'she makes a man proud to be a man.'
Clark Gable on Marilyn Monroe
There is something deeper than just sex at the heart of marilyn monroe. Something deeper than fame, glory, money, movies... even platinum blonde hair. At the heart of Marilyn Monroe is something wonderful.
Nobody quite captures the zeitgeist like Marilyn Monroe. She has continued to captivate and fascinate for over 40 years, one of the only persons who could cover a popular magazine decades after her death (vanity fair 2009) and who is synonymous the world round with cinematic fame, yet there are few who can actually recall her movies and, better yet, have seen them. She is not universally loved for style, like Audrey Hepburn, or sass like Lauren Bacall, but rather for womanhood. She is frequently tossed around as a sexual ideal, as the perfection of the female form. When actresses want to prove themselves as sex objects they dress up as Marilyn Monroe (from Lindsay Lohan to Nicole Kidman). She is an icon whose very image of flicked platinum blonde hair recalls a thousand hopes and dreams the world over.
But, like i said, the sex thing is all smoke and mirrors. She said once that a sex object is just a thing, and that she never wanted to be that. She may be the ultimate woman, she may be every man's fantasy (though, of course, each to their own), but there is something else there. Something more than just 'thing-dom'. To categorise her as an icon is to completely dismiss her allure - that she is a living, breathing, heart-beating, lip-biting person. She lives. She is not a pin up, air-brushed and chest-thrusted for the camera. She was real.
Old Hollywood was a very different place to the one we know now. It would certainly have been fearsome to behold. The Paparazzi may have been coming into their own, but stars lived in relative freedom to live, breathe and make mistakes. To marry multiple husbands, to have affairs, to take too many drugs, to get drunk, to cause fights. Agents were relatively non-existent, there was no-one to check the behaviour of starlets but themselves, and possibly their mothers. It is this kind of world that breeds the movie star who is the lover of a president, the rebel shooting star who dies before his time, the actress with a diamond as big as the ritz. Their superstars were not the cookie cutter, publicist pacified versions we have today. The closest we have to an old hollywood star, imbued with every bit of their charisma without sacrificing personality is Johnny Depp.
It is our society that churns the monroes, the hepburns, the james deans, even the elizabeth taylors into this kind of mass-produced, mass-adored, mass-consumed monster that is the 'classic' old hollywood film star. What we know, widely, about these stars is the narrative force-fed to us by the marketing machine of NEW hollywood. Old Hollywood was about charm, charisma and personality. New Hollywood is about fame, success, money. Monroe becomes the sex symbol, Scarlet her successor. I remember Woody Allen writing about her that she reminds him of Marilyn in that he can't observe her full on. The effect of her beauty is too dazzling, too spell-binding... god save me. the reason he can't look full on is that he is frightened of the spectre of the film star, that very same spectre that destroyed the original in the first place.
What i mean, and i haven't really got this point across well at all, is that to equate Marilyn Monroe with sex is to reduce her to the sum of her parts. Just as how to equate Hepburn with style and grace, or Taylor with excess, or Dean with rebellious cool is to do the same. Popular culture, modern popular culture, i should say, does this on a daily basis. For the modern narrative of film stars to make sense there must be a precedent. There must be something that came before, that set the scene, as it were.
Marilyn Monroe once said ' 'i just want to be wonderful'. Sure, the first thing that comes to mind with her is sex, but I urge you to look a little deeper. I urge you to watch her and fail to see the wonder, the charm, the enchantment of her person. For she is more than a sex symbol, she is wonderful. From the very tips of her platinum hair to her red-varnished toes. As a sex symbol she is one dimensional, the archetypal dumb blonde with big boobs and come-hither eyes. But as Marilyn Monroe the person she is alive, vividly so. She is clever, witty, wily and engaging. She charms. She is a great beauty, by all accounts, and yet not one without flaws.
the wonderful thing about Marilyn Monroe is her place in posterity. She may have achieved that through the sexual ideal that she embodies, but i like to think that she will continue to captivate minds in her best role - herself.
X
ps i apologise for the lack of posting... i suppose inspiration can strike in the oddest of places, and while watching some like it hot with a gooey brownie (my mother's cure for everything from broken wrists to broken hearts is a classic movie and baked goods) this post just came to me. hardly fashion related i know, but i wanted to write it down, really.
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