Even in a world overflowing with d— jokes, the name “Lorena Bobbitt” has proved to be one of the most enduring punchlines that pop culture’s ever had. The extremity of the inciting situation — which left her husband mutilated and both of them on trial — immediately captured the country’s attention and became a genuine phenomenon. The ins and outs of the cases were covered obsessively, kicking off debates and controversy that consumed the media and its consumers alike. And yet, 25 years later, the one detail that most will remember about Lorena Bobbitt is that she once snapped and cut off her husband’s penis. Her experience, for those who don’t remember or weren’t around for the trials, has been reduced to shorthand for the worst thing that a woman scorned could possibly ever do.

But that narrative, as Joshua Rofé’s new docuseries “Lorena” convincingly argues, is...