New Documentary Revisits Beatles Fans' Shocking Backlash Toward Yoko Ono
John Lennon and Yoko Ono's move to New York City in the early 1970s is the subject of the new documentary One to One: John & Yoko
The film will explore the backlash Ono faced from Beatles fans upon entering into a relationship with Lennon
"Society suddenly treated me as a woman who belonged to a man who is one of the most powerful people in our generation," she says in the documentary. A new documentary is revisiting the difficult road Yoko Ono faced when she fell in love with John Lennon in the late 1960s.
One to One: John & Yoko focuses on never-before-seen material of the high-profile couple as they uproot their life in England to move to New York City in 1971, where a changing American culture collides with the pair’s desire to do good in the world.
In one moving section of the film, Ono gives a speech at the First International Feminist Conference, which took place in 1973. During the emotional address, Ono, then 40, detailed the harsh way she was treated by society after she first started dating Lennon and how a constant barrage of criticism chipped away at her self-confidence.
When Ono and the former Beatle first met in 1966, she was already established as a successful artist. She told the crowd in her speech that because she was an independent, creative woman, society had already deemed her a “bitch” — and when she and Lennon got together, she was “upgraded into a witch,” which was “very flattering,” she quipped.
“Society suddenly treated me as a woman who belonged to a man who is one of the most powerful people in our generation. And some of his closest friends told me that probably I should stay in the background, I should shut up, I should give up my work and that way I’ll be happy,” she said. “Because the whole society started to attack me, and the whole society wished me dead, I started to stutter.”
She continued, “I consider myself a very eloquent woman, and also an attractive woman. And suddenly, because I was associated with John, I was considered an ugly woman, ugly Jap, who took your monument away from you. That’s when I realized how hard it is for women. If I can start to stutter, being a strong woman, it is a very hard road.”
Source: Rachel DeSantis/people.com
