“There’s a tape out there
floating around... what's it like to have that kind of exposure?”
“what's it like?” Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee
were the original modern glamour girlfriend and
tattooed boyfriend couple. Right now we’re seeing a
renewed interest in celebrity couples who fit this
Barbie-and-the-Bad-Boy pattern, like Megan Fox and
Machine Gun Kelly, Kim Kardashian and
Pete Davidson, and Kourtney Kardashian
and Travis Barker. “Kourtney put her tattooing
skills to the test and inked the words
‘I love you’ on Travis’ forearm.” And all these romances feel,
to an extent, like a throwback to 90s and 2000s
celebrity couples such as Billy Bob Thornton
and Angelina Jolie, Dave Navarro and
Carmen Electra, and most of all,
Pam and Tommy. The release of the
Pam & Tommy miniseries coincides
perfectly with this resurgence to reexamine
the couple’s cultural significance, as well as
the most infamous part of their story -
the leaked sex tape from their honeymoon that exploded
on the internet. At the time it was
rumored that Pam and Tommy
released the video themselves as a publicity
stunt, but with today’s post MeToo lens,
the Pam and Tommy series draws our attention
to just what a violation this stolen material actually
was “this is so private,
it’s like we’re seeing something we’re not
supposed to be seeing.” In the years that followed,
the theft contributed to a society of increasingly
blurred lines between a celebrity’s public and
private life, which offered little
protection for their privacy and consent in the face
of a voracious media appetite for voyeurism. Here’s our take on the
definitive barbie-alternative guy pairing, Pam and Tommy,
and why now is the perfect time to understand how the
price they paid for fame. “Did you make a
mint off of that” “I made not one dollar…”
“Are you, I thought you guys made a deal…”
“No, it was stolen property.” If you’re new here,
be sure to subscribe and click the bell
to be notified about all of our new videos. It’s tempting to think
of the glamour girlfriend tattooed boyfriend couple
as an iteration of the beauty and the beast trope,
but what singles out these tattooed men isn’t that
they’re unattractive, It’s that they embody a
rebellious, anti-establishment ethos that casts their
partners in a different, darker light. “Guess what my
middle name would be?” “Blade. Chaos. Hectic.
Violence. Rebel.” Prior to meeting
Tommy Lee, sex symbol Pamela Anderson
was viewed through a very specific lens: first as
the ultimate Playboy playmate, and then as CJ Parker
in the more mainstream, less explicit, but
no less titillating Baywatch. She was an archetypal
playboy bunny blonde – embodying that type
more perfectly than perhaps any other- “You are still the hottest
chick on the planet” “I’m playboy.” “You’re a playboy girl.”
“I’m a playboy girl.” – but this Barbie
hyper-perfection didn’t necessarily send
the impression of depth or an interesting personality.
She became more unpredictable and edgy
in the public mind when she made a surprising
choice for a partner: Tommy Lee, the epitome
of rock and roll excess, famed for his extravagant,
drug-fueled tours with Motley Crue and his
seemingly never-ending list of conquests. Their love story felt from the
very start like something unstable, which
made it exciting “After a five-day
whirlwind romance in Cancun, Tommy lee
and bikini-clad Pamela Anderson exchanged vows.” Pam and Tommy
weren’t the first good girl/ bad boy couple to enter
the public consciousness - The Red Hot Chili Peppers’
Anthony Kiedis and (then only 16 year old)
actress Ione Skye had a tumultuous two year
relationship in the 1980s. Arguably, Danny and Sandy from
Grease fit into a similar mold. “Sandy!”
“Tell me about it, stud.” But it was
Pam and Tommy’s popularity that planted
the seed for modern explosive mainstream interest
in this particular kind of couple. Tabloids obsessed over
the weirder, more gothic details of Billy Bob Thornton’s
relationship with Angelina Jolie - like the fact they wore
vials of each other’s blood around their necks,
and gifted each other his-and-hers grave plots. “It’s a beautiful train-wreck.”
“I need a kiss please.” “I said A kiss.” Rocker Dave Navarro and
playmate Carmen Electra’s relationship became
the focus of its own early 2000s reality show,
which played up Navarro’s dark, gothic image. “To prove from the start
it was death do us part, they swallowed their
rings and expired.” While these darker,
more brooding men seemed to make the
women they were with more interesting in the
public eye, on the male end, there was an element of
wish fulfillment and fantasy at play.
Despite these men being famous, talented, rich,
and often incredibly body-confident - showing off
the countless tattoos that cover their skin -
their alternativeness and divergence from a ‘
buff-jock masculine-beauty ideal led to them being seen
almost as everymen. So the knock-on effect was
that these glamorous, male-fantasy archetype women
appeared slightly more attainable
to the average guy. “What do you see in
this Kid Rock character? I mean he’s like 100
pounds wet and this guy wears these wife beaters
and these stupid-looking hats.” It’s also impossible to ignore
that the majority of these men come from
a rock and roll background, where the rocker and the beautiful
girlfriend is almost a rule. Rock and roll has a history
of excluding women from the music side of things,
and casting them as groupies or muses - there to inspire
or fawn over their creative partners. Pam and Tommy then
were a highly visible proof of how being a male musician
could elevate your status to the point where you would be
rewarded with one of the most beautiful women
on the planet, and how even if you’re the most beautiful
woman on the planet, people will look to the
person you’re dating to define who you really are. “How did Tommy Lee
feel about you posing for playboy, did he like it?”
“Well that’s how he found me.” When we’re creating Take
episodes like this one, we know that time is money.
And here at The Take, we don’t want to waste
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“The Take.” If you only know one thing
about Pam and Tommy, then it’s almost certainly that
they recorded a now-infamous sex tape which was
distributed by shady websites in the late 90s.
At the time the scandal was focused around the contents
of the tape itself, and the newness of how the internet
was used to distribute it, allowing sellers to evade
prosecution more easily than ever. What there wasn’t
was much suggestion Pam and Tommy had been violated
in any way by having this property stolen, other than in interviews
given by the couple themselves “Somebody just went
and exploited the hell out of our life.” There were even some implications
that the tape had been released deliberately
by the couple – a baseless rumor that the Pam and Tommy series
debunks, based on the 2014 Rolling Stone article reported
by Amanda Chicago Lewis that “the tape was, without question,
physically and illegally taken from Anderson and Lee’s home”
when disgruntled contractor Rand Gauthier stole
the safe it was locked in. As Lewis observes,
it’s the fact that it clearly wasn’t made for an audience
that enabled the authentic, unself-conscious intimacy
of the tape that viewers were so compelled by.
Howard Stern once said, “It’s the greatest tape
I have ever seen in my life. What’s cool about it is that,
like, you get to live their lives with them.” “you know my favorite part
of that video is when Pam's trying to work
the laptop and then that crazy sort of like
white trashy talk they talk to each other
baby hey baby I love you hey lover
I love you baby.” The lack of conversation
in the 90s around the violation enabling this
viewing stems from how the idea of consent wasn’t
widely discussed in the culture at the time,
to a degree that feels kind of shocking now. “Did I miss anything?”
“No, you are just in time.” And while the tape
is estimated to have made at least 77$ million just
in legal sales in the first 12 months, initially
the couple saw none of that money. “I wonder if I’ll ever see
any money from that? They’ve sold it all
over the place, I’ve never seen a dime.”
“I know!” (While they did eventually
reach a legal settlement, it’s unknown exactly
how much they got, and it was likely a small fraction
of the actual sales, as well as contingent on them
signing away the rights for future sales).
The other flawed assumption of many conversations of the
time was that – because the sex lives of both parties were
already subject to tabloid dissection, and Anderson had
posed for many explicit Playboy shoots – there was a public
entitlement to seeing what went on behind her closed doors.
Shockingly, this was even a legal argument at the time;
as Lewis writes, “since Anderson had posed
nude several times and because the two discussed their
sex life in interviews, Penthouse’s lawyer argued
that the couple had forfeited their privacy rights regarding
the video’s content.” Even in the way the tape
is discussed now, that sense of entitlement still remains,
as if because it’s Pamela Anderson, it’s fair game. “I was a big fan of
your Tommy Lee sex tape.” The false idea that
Pam and Tommy must have released the tape themselves
contributed to the longstanding myth that celebrity sex tapes
are always used to rebrand celebrities or gain them
a spotlight. Paris Hilton’s famous sex tape,
released without her consent in 2004 as what we’d now
call “revenge porn” was mostly discussed in the
media as yet another example of her shameless
self-exploitation in pursuit of “fame for being famous.”
And when Kim Kardashian’s introduction to fame came
via a sex tape “I only had that one movie
come out, and no-one told me it was even premiering” the rumors that Kim had sold
the footage were widely interpreted to affirm and prove that
this had been the case for everyone who came before her,
despite counter-evidence "You know there are people
out there who say that you put it out there yourself,
you know that.” “Yeah, and, you know,
I think why would anyone put that humiliation
on their family.” And all this plays into
the strange assumption that the public is entitled
to celebrities’ bodies. Pam’s and Tommy’s tape’s
release happened at a time when there was a stricter
divide between the life of celebrities and the lives
of ordinary people. Social media hadn’t been
invented yet, and the internet was still something of a novelty. “A what site?”
“A website. It's this thing on the computer.
People will go to it. They will order the
tape directly from us.” But news media had already
begun moving toward something more voyeuristic - the dawn
of news reporters roving the streets via helicopter led
to iconic television moments like the LA Riots and the
OJ Simpson car chase, both of which gave viewers
a more immersive, fly-on-the-wall “entertainment”-style coverage
of events that may previously have been reported in a more
detached, factual way. The Pam and Tommy tape
fed this newfound level of voyeurism. No longer were
viewers content with looking at consensually obtained sexual
material produced for an audience; they wanted more.
The Pam and Tommy tape helped create a market just as
the internet was developing as a means to satisfy
that market. It’s a short leap from Pam and Tommy’s tape
being released in 1996 to the lurid details of Monica Lewinsky
and Bill Clinton’s sex scandal being disseminated
across the world via Matt Drudge’s gossip blog
The Drudge Report not long after. “It really is the first time
I think the internet is breaking a story of
this magnitude.” Yet as well as creating
a market, the Pam and Tommy sex tape incident
illustrated how little control celebrities now had over
their public image. Pam’s and Tommy’s paparazzi
photos of their beachside wedding appeared even
before their tape got leaked (a previous violation
which was exactly the kind of evidence used to argue
that they no longer had entitlement to privacy). The sex tape in turn contributed
to a culture where celebrities had even less control,
as a voracious tabloid press had to effectively
keep up with this new appetite for voyeurism.
Gossip magazines exploded, as did online blogs, and the
paparazzi became an even bigger part of the media landscape,
with the success of a magazine dependent on scandalous,
candid photographs. “There was always
a little bit of a hunger for the unposed photographs.”
“As we had more of that kinda material in the magazine,
you know, the sales just went up.” Even despite the public
calling-out of the paparazzi in the wake of Princess Diana’s
death in 1997 “Do not use tabloids as a
source, you define the difference between tabloid and
legitimate news,” their influence continued to
grow in the 2000s, as we can see in the shocking tabloid
treatment the public condoned of stars like Britney Spears,
Paris Hilton, Janet Jackson and Lindsay Lohan.
And while it’s easy to look for one scapegoat among
this whole media structure, it was fundamentally a
profit-structure fueled by a public desire for voyeuristic
content, motivation violating behavior; even Gauthier and
those who partnered with him in selling Anderson’s and Lee’s tape
found themselves quickly ripped off by other anonymous
sellers online, preventing them from making a fortune themselves.
The watershed moment all this led to was arguably the 2014
celebrity nude photo leak, with Roxane Gay writing
at the time “This leak is likely only
the beginning. Because there will always be another leak,
because there is an insatiable curiosity when it comes to
the nude celebrity woman’s body. She puts herself in the
public eye and, in turn, we are entitled to see as much
of her as we so desire, or so I am sure the
justification goes.” “Private behavior is
a relic of a time gone by.” These beautiful and the damned
couples are in the middle of a resurgence. Kourtney and Kim
Kardashian have coupled up with Travis Barker and Pete
Davidson respectively, while the revival of Megan Fox’s
career has coincided with her relationship with actor
and musician Machine Gun Kelly, who actually played Tommy Lee
in Motley Crue biopic The Dirt “I keep having this
vision, right, where my drum set,
it rises up like this, and then bam, smoke,
lights, and the whole thing starts spinning
around.” But while Pam and Tommy’s
image was packaged and sold to the public by others,
this new generation of couples have somewhat more power
to retain control and shape their own narratives.
Megan and MGK, like some of their predecessors, have
created a mythology around their relationship, but it’s
one that’s known to us from details that have all been shared
by the couple themselves – from the reveal that Megan’s
engagement ring is inlaid with thorns - because, as MGK says,
love is pain, to the fact they apparently drank each other’s
blood after getting engaged, to the bizarre meet-cute
that began their relationship. “You said to me.”
“You smell like weed.” “And I said: I am weed.”
“And then, you vanished.” Similarly, Travis Barker
and Kourtney Kardashian have been able to
maintain control over their relationship’s
narrative, with their introduction to the world
as friends coming in an episode of Keeping Up With
The Kardashians “Our neighbour and friend
Travis Barker decided to come over to Khloe’s house
because his kids and my kids are really
good friends.” While Travis hasn’t ever
been a regular in the series, Kourtney has used
the show to drip-feed their relationship to the world,
showing people maybe a different side to Travis
that’s at odds with the hedonistic rockstar image “Travis do you wanna
make a house? A gingerbread house?” The other place the
couple have been able to craft their own narrative
is via social media, which has almost negated
the need for paparazzi voyeuristically spying on the
private lives of celebrities by giving audiences direct
access to those private lives - as well as the ability to interact
with the celebrities in question. While Travis’ instagram
photos are still professional and manicured, they give
the impression of a candid, behind the scenes look
at the couple, satisfying our need for a deeper,
more personal engagement, but on the couple’s terms
(and with their clear consent) “Travis also took time
to cherish Kourtney’s love note he posted
via instagram.” There’s also something
to be said for the balance of power having shifted
in the years since Pam and Tommy were
together. Then, there was a sense that these bad boys
were leading these beautiful women astray, as if the
women couldn’t resist the pull of something that wasn’t
good for them. But now the women in these
relationships come to them with far more agency in a
different cultural climate, and the idea they even
could be led astray feels far-fetched. There’s a real
sense of equality in many of these partnerships–
with Kelly even taking second billing to Fox in his own music
video for Bloody Valentine “I’m sad, I don’t expect
you to understand.” And profiles of that couple
take pains to at least pay some attention to Kelly’s looks,
instead of just objectifying Fox – GQ’s Molly Lambert describes
them as an “absolutely gorgeous couple,
seemingly made for each other” and calls Kelly “handsome”
before remarking that Fox is “the most beautiful woman
I ever met”. And while there may be a
collective incredulity in the media around Pete Davidson’s
ability to date so many beautiful women, which echoes
some earlier conversations around Tommy Lee or
Anderson’s following husband Kid Rock, the interest in Pete
is less focused on a secret destructive darkness than on
a fascination with what’s so compelling and attractive
about his personality – and what that reveals about
attractiveness standards today “He seems super charming,
he’s vulnerable, he’s lovely… His fingernail polish is
awesome. Like, he looks good…good relationship
with his mother.” But arguably, it’s the
ordinariness and healthy domesticity we’re seeing from
some of these new beautiful and the damned couples that’s
the biggest shift in celebrity in the era since
Pam and Tommy. Pam and Tommy were anything
but ordinary - they were famous in an era when fame meant
living a life completely different, and came with the cost
of not allowing celebrities to define their stories
for themselves. The irony of the Pam and Tommy
miniseries is that it’s a show about a violation of consent,
but it’s being done without the consent of those
portrayed. Director Craig Gillespie has talked about wanting
to “change the narrative” surrounding the couple,
but neither was involved in the creative process,
and Lily James’ attempts to contact Anderson ahead of
her performance as her were fruitless.
Pamela Anderson has tried to shape her image in
unexpected ways over the course of her career –
whether through comedy, like her appearance in Borat,
writing novels, or becoming a passionate activist for
political and environmental issues “And what are the funds
being raised for? They’re gonna go to the
Pam Anderson foundation which supports
environmental issues and animal issues and
human rights issues.” Still, the release of this
series reminds us how she’ll always be seen through
the lens of what proved a relatively short relationship
that lit the fuse for the celebrity gossip explosion of the
21st century. When control has been taken away
from you in such a public way, maybe there’s
nothing you can ever do to take it back. “You don’t seem to
understand what a big deal this is to me.” “I’m on that tape
the same as you.” “But this is worse
for me.” This is The Take
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