When it comes to exploiting real-life tragic events, Hollywood does it best.
“Blonde,” the Sept. 28 Netflix release, is unique in the sense that it isn’t a biopic, but rather is a fictionalized telling of Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe’s tragic life.
Monroe, who died in 1962, is one of the first in a long list of women whose trauma has been exploited by an industry that’s hell-bent on glamourizing their pain.
Princess Diana, pop singer Britney Spears, singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse, model and actress Anna Nicole Smith are all women whose lives have been thrown into the spectacle of the public spotlight in excruciating detail as there is nothing more interesting than the traumas of women on any level of notoriety.
I would go as far as to say it is just a further exploitation of the myth of Monroe.
The myth of Monroe’s life and death has had the world in a grip, whether it has been her sex appeal, her marriages or the ditzy blonde persona she acted out on screen.
When I first heard of “Blonde,” I assumed it would be a full-scope retelling of Monroe’s life, starring Cuban Spanish actress Ana De Armas, who became one of my favorite actresses after her breakout performance in the 2019 mystery film “Knives Out.”
As more behind-the-scenes photos of De Armas were released, I was blown away by how much she looked like Monroe and hoped for the best in this film.
But as clips from the film came out, it seemed as though the movie would be a disaster.
“Blonde,” based on the 2000 novel by Joyce Carol Oates, was meant to be an exploration of the person behind the persona, and more specifically about Norma Jeane Mortenson, Monroe’s real name.
Monroe legally changed her name in 1956, although she has been known as “Marilyn Monroe” for a decade prior to that. Mortenson chose to be Marilyn Monroe because her birth name made her feel “unwanted,” according to Monroe’s 1974 autobiography, “My Story,” released after her death.
However, criticisms of the novel also level at the fact that Oates cannot write a true depiction of Monroe’s life, resorting to conspiracy theories.
One of those conspiracies is that she had an illicit affair with former president John F. Kennedy.
Oates exploited Monroe’s “myth” and “riddle” of a life as a study on the enigma of what it is to be an American celebrity, according to an April 13, 2020 New Yorker article.
But that in itself is the problem, as Monroe is neither a myth or a riddle. Oates falls into the trap that many do when it comes to the allure of celebrity: forgetting that they are quite in fact just people.
Monroe was a human being and as much as we have all grown up seeing her face on posters at the music store or corner smoke shop, she was a person who navigated the world around her as best as she could and not as some mystical creature in a white dress.
I have not read the novel and I will not be watching the movie because both are further misrepresentations of a person that the world just needs to let rest.
Australian film director Andrew Dominik essentially sets out to degrade Monroe’s persona as much as he possibly can in what many described as “sexist” and “one of the most deplorable movies ever made,” according to a Sept. 29 Variety article.
Dominik victimizes Monroe in the film and depicts a fetishization of female brutalization, which ends with Monroe’s death.
One scene described by Planned Parenthood as “anti-abortion propaganda,” according to a Friday article by Hollywood Reporter, which is a TV, film and entertainment magazine.
The scene shows Monroe holding her flat stomach as a fully formed, Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) fetus talks to her in what sounds like a four-year-old child’s voice saying, “You won’t hurt me this time will you? Not do what you did last time?”
When I watched that clip in a Twitter post, I had my jaw on the floor as Monroe spoke back to the “fetus” by saying “I didn’t mean to” and the “fetus” retorting back with, “Yes you did, it was your decision.”
Writing that almost made me gag.
I could not believe that during the film’s production, no one in the room thought, “Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this?”
Exploitation of Monroe isn’t new, there have been many instances where men feel like the “idea” of Monroe is theirs to own.
Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy Magazine, where Monroe was the first centerfold model, bought a burial plot next to Monroe because of his desire to “[spend] eternity next to Marilyn,” according to a Sept. 29, 2017 NPR article.
If that isn’t enough to enrage you from boycotting the movie, there is also a deplorable scene between Monroe and former president Kennedy.
I have not seen this part of the movie, nor will I even find myself looking for the scene anywhere else. Many people have called this the most “perverted” part of the movie.
The scene, without going into graphic detail, is a fictional depiction of JFK sexually assaulting Monroe, forcing her to give oral sex, according to a Sept. 28 Esquire magazine article.
In a two-minute scene that can only be described as “gratuitous” and “weird,” we are met with an upclose shot of Monroe’s face as she gives us a speech that is meant to be in her head.
It is the ultimate form of exploitation of Monroe’s life.
Andrew Dominik makes Monroe out to be weak and beholden to the men around her. He fictionalized brutality that Monroe never dealt with in her real life.
Not only that, Dominik personally insulted Monroe and her work outside of the film, dismissing the classic 1953 film “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” as a film about “well-dressed whores,” according to an outtake from an interview he did with journalist Christina Newland about the movie.
That is the person who had agency over a film about Monroe.
The Esquire article touches on whether or not Monroe actually had an affair with the former president, but all of that is based on hearsay by people who knew Monroe and is not a confirmation of if she actually went forward with it.
An affair has never been confirmed as Monroe and Kennedy only met face to face a handful of times, all at public events, according to the same Esquire article.
I do not believe in the conspiracy theories surrounding Monroe, nor do I believe in the myth that many people have created around her life.
I believe in Monroe as a brilliant and beautiful actress whose life was cut short by the pressures surrounding her.
Joyce Carol Oates defended the film by saying it is a “Me Too” movie, calling back to the 2017 movement against sexual abuse, harassment and assault, according to a Sept. 28 article by Another, an international fashion and culture magazine.
Everyone in that movie is complicit in the exploitation of Monroe’s character and life including De Armas, whose performance was hollow and stale at best.
It is a gross and utterly disgraceful film that should have never been made, based off of a terribly written book that shouldn’t have been written.
My last words on her legacy is this:
Monroe, as in life, is disrespected in death. It is high-time we leave her soul alone.
