Don’t look now. Forget her almond eyes, her peroxide blonde hair, her sweetgiggle and bouncy walk. Forget Marilyn. Who was this woman, this actress, deadfor over sixty years and still omnipresent? Why have all the (TV) films,biographies and discussions devoted to her hardly brought her closer? And whydo we keep looking for her?
2022 was a Marilyn year; the umpteenth. The film experienced in September_Blonde_ its long-awaited premiere on Netflix: a 167-minute drama in whichAustralian director Andrew Dominik showcased ‘his’ Marilyn in a grand andvisually eclectic way, starring Ana de Armas as a well-matched ventriloquist’sdummy. The film had a divisive effect on the public. “Trauma porn,” somejudged, unworthy of Monroe’s legacy. “A work of art in itself,” said authorJoyce Carol Oates, whose 2000 novel the film was loosely based on. In 2020,the book was reprinted with an introduction by literary scholar ElaineShowalter.
Joyce Carol Oates: Blonde. HarperCollins, 739 pp. €14.99
Marilyn Monroe: My Story. Taylor Publishers, 208 pp. €27.50
Norman Mailer: Marilyn. A Biography. Virgin Books, 314 pp. €19.99
Arthur Miller: After the Fall. Penguin Books, 118 pp. €15.99
In the same interview with The New Yorkers told Oates she had to stopwatching the film adaptation halfway through to recover; she found it an“emotionally draining” experience, “ not for the faint of heart ”. Althoughwhat actually happened to Monroe was “much worse”.
The bad and the dark, that’s what Oates’ book is all about. Blonde is thick:among the fans who shamefully confess to each other that they have not (yet)read it, there are rumors of a thousand pages long, fueled by Oates’ owncharacterization of the book as “my Moby Dick”. It’s not too bad: the 2020reprint is 738 pages, and Oates has a fluid, fast-moving style. She dividesfive long chapters into dozens of small ones, full of colloquial language,diary fragments, poetry and whatnot. Despite the heavy content, it is aplayful whole, written with speed and pleasure.
Oates spent years researching Monroe and opens her book with an account of thesources consulted, but it is also and above all a fantasy, a free-flowingliterary interpretation of what could have been. Thoughts, conversations,incidents: once Oates starts making up, the brakes go off and before you knowit you’re reading dozens of pages about “Rumpelstiltskin” (who can berecognized as Monroe’s agent Johnny Hyde), “the former athlete” (baseballplayer Joe DiMaggio, her second husband) and “the playwright” (Arthur Miller,her third). Here they are characters in a dark fairy tale in which the maincharacter is sometimes called Norma Jeane, sometimes Marilyn Monroe, andsometimes simply ‘the Blonde Actress’.
Also read the NRC review of Blonde (●●●●) ” Blonde” is sad and creepy, notMarilyn for everyone
A great achievement of Blonde is that in addition to her outward appearance– seen through the eyes of others – it gives Monroe back her body, her insides– damaged, abused, overworked, restrained by suffocatingly tight dresses andpainfully narrow wobbly pumps, tormented by gynecological problems. A bodythat alternately catapulted her onto the stage and then kept her confined tobed for long periods, which she cherished on the one hand with long baths,jewelry and perfume, and on the other hand drugged and anesthetized so as notto be swallowed up by old fears.
Trump, trademark and a pool of shame and misfortune; Monroe’s ambiguoushandling of her physical self is the logical, sad consequence of her originsas an underclass woman in a sexist, capitalist society, with Hollywood as itssinister capital.
System of abuse
Blonde is an indictment of an entire system of abuse. Norma Jeane Mortenson,as her birth name was, was not unique, but a girl like so many others; Oates,born in 1938 and therefore only twelve years younger, remembers ‘Norma Jeanes’from her own childhood, with no safe family environment and no real prospectsfor the future. In the 1940s, thousands of them, like Monroe, showed up at thegates of the big movie studios, and what happened to them inside had little todo with cinema. Everyone knew that; the women complied and paid the price.Hollywood was – or seemed – their only way out of poverty and anonymity. Oatestranslates her anger at this skew into dismal scenes of verbal and physicalhumiliation that unfortunately seem a lot less far-fetched to readers from thepost-#MeToo era, as Showalter also writes in her introduction. She was the_Zeitgeist_ way ahead.
She also takes Monroe seriously professionally. That too is exceptional:although Monroe’s enormous gifts as a comedienne have now become widelyrecognized, her talent is still all too often regarded as a kind of by-catch,something she possessed ‘just like that’, almost in spite of herself. That’snot right: if Monroe focused on anything, it was her profession. Acting washer raison d ‘être, the ultimate escape upon escape – as enticing as it isdangerous for someone with so much emotional baggage. Oates quotes from realand fictional standard textbooks on acting and elaborates on some of Monroe’sbest roles; Cherie out Busstop (1956) and Sugar Kane Some Like It Hot(1959) both get their own chapter.
Also read an interview with Blonde director Andrew Dominik about MarilynMonroe: ‘ That much worship is apparently not very healthy’
All commendable. And yet there is with Blonde something strange is alsogoing on: despite all the details and the technical ingenuity of the writer,after reading there is no memory of a real person. The all-around blonde ismade up of so many parts that it’s hard to love her; pity does arouse them,but only from a distance. The stylistic fringe deprives the reader of the viewof the person for whom Oates wanted to erect a monument.
Own voice
While Monroe did have a voice of his own. Posthumously published in 1974 MyStory , the start of an autobiography that she had written years earlier withthe help of screenwriter friend Ben Hecht. The veracity of the text wascontroversial from the outset, but even if My Story is a fairy tale – justlike Blonde – then it remains revealing that Monroe wanted to presentprecisely this version of her life. She gave a copy of the unfinishedmanuscript to Milton Greene, one of her few confidants. So you can assume thatshe herself was behind the text.
And what a strong, self-willed man speaks here! There are plenty of pitifulpassages, especially the childhood memories of her schizophrenic mother areheartbreaking, but this Marilyn is no pushover, no ‘ lost cause ‘. She is anambitious fantasist who has literally dreamed another life out of the gutter.Manifesting, that is now called in self-help jargon; Monroe believed in itwholeheartedly.
What set her apart from all the others starlets was not her talent or herbeauty, she writes, but ‘her dream’. She clung to that dream despite hungerand misery. “In me was a secret – acting. It was like being in prison andlooking at a door that said “Exit.” Acting was something golden, somethingbeautiful.’
Hollywood comes to know them as a ‘city of failure’, full of malnourished,suicidal people. “Your dignity is [er] less important than your haircut. Youare judged by how you look, not what you are.’ Unlike many other girls, shedoes not capitulate to the quick money: “Men who tried to buy me made mesick.”
That doesn’t mean she doesn’t flirt. Her life as a man magnet starts early,thanks to a ‘magic sweater’ that she is allowed to borrow from a fellowresident of the orphanage. Norma Jeane is twelve but ‘looks like seventeen’.When she shows up at school in her new sweater, she is stared at ‘as if Isuddenly had two heads, which in a way I did’.
From that moment everything changes: the guys swarm around her, the girls turnaway from her and gossip. The whistling and howling that haunts her becomesthe soundtrack to her escape fantasy: one day everyone will see and adore her,she will belong to ‘the ocean and the sky and the whole world’.
Her body is the key to everything. At the age of eight she has already beenmolested by ‘Mr. Kimmel’, a scary tenant in one of the many foster homes whereshe is temporarily placed. At the same time, she longs for nakedness inpublic: in church she fights the impulse to take off all her clothes. ‘Dreaming of people looking at me made me feel less lonely.’ She doesn’tcount on friendship or loyalty: men are wolves, women are bitches who getannoyed the moment she appears. “I feel sorry for their men. I think thosewomen are bad, sexually crippled mistresses.’
Misogyn
Yes, this was Monroe too. Anyone who wants to hoist her posthumously on thefeminist shield, for example because once fame had come, she entered into manybattles with the studio system, would also My Story should read – althoughone could argue that she has never had a choice but to internalize themisogynistic notions of her own time. In his ‘novel-biography’ Marilyn from1973, Norman Mailer calls her downright a narcissist, who had to come up withbigger and bigger stunts to satisfy her exhibitionistic desires; he describesher as one monstre sacre which caused chaos everywhere.
Marilyn is a macho book by a macho writer who would be canceled just becauseof his wild love life. But his book is one great read , full ofpsychological hypotheses that are at least worth pondering. For example,Monroe’s legendary lateness to the film set, was that merely evidence of hermalaise, or also a form of power? The diva versus the (ever-male) director andhis army of assistants? And her affair with Yves Montand while they were bothmarried, was it love or cunning chance? In other words: are we, as insatiableMarilyn fans, ready to accept the less attractive sides of her character?
What else are we supposed to do with Maggie, the Monroe-inspired characterfrom After The Fall (1964) by Arthur Miller? He began writing it after theirdivorce in 1961, but when the play premiered, Monroe had been dead just a yearand a half. The piece drew an angry response from Miller; this was tooprivate, it came too fast, he smeared her name.
After The Fall is still played, although it is certainly not Miller’s bestwork – the structure is difficult to follow due to the constant alternationbetween the thoughts of main character Quentin and ‘real’ dialogue.
Also read: the TV review of the documentary From Norma Jeane to MarilynMonroe (NTR)
Maggie begins as an irresistibly beautiful shadow of a woman, a being so pureand vulnerable that Quentin – Miller’s alter ego – is convinced he must, andcan, save her. That fails miserably: once married to him, Maggie changeswithin a few scenes into a manipulative, verbally aggressive addict whoconstantly threatens to commit suicide. Quentin is forced into the role ofhome doctor and care provider until he literally has to snatch the bottles ofsleeping pills from her hands. He leaves her feeling hopelessly failed.