in his article “The Children of Pornhub”, it’s sexual abuse and a lack of respect and consent for people during sex that becomes an issue. Porn itself isn’t bad, it’s the sexual violence against people in pornography that is bad. Sex itself is not a bad thing, it’s a human function like eating, breathing and drinking water. However, when sex workers are not having their human needs for housing, fair wages, and other social goods met, that’s the issue that needs addressing. Anti-trafficking organizations in the U.S., as many human rights organizations have revealed, try to lump all porn industries and companies together and say that they’re all bad, that all they do is exploit and that these sex workers need to be rescued or saved, when in reality this anti-sex culture hurts people who make their living from sex work. As Vice points out, it’s a combination of antiquated legislation, politicians, businesses and a culture that treats all sex as if it’s a sin that hurts sex workers, not necessarily the industry as a whole. When sex workers have their humanity recognized then that would be a huge step towards a fairer society that respects each person’s inherent worth.