My week with Marilyn
The horrors of Blonde
To be loved is to be seen.
The beloved is seen in all shades of limelight, even the ones that can wreck their complexion, and is still wanted. No matter if the beloved believes themselves unworthy of that love or denies it.
To be loved is to be known, to be perceived.
I’m talking about God as lover. Someone once said that to be known and loved by the Creator of the universe is actually terrifying. He knows all your secrets. He knows you better than you know yourself. It can seem like a profound violation when your innermost thoughts, your very heart, are not private like you hope.
I understand very little, but I know that much about love.
Loving as seeing is relevant to Marilyn Monroe. Andrew Dominik, Joyce Carol Oates, and everyone else involved with Blonde don’t see Marilyn and so, they don’t love her. She is an object, though not of affection. She’s not the beloved, she is merely a thing, a blank canvas to project ideas onto, but not a real person who had thoughts and feelings and agency.
I’ve always been perplexed by the culture’s fascination with Marilyn Monroe. But I understand better why she continues to fascinate in the 60 years since her mysterious death.
She was a sex symbol in the sexually repressive decade of the 1950s, before the sexual revolution took hold (and ruined everything).
She essayed the role of the dumb blonde so well that some people actually believed that’s who she was off-screen.
She allegedly had affairs with both JFK and Robert Kennedy and was possibly killed because of it. They may have even ordered her murder.
She died so young and will never be ‘punished’ with old age.
But I think there’s another reason for the obsession with her.
Marilyn Monroe spent her early years in foster homes, abandoned and unwanted. When Norma Jeane became Marilyn, it was like she created herself. She’s the ultimate symbol of the American Dream where anyone can acquire wealth, transforming lowly beginnings into a dazzling future. Marilyn was handed off to relatives and strangers, never belonging to a true family. She is still public property getting passed around. In life and in death she cannot belong to herself alone. She is not the beloved to be seen and understood but an object to be owned.
"People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed; never throw out anyone.” — Audrey Hepburn
Marilyn is thrown out and reclaimed but handled roughly. She’s treated like a valuable artifact that is carelessly thrown away, and once her value becomes known, grubby hands retrieve her from the trash to sell to the highest bidder.
I was not planning to watch Blonde. Everything I learned about it was against my will. I'm too delicate to withstand graphic scenes of sexual violence. There's no way I would subject myself to this in theaters. But my curiosity proved too powerful. I watched the film (though not on Netflix, hooray for piracy!) to see what all the fuss was about. Dominik boasted that it would offend everyone, but it’s actually such a dull, rote piece of filmmaking that I was more bored than offended. It’s still an offensive film for its exploitation, tastelessness and lies. I thought — hoped — it was all exaggerated in typical Hollywood fashion, but the source material is just as bad.
I’ve read Joyce Carol Oates’ short stories, but Blonde was my first of her novels. Her writing style is actually very irritating. She has been saying some troubling things about mental illness and suicide lately, so she isn’t a particularly compassionate person. That comes through in how she renders Marilyn on the page. It honestly doesn’t matter that it’s a work of fiction. Why is Marilyn propped up as a symbol of American female identity to be examined? Oates writes her as an anxious child-woman who is overly reliant on men for her livelihood and self esteem. Blonde Marilyn has no canny or sparkle or wit. She is afraid. She is lonely. She is abused. She is precious. She is simple minded, incapable of profound insight or understanding.
Joyce Carol Oates hates Marilyn Monroe. There is no film version of Blonde that would be saved by a woman's touch.
I understand the appeal of stripping away the layers of an icon to find the real person beneath. We all search for clues to the mystery of who individual stars were. It's such a disservice to conclude that all of Marilyn’s issues stemmed from an absent father and an inability to have children. To pretend that the mystery is solved.
With how inescapable social media is and celebrities sharing mundane details to sell a relatable version of themselves, the power of mystique is lost.
Marilyn Monroe also understood the power of mystery which is why she added to her own myth. In Life's "Remembering Marilyn" issue, an article states that she "willingly contributed to the legend herself; just as one example, she certainly pumped up the woebegone orphan aspect of her childhood."
Maybe she is meant to be unknowable. Maybe the world still isn't ready to know or love Marilyn Monroe as she deserves.