Hollywood has never been keen on exploring the lives of sad, attractive women. But the last few years have seen an explosion of philanthropic retellings – what Vulture writer Kathyrn VanArendonk calls “empathy tourism” – aimed at humanizing particularly ill-treated starlets and recontextualizing their sexist portrayals by the media. It was only a matter of time before an opportunity was given for a reconsideration of one of pop culture’s greatest cautionary tales.
A new Netflix documentary called Anna Nicole Smith: You don’t know me, coming out this week, attempts to shed new light on Smith’s iconic fall from one of the world’s most desirable women to a depressed, financially needy drug addict. The film is more of a stereotypical character study of a Marilyn Monroe-like figure than an indictment of the tabloid culture of the ’90s and early 2000s. After years of documentaries, specials, and even an opera that chronicles his extraordinary personality since he died of an accidental drug overdose in 2007, this film can’t help but feel utterly unnecessary.
But, you do not know me manages to reveal two shocking revelations about the first womaniser The playmate includes both Smith’s now-dead parents. The rebuttal of an allegation about his mother, in particular, is a confusing effort to present Smith with more complexity. But her placement in the film only questions the intentions of the film’s director, Ursula MacFarlane, and how she wants the audience to remember Smith.
Smith’s poor upbringing in Houston and later in Mexia, Texas – before dropping out of high school and getting married at 17 – was a crucial part of his rags-to-riches story, which he often admitted to the media. It’s a pretty sickening fact that Smith’s family is so poor that he’ll have to steal toilet paper from gas stations and wear extra layers of clothing at home in the winter. His background was also identified with an alleged child abuse at the hands of an absentee father and mother.
But in the documentary, relatives and an old close friend claim that his childhood wasn’t as tough as he thought.
Early in the movie, Missy, Smith’s old friend and boyfriend, whom Smith met while she was a stripper in Houston, recounts the stories she and Smith exchanged about their childhood.
“She told me about her mother, Virgie,” Missy says. “He was law enforcement and he was a kind of tyrant. He would handcuff her to the bed for days and beat her mercilessly. And I believe most of what you tell me. You know, I have no reason for that. externalbelieve it.
Missy’s suggestion that Smith fabricated her claims remains untouched until the end of the chronological film. In fact, you almost forget this saying until you see a television interview hidden at the end of the documentary where she asks about her mother.
“You want to hear everything [my mother] for me?” Smith responds visibly aggravated. “Everything he lets me [stepfather] do it to me or let my brother do it to me or my sister? All the beatings and whips and rapes? This is my mother.
The film then returns to Missy, who claims that Smith has appropriated the truth. he turbulent childhood and that Virgie”[came] to save him many times throughout his life. After his death in 2007, Arthur claimed that he and his daughter had a relationship that was torn apart by drug addiction. One of Smith’s brothers, Donald Hart, also said in an interview that their mother “didn’t abuse” Smith. “My mom was such a sweet, loving person,” she says.
We then see a never-before-heard interview of Arthur claiming that their parents are living a “moderate life” in a “three bedroom and two garage” house. He also says that Smith told him quite openly that he fabricated the harassment allegations for his own financial gain.
She claims that Smith told her, “I make more money by telling sad stories than by telling good stories.” “If it’s bad, if it’s really bad, if it’s good, I get 50 times what I earn.” When Arthur asked Smith why he didn’t want people to know good things about him, Smith replied that “no if bad pays off.”
Admittedly, this result puts viewers in an uncomfortable position after two hours of sympathy for Smith. Presumably, this revelation is meant to highlight his underappreciated, possibly dangerous level of understanding. The documentary seems to imply that he is an accomplice in his own mythology and not merely a victim of the public’s imagination. After all, mocking this information early in the movie—and coming back to it at the end—sounds like a gimmick to get people involved in a movie that has nothing new or insightful to say.
Anna Nicole Smith and Donald Hogan.
Courtesy of Netflix
The documentary detonates another bombshell to add some balance, perhaps after discrediting Smith’s alleged false allegations, as well as other allegations, including that of his father, Donald Hogan, who died in 2009.
The Doctor shows exclusive footage of Smith meeting Hogan and one of his other brothers, Donnie, for the first time around 1993, after he hired a private detective to find them. The clips depict a quiet, friendly man who is proud of his daughter’s achievements, but their reunion apparently ends on a sickening note.
“When we are alone, [Smith] she told me her dad was trying to have sex with her,” Missy says in the movie. “It was really sad because I know how happy you were when you met him. He had all these ideas about what he was like and what he would be like. And then he was very, very disappointed.
Donnie learns this information while speaking on camera and initially denies the claim before changing his tune. “It would be like that,” he says hesitantly. “I wouldn’t take that away from him. This may be true. He later recounts the time when his wife confessed to him that he raped his sister, while admitting that his father “is not the kind of man you would want to be alone with”. By now, Hogan’s sexual abuse record is well known.
Hogan’s attempt to attack Smith is hardly surprising, in a documentary that only deals with retelling the saddest parts of Smith’s life, with the occasional side note that he’s smarter than the public perceives him to be.
But the biggest problem with this movie is that it doesn’t have a unique point of view. It’s like a subtitle you do not know me rather than an entry point for revealing hidden parts of her personality, the assertion that she will always remain an enigma is something we cannot stop trying to solve because of our unhealthy obsession with tragic women like her.
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