Even before I was familiar with Tina Turner as the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll or could recite a single song lyric of hers, I somehow knew the most horrific, humiliating details about her life.
This isn’t a strange or unique introduction to a public figure, particularly a woman. As a recent string of documentaries illuminating toxic tabloid culture have shown us, a female celebrity’s personal afflictions can easily obfuscate their entire careers and negatively distort the public’s perception of them forever.
In the case of Turner, who died this week from an unknown illness, I would never view her solely as a survivor of her ex-husband and musical partner Ike Turner’s ruthless abuse. However, growing up, it always struck me how her infamously volatile marriage had consistently been relayed to me in the form of a punchline: If my middle-school (usually male) peers weren’t doing some comic reenactment of the domestic violence scenes in Turner’s 1993 biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It, they were touting her traumatic backstory for shock value.
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