What's Love Got to Do with It (1993)

and the Name She Kept

From Tina Turner's memoir: a singer whose name, career and voice were taken over by the man who said he made her, and who walked out with nothing but her name. What it teaches about "I made you," a name changed without asking, being punished for an opinion, and what it takes to leave.

What’s Love Got to Do with It (1993). Directed by Brian Gibson, screenplay by Kate Lanier, from Tina Turner’s memoir I, Tina, written with Kurt Loder. Angela Bassett as Tina Turner and Laurence Fishburne as Ike Turner, with Jenifer Lewis as Tina’s mother, Zelma.

“I’ll give up all that other stuff, but only if I get to keep my name. I’ve worked too hard for it, your honor.”

Tina, at the divorce.

A note before you read. This page discusses a film about a woman beaten and raped by her husband for years, and a suicide attempt. Nothing is described in detail, and no method is named. If someone is hurting you, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. If this is close to what happened to you, RAINN is there any hour at 1-800-656-4673. If you are thinking about suicide, call or text 988. Every current number is on the Resources page.

This page belongs to On Screen. It is a refusal, and one of the most famous on film: a woman who walked out with almost nothing, and kept the one thing she’d made herself, her name.

Like every entry on the On Screen page, it reads a story for the pattern it teaches, and makes no claim about anyone’s diagnosis. That rule matters more here than anywhere, because these were real people. The film is drawn from Tina Turner’s own memoir, and both Turners objected to its inaccuracies. This page reads the film, as a film, and says nothing about either of them beyond what it shows.

The Story

Anna Mae Bullock grows up in Nutbush, Tennessee. When she is small, her mother leaves, taking her older sister and leaving her behind. As a teenager she moves to St. Louis, and one night at a club she gets up and sings with the bandleader Ike Turner. He is so impressed that he offers to mentor her.

She becomes his band’s singer, they have a hit record, and they fall in love. While she’s in the hospital having their son, she hears the radio announce the record by a new name, “Ike & Tina Turner.” Her name has been changed. They marry, the act becomes a national sensation, and they move to Los Angeles.

At home, when Tina says Ike’s music all sounds the same, he beats her in front of their sons. As the crowds start wanting her more than him, and as he starts using cocaine, the violence gets worse. During a recording session, he rapes her, blaming her for their trouble following their old hits. In despair, Tina attempts suicide before a show, and survives.

A friend introduces her to Buddhist chanting, and she finds a new strength. In 1976, after a fight in a limousine on the way to a hotel in Dallas, she waits until Ike falls asleep, runs across a freeway to another hotel, and finds refuge. In the divorce, she gives up everything except her stage name.

She starts again in cabaret, and persuades a young manager, Roger Davies, to take her on. Years later, before a show in New York, Ike confronts her in her dressing room with a gun. She faces him down, walks out, and sings to a packed house.

Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne were both nominated for Academy Awards for their performances, and Bassett won a Golden Globe.

What It Gets Right

A great deal. It shows how a man can take over a woman’s career, her name and her life, slowly, while the whole country watches the act and sees nothing. It shows violence without making it a spectacle to enjoy. It shows that leaving took more than courage: it took a friend, a practice, and years. And it lets a woman who started over in cabaret become a bigger star than she had ever been.

What It Teaches

1. “I made you”

Ike’s claim, said straight to her: “I MADE you. You were nothing before you met me, and you’ll be nothing without me.”

The Decoder’s Card 34, “You’d Be Lucky to Have Me”, is “Ego reassertion after threatened control,” and this is its classic line: the story a controlling partner tells about where your talent came from, usually just as you start to outshine him. This series met it before, in Heathers. The answer the film gives isn’t an argument. It’s her life afterward.

2. The name on the radio

Tina finds out her own name has changed by hearing it on the radio, from a hospital bed. Nobody asked her.

The Decoder’s Card 49, Identity Erosion, is “Slowly dissolving your sense of self.” It doesn’t always look like cruelty. Sometimes it looks like a stage name, a new brand, a joint account, a life arranged around someone else’s act, until you can’t find where you end and it begins.

3. “The name stays home”

In the divorce, Tina gives up the money, the houses, everything, on one condition: “only if I get to keep my name. I’ve worked too hard for it.” And Ike’s answer: “The name is mine... If she want to go, she can go wherever she want to go, but the name stays home!”

The Decoder’s Card P-2, Ownership Entitlement, is “Claiming what isn’t theirs”: the belief that what you built together, or what you built alone while with them, belongs to them. Many women have left with less than they came with, to get out. Tina’s refusal is in what she wouldn’t leave behind.

4. Punished for an opinion

The first time the film shows Ike beating her, it’s because she said his music all sounds the same. The violence isn’t about the music. It’s about her having a view of her own.

Many women learned to keep their opinions to themselves at home, not because anyone said so, but because of what happened the one time they didn’t. If that’s you, please hear this: the problem was never your opinion. The number at the top of this page is there for exactly this.

5. What it took to leave

Tina doesn’t leave the first time she’s hit. She leaves after years, with a friend who introduced her to a practice that gave her strength, and when he was asleep, across a freeway, with almost nothing.

Leaving a violent partner often looks like this: slow, then sudden, and dangerous. The time around leaving can be the most dangerous part, which is why there are people whose whole job is helping someone plan it safely. The film doesn’t pretend it was simple. It shows it was possible.

6. The dressing room

Years later, he comes to her dressing room with a gun, to remind her who he thinks made her. She faces him, walks past him, and goes on stage.

It’s the film’s last word on “I made you.” She made herself, and the audience in that room is proof.

Who Got Out, Side by Side

	Sleeping with the Enemy (1991)	The Color Purple (1985)	What’s Love Got to Do with It (1993)
What he took	Her freedom	Her sister’s letters	Her name, her career, her voice
What helped her leave	Planning, alone	A friend, and her own voice	A friend, a practice, and years
What she kept	Her life	Her family	Her name

Three women who got free of a violent man. The last one walked out with nothing but her name, and made it bigger than his.

If You Grew Up on This

Many of us saw this young, and sang along to the music for years after. Nothing on this page asks you to stop. The useful thing is to look at it clearly from where you stand now.

Some questions to sit with:

Has anyone told you they made you? What did you have before you met them?
Has something of yours, a name, a talent, a business, been treated as theirs?
Did you learn to keep your opinions to yourself at home? When did you learn it?
If you left something, what did you refuse to leave behind?
Who was your friend with the chant: the person who helped you find your strength?

He said she’d be nothing without him. She kept her name, and filled the room with it.

You’re the audience now. What you made is yours.