"It feels, actually, as if we’re going backwards. The playful cheesecake Marilyn of the 1950s — a confected blonde bimbo that this film clearly despises — seems infinitely preferable to the Marilyn of 70 years later: a haggard, weeping cipher and shivering perma-victim who is obsessed with the contents of her womb. In an attempt to 'explain' Marilyn, the makers have simply created another pathetic object: a woman who spends the entire film either naked or in tears, or both.... She can barely touch a drink without getting wasted; barely get in a car without crashing it.... Is this where victim culture has led us.... Schoolgirls are told that they ought to be crippled by their periods. Female celebrities scramble to be defined by menopause, the horrors of pregnancy or, even better, miscarriage. On podcasts, in interviews and in articles otherwise intelligent, capable women moan about their lives collapsing, or being unable to cope with even the tiniest sliver of adversity: they are all like Marilyn on a date with DiMaggio at a perfectly nice restaurant: 'I’m afraid of some of the people here.' Marilyn had more power when she was a plain sex object, giggling on the cover of Playboy."
Writes Camilla Long, in "Every generation has its own Marilyn. Our one gets drugged and raped. Thanks, Netflix" (London Times).
Posts
34 comments:
Would Norma Jean have hated this movie? I don't pretend to know, but based on thus review if she was even a facsimile of a reasonable human being, she would despise it.
At one time in the late 1940's she was a regular woman, doing regular things at normal places. She had a crew of friends who were healthy and fit and then... Hollywood. Her life would have better around the surfer fire pit at Malibu. She wanted Hollywood - she got Hollywood. Who was it that said "answered prayers always cause more problems than the unanswered ones.
Solution? Frankenstein, Part II. Screenplay by DDB.
Alrighty then. Another click bait hot take that insists everyone join them in chewing on a cold sore. The road not taken... the itch not scratched.
Judging by what's being written about "Blonde" the director should never work again and Netflix needs to restructure its Original Movie division.
However, that doesn't mean Marilyn can now be the avatar for every pet peeve. It's ridiculous, the notion that a social grievance generates authenticity if it can be linked to her. Maybe Netflix will actually consider this a win, which is a shame. Don't help a bad movie gain clout.
Thank you feminism.
"Our one"???
Is this the point of the post? I have never heard this before. Is it correct? It sure doesn't sound correct.
You don't say that "our one" is the point of the post, which suggests that it is not the point of the post, which raises the question of how this slipped by.
Maybe the English have their rule about this and we have a different rule, but I think our one is right and their one is wrong.
That's not a MM problem. Every movie is like that today.
"Mindless death porn." It's not just Netflix. It's the industry. Remember Disney?
This is Hollywood - serving up nothing but hot garbage over and over.
Don't pay for it. Turn away.
The hack press whining about hollywood.
LOL. the mirror has 2 faces.
I haven't seen Marilyn, but if it is as honest about her sexual use by the saintly Kennedys, it will be as welcome as the recent and far-too-late film, Chappaquiddick.
This film echoed exactly the impression I always had about Marilyn Monroe: Someone who was actually a very good comic actress, but who was just not psychologically tough enough to handle the total debasement that Hollywood demanded from its actresses. And who needed to sell literally everything she had - body and soul - to succeed in that vicious environment.
Well done. I have no idea what the ones criticizing the film thought of her. This seemed to be the simple truth.
At least Camilla Long watched the movie before she hated it. Question for feminists — why can’t both the ditzy blond bimbo and the drugged and raped victim both be true? I’ve been married to a complex woman for almost 48 years. Am I the only one?
I gave up on Blonde after ten minutes. It's very hard to frame the torture of children in an entertaining way....I did see the Elvis movie, however. It was okay. They took some efforts to show the talent that made Elvis such a force. They didn't spend the whole movie dramatizing his weird relationship with his mother. There was more to Elvis than his pathology....Marilyn Monroe has passed beyond legend and entered the realm of myth. She continues to attract and, uh, arouse interest generations after her death. There were bright yellow Hazardous Materials stickers stamped all over her, but her seductive powers were brighter and she made love to a cross section of the leading men of her era. Maybe someday she will get the movie she deserves.
If I were a great dramatist, I would write a play about the encounter of Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe on the set of The Misfits. I wonder if she was disillusioned about the gap between his legend and his reality. I wonder if any of her allure shone through her mess and attracted his interest. GBS wrote a play about Caesar and Cleopatra that paid attention to their tragic fates but was witty and forgiving of the power dynamics.
Good God I’m sick of people prattling on about Marilyn Monroe, who’s been dead for sixty years. Almost as bad as Diana Spencer nostalgia (though she’s only been dead for twenty-five years).
She had me until she got to the part about sex symbols and their power. I suppose Real Marilyn did have some kind of power. Much good it did her. Pursue power through sex and you are likely to end up used and unhappy. Attractiveness is in a way a real power, in a way an illusory one. In the end it's likely to make you a mere pawn or plaything of those whose power is more real.
I am reminded of why I quit Netflix.
"Is this where victim culture has led us"
Yes, but it was only a short distance. Feminism has always been about we're-special-but-put-upon. No miniskirts at school! The outrage! The denial of autonomy! Etc.
But at this late date, the question is: cui bono? Why does prog propaganda still put out the sob stories, cultivate female victimhood, wallow in the eternal whine? Why does at least a fair portion of the public still eat it up?
I invite you to think deeply about this.
"It feels, actually, as if we’re going backwards."
Congratulations. The feels confirm reality at last.
Camilla Long has the makings of a good writer, but her working vocabulary needs help. Actually is one of the cursed words, the words that can make every word surrounding them read like the product of a dope-smoking monkey chained to a typewriter. It has its limited uses, such as in the big reveal scene in formulaic detective fiction and every Scooby-Doo cartoon episode. Nevertheless, it sinks of comic-book pedantry, as in actually, only red kryptonite can cause Superman to grow a second head.
Like the others of its near-useless tribe, the conscientious writer will think five times before typing the first a of that troublesome term. Don't be a Velma, actually avoid actually.
Feminazis hate the movie because it shows abortion in a bad light. It shows that “sex positivity” in Hollywood is actually exploitation for women. Just as it is today. Old Crone feminists can’t accept they were duped, even to save their granddaughters.
Sebastian (what a fey name): I invite you to endure a night of sexual catch-and release torture and worse by a stranger serial rapist and then try to explain to the DA why they should try the case despite the fact that I had a box of birth control in my bathroom when the animal broke in a window.
And then watch him walk free and never get a day in court, because 'no jury would believe me.' Because I was using birth control with my long-term boyfriend. Fuck you.
By the way, after he fist-raped an elderly victim to an early death, likely his latest of hundreds of cases not taken up by the court and after five early releases for similar crimes, and after police found boxes of "trophies" of missing women in his apartment, he is still eligible for release because the ACLU overturned his life sentence on a technicality.
Because I am a womam.
Every week, I have to check to make sure he is still incarceratd. Every fucking week for decades.
Do get back to me when you get your pinhead wrapped around that. I recommend shrinkwrap: it will adhere better.
ALso, screw imaginary campus victim culture. Unlike you, I fought them tooth and nail so real victims had a chance in court. What the hell, if anything did you ever do but bitch in a comment thread, "Sebastian"? Hug your teddy?
William writes, "Marilyn Monroe has passed beyond legend and entered the realm of myth."
Whoa! That one got me, and my keyboard. Either William must cease writing these delicious one-liners, or I must cease drinking coffee while reading Althouse.
It's called feminism.
I guess you could say that Marilyn broke Clark Gable's heart....Of all the alpha males featured on screen in that era, Clark Gable was the alphiest. And alpha males back then were extremely alpha. He was a legend in his own era, but, unlike Marilyn, he never made the quantum leap to mythic status. So far as I know, he has not attracted the attention of any A-list writers or movie directors. He's not forgotten, and he'll always have GWTW, but he's no Humphrey Bogart either.....I wonder about the interplay between him and Marilyn. Clark Gable was said to be damaged in significant ways, but, unlike Montgomery Clift or Marilyn Monroe, he could not project that damage on screen. He had to be alpha and his persona could not leak vulnerability. Marilyn, on the other hand, could be exquisitely vulnerable but, on screen, could only show those parts of her vulnerability that were sexy. Those parts of her vulnerability that were manipulative and calculating could not be revealed. You've got to say that they were both pretty good at curating their onscreen personas...I wonder if they found any common ground in their predicaments. Probably not, but there's a story there.....Those people who comment that they are not interested in Marilyn Monroe should take note of how their disinterest in Marilyn Monroe is so much more intense than their disinterest in Pam Anderson or Ana Nicole Smith.
mindless death porn
We need a "hero", a Democrat "hero". All's fair in lust and abortion. Forward!
It's called feminism.
Women, men, and "our Posterity" are from Earth. Feminists are from Venus. Masculinists are from Mars. Social progressives are from Uranus.
as I rememember from joyce carol oates source material, it was a rather unrelenting read,
William's comment is great. I'd only add what Joan Didion wrote, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.”
On the plus side, the actress that plays Marilyn is way better looking than the actual Marilyn.
So the nudity is justified...
I thought Netflix had moved on from death porn to food porn.
Isn't that why they changed the classification of the Dahmer movie from "gay" to "food/cooking"?
John stop fascism vote republican Henry
My husband (and I, by default - I tend to surf the Internet and somewhat watch whatever he has on) has been watching "Julia" on HBO Max, a dramatization of the life of Julia Child. In the last episode he watched, our heroine gets a checkup at the doctor's and learns - oh, the horror! - she is in menopause. She staggers blindly from the office and to a public pay phone where she dials her beloved Paul at home. But oh! She cannot push past the anguish to tell him what the doctor said! Gulping back her tears, she says he pronounced her "fit as a fiddle!" and hides her devastation by asking Paul if he has a preference for dinner.
To use a common expression among the youth - "B***ch, please." I am 61 so been there, got the hot flashes, happily threw out the Tampax, and went on with life because, you know, it was expected.
Did Julia Child experience discomfort with menopause? I am sure she did. But does her arrival at "the changes" have to be portrayed as if she was just handed a diagnosis of a terminal disease? Well, of course - it's HBO Max, the same folks who have been bringing us "The Handmaid's Tale."
Post a Comment