Since when was Halloween an opportunity to poke fun at victims of domestic violence?

What many of these comedians fail to address is that these critiques usually only apply when “punching up” rather than down. If the butt of your joke is a person/group of people already marginalised by society – e.g., transgender people – you’re punching down. If the person you’re making fun of occupies a high social position – e.g., Boris Johnson – you’re punching up. 

Was I naive to think that mocking alleged survivors of domestic abuse would be considered punching down and, therefore, in bad taste? 

Regardless of taste – which is, after all, subjective – I worry that offensive Halloween costumes are merely the tip of the iceberg regarding societal attitudes to survivors of domestic abuse. 

It’s surely no coincidence that ‘Amber & Johnny’ and ‘Pam & Tommy” have cropped up as fancy-dress costumes in the same year that the entertainment industry sought to profit from their respective traumas. 

In February 2022, Pam & Tommy – the “true story behind the release of the first-ever viral video in history — the sex tape of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee” – was released on Disney+. Multiple sources suggest that Pamela Anderson was against the making of this show, with one describing that she found the show “painful,” adding that “It is shocking that this series is allowed to happen without her approval.”

One of the resounding critiques of the series was that it raised awareness of Anderson’s exploitation by… exploiting her even more. As Adrian Horton wrote for The Guardian, “Pam & Tommy recreates parts of the tape, has actors mimic Anderson and Lee’s sex noises, includes montages of them having cartoonishly vigorous sex, uses prosthetics to imitate their famous anatomies.”

In addition to watching a fictionalised account of Anderson and Lee’s relationship, the world also had unprecedented access to a real-life drama in the form of Johnny Depp’s defamation suit against Amber Heard, which was televised and shared widely on TikTok. 

Public opinion initially favoured Depp, with many choosing to express their support for him by acting out Heard’s courtroom description of being sexually assaulted. In the months after the jury delivered its verdict, Tubi TV (an American content platform) released a cheap dramatisation of the trial titled Hot Take: The Depp/Heard Trial.

In seeking to dramatise and profit from stories of domestic abuse, the entertainment industry has trivialised it – to the extent that survivors have become the butt of our jokes this Halloween. If anything, that’s what we should be scared of. 

For more information about emotional abuse and domestic violence, you can call The Freephone National Domestic Abuse Helpline, run by Refuge on 0808 2000 247.

For more from Glamour UK’s Lucy Morgan, follow her on Instagram @lucyalexxandra.