Saturday, February 23, 2019

The Review: Lorena



Lorena 7/10

I just finished watching the Amazon docu-series Lorena and holy shit John Wayne Bobbitt is a shitbird. I learned a lot of new stuff watching this. As far as I knew from the story a wife, Lorena Bobbitt, got upset at her husband John one night and cut his dick off, threw it out a car window, and dude went on to become the 90's version of famous. There was so much more to this story. When I watch these new documentaries that come out now not only are they filmed and produced better than they've ever been, but the series aspect gives the story time to breathe and actually explore the personal as well as social aspects of what they are trying to convey. That is probably the smartest sounding sentence I will ever type. When this case first happened I remember thinking “I wonder what he did” instead of what a shit ton of guys did and wanted her killed or beaten for what she did.


This series goes back and forth through time. It shows actual court footage, interviews with Lorena and John from the past and present, and the people that worked on the court cases. Yeah. I did not know that there was more than one. The second trial took place to see if she was Virginia's version of temporarily insane. I did not know that she ended up spending 45 days in a mental institution. This series pointed out how badly handled domestic abuse cases were and still are till this day. Throughout the marriage John raped, beat, and mentally abused Lorena. As I watched this I kept asking myself “How is he free to do interviews?!” It's not like he abused her and got away with it. Well, he did. But he also abused other women after her. Oh, another thing Cam told me about this and I was still shocked when I watched: after he got his dick put back on and did a porn film he got another surgery to get it bigger and they fucked up the operation. Talk about spitting in the face of god!


Later in this John talks about abuse he grew up with being the only White family on a street full of Black people. Oh, whah! Deal with that shit. What you don't do is grew up to abuse people. Plenty of people have grown up in houses where they were physically abused and did not grow up to do that to other people. I got my ass kicked all the time but not once did I think it was okay to hit a woman. This guy does not sound bright either. If you think he sounds dumb when they show clips of him when this shit was all happening he has not gotten any brighter in the decades since. I know at the time there were a lot of jokes made about this case (which they show) and people were more concerned with a dudes dick than the reason she cut it off in the first place. In this they also talk about how afraid women are to leave an abuser and people ask “Why don't they just leave?” like it is that easy. If you have ever lived in a house with abuse you personally know it is not as easy as just leaving. Nicole Brown left and was gutted by OJ Simpson. It literally takes the community helping a lot of women in these situations to escape. You have to have friends you can talk to and not judge you. A police force that takes you seriously. A government that has programs in place and somewhere to go for you and/or you and your children. There is a national hotline to use when shit gets squirrely. 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)

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