Movie Review: Lovelace (CW: rape, sexual abuse)

I had been wanting to see the film Lovelace for a rather long time, mainly because I love Amanda Seyfried. Also the trailer was really good, so I wanted to see it. The film was very deep and gave me a lot to think about, especially because I didn’t know who Linda Lovelace was until I saw the poster for Lovelace one time, and I had only heard of Inside Deep Throat, the documentary about the porn film Deep Throat, from looking the movies section of a newspaper. But the film is not so much about Deep Throat as it is about the trauma and sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of the man who coerced her into making the film. Chuck Traynor didn’t really love Linda; he just saw her as a way to get rich, a prop, so he sweet-talked her because he thought she was innocent and weak and couldn’t stand up for herself.

This film also taught me to be more empathetic when listening to women talk about abuse and domestic violence. When the allegations against Bill Cosby came out I asked, Wait why didn’t those women just leave him? And then my friend told me that Bill threatened to take their careers and livelihoods away from them if they said no (it wasn’t until I saw the movie Bombshell, a film based on the the sexual harassment allegations against Roger Ailes at Fox News, that I finally woke up). I then reflected when a friend raised a similar question (the “why don’t you just leave this extremely toxic abuse?” question) when the sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein came out, and our other friend said it was because Weinstein, like Cosby, threatened these women that he would end their careers if they said no or even told others about the abuse he inflicted upon them. Same with the film Lovelace; at the beginning of the film it seems as if Linda and Chuck are having consensual sex, but later on in the film we see Chuck raping and beating Linda and then forcing her to marry him. After the film I wanted to learn more about this woman’s life so I watched some interviews she did, and in the interview Linda did with Howard Dando and she says that people asked her why she didn’t just leave Chuck when he kept abusing her, she said she tried at least three times, and each time she tried to escape him he beat her and manipulated her into staying with him. It reminds me of a song I listened to by Christina Aguilera called “Walk Away” where she talks about relationship abuse and how it is difficult to leave her abuser because the abuser makes her feel like she should be grateful to be with them, that they are the one. The abuser convinces her that it is love and not abuse, even with all the suffering the abused faces at the hands of the abuser. That’s why I need to keep educating myself by reading narratives of abuse victims, listening to their narratives, especially as someone who cannot personally relate to what Linda went through, I need to listen and be supportive.

Before her death in 2002, Linda became an anti-pornography activist later on in life, and published a memoir called Ordeal, where she discusses the abuse she suffered in the pornography industry. It reminded me a lot of this article by Nicholas Kristof I read in The New York Times back in December of 2020 called “The Children of Pornhub,” in which Kristof unveiled the issue of sexual assault in porn videos uploaded to Pornhub and other porn sites. 4/24/21 edit: even though I saw the film a month ago and started writing this review a month ago, and was going to go in depth about “The Children of Pornhub” article, I literally could not stop crying every time I thought about what those young women (and men) went through every time they had videos of them being raped uploaded to Pornhub and have everyone see it. It saddened me because many of these youth attempted suicide because of the shame and embarrassment they dealt with. Thankfully when I searched for the article, I came across a much more hopeful update that Kristof had written called “An Uplifting Update, on the Terrible World of Pornhub”, in which he talks about how governments and the Pornhub corporation itself are taking more actions towards addressing sexual assault of children in pornography videos, such as bipartisan legislation that allows for rape victims to sue porn companies profiting from videos of their assaults. Kristof also notes that Pornhub will now require people to verify their identities before they can upload videos and no longer will allow video downloads that would allow for the proliferation of illegal material. Of course, Kristof notes that it’s important to always keep questioning whether these companies will follow through, especially because people can probably use fake IDs to get around the rule on verifying one’s identity. But he says that there’s hope because young rape victims have spoken out on the companies’ exploitative practices. Kristof says, too, that we shouldn’t be just scrutinizing Pornhub’s practices but also less well-known porn sites for how they deal with matters of child exploitation.

As Kristof emphasizes, “the issue isn’t pornography but rape. It is not prudishness to feel revulsion at global companies that monetize sexual assaults on children; it’s compassion.” (Kristof) Indeed, while reading “The Children of Pornhub” article for the first time when it came out in The New York Times paper last year, I literally wanted to vomit because of the sheer amount of rape and violence done to children in these videos and the lack of strict measures on the part of porn companies to tackle the proliferation of this material. Sex done without consent isn’t truly sex anymore; it’s rape. As I’ve educated myself more on trauma and sexual abuse through reading and listening to rape victims’ experiences, I am more aware of how the issue of consent is a serious issue that always needs discussion, because if it’s not being discussed, then rape’s going to keep getting a pass in society.

On a more hopeful note, there was an update on one of the victims of this exploitation, and how, when before she wanted to end her life because of the humiliation that came with being exploited on Pornhub, she received so much love from people who wanted to help and was finally excited to go back to school and pursue her dream of being a veterinary technician. When I read the update I broke down in tears of relief and joy because I was just so happy for this young woman that she can now fully live her life instead of feeling like she had no reason to live anymore. I cried because before reading the update I had seen the interview with Linda and how she talks about how she was finally able to live her life with a caring husband and two beautiful kids after she got out of the pornography industry and Chuck’s abuse of her, and as someone who never dealt with what they went through but experienced serious depression where you feel that there’s no hope, I felt so hard for both Linda and the young lady in the article because they finally got to be human after living in a hellish world that didn’t recognize their humanity.

Honestly, I don’t know what else to say about this movie because I’m still emotionally processing it. But it’s a powerful film and it made me appreciate Amanda Seyfried’s incredible acting, as well as Linda Marciano because I didn’t know much about the issue of sexual abuse in pornography but I now know after seeing the film how serious a problem it is.

Lovelace. 2013. Rated R for strong sexual content, nudity, language, drug use and some domestic violence.