Our Love Affair With Marilyn Monroe
In this undated publicity photo courtesy Running Press, Marilyn Monroe is shown wearing a knife-pleated gold lam© gown made from?one complete circle of fabric.? She wore this dress in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." Monroe passed away a half-century ago this week, a murky death that remains one of Hollywood's most tantalizing mysteries. But look around: Her legend lives on, more vibrantly than ever. In a twist she surely would have appreciated, this 1950's bombshell has become a 21st-century pop culture phenom. (AP Photo/Courtesy Running Press) Photo: Associated Press
Marilyn Monroe has been dead all my life, or at least all my conscious life. Yet even so, the idea still doesn't sit right. "Marilyn Monroe is dead." That's like saying life and joy and sex and fun are dead. How screwed up does the world have to be that it can't even keep Marilyn Monroe alive?
She died 50 years ago tonight. Maybe somebody killed her. (Just the thought makes you want to grab your head and scream.) Maybe she killed herself. (I still want to grab my head and scream.) Or maybe she died by accident. (Better, but still awful.) And yet in the years since, no one who has died has seemed less dead.
Indeed, it's safe to say that in the entire history of the world, the image of no woman dead for half a century has maintained the same allure or the same modernity. We can look at a picture of a supreme beauty like Ava Gardner or Rita Hayworth and wonder what she was doing with that haircut or that outfit. They are of their time. But I would venture to say that there is not one photograph of Marilyn and not one frame from one of her movies in which she looks anything other than fresh, immediate and timeless.
What is this thing she had, that she still has? She was beautiful, beyond belief beautiful, and yet her beauty had to have something to do with her, with who she was as a person. Otherwise, why was her beauty undiminished on those occasions when she looked puffy or drugged or chubby or haggard or silly or exhausted? She was insanely sensual - even a photo of her reading a book looks like the prelude to a carnal romp - and yet again, it wasn't just her body, but her soul. The camera saw this, and we recognize it.
True worth
One crucial aspect of her appeal, intrinsic to that combination of physical beauty and spirit that she was, is this: Marilyn makes people watching her feel that, if she knew them, she would like them. But no, it's more than that. She makes them feel that she would see them and their true worth, their true virtue. It's not just men who feel this. Women feel it, too, and like her. So do children.
Needless to say, with a grown man this reaction becomes all the more powerful, tied up with dreams of sex and love: Almost unique among the most beautiful women of the past century - Jean Harlow is the only other possible exception - there is nothing mean about Marilyn's sexuality. She's not scowling or threatening or even particularly challenging. If you met her at a party, she would be the easiest woman on Earth to pick up, but of course only you could do it, because she'd want to be loved by you, just you and nobody else but you. What Marilyn offers is complete and total and absolute acceptance.
That's why we call her "Marilyn" and not "Monroe" - not because we know her, but because we feel she knows us. She has been looking at us all our lives saying yes, you're great, you're so smart, and you're so funny, and I love you. Let's have fun forever!
Rescue fantasy
And this is why she has been and remains the ultimate rescue fantasy. If she loves us and us alone, then only we can save her. Thus every man in the real life she lived (dumbo Joe, smirky Miller, goonish Sinatra) becomes repugnant to us, and why her death, as well as every sordid detail of it - lying sideways across the bed, hand on the phone, face down in the pillow - remains a fresh affront. It's a story with the wrong ending.
Some may see that ending as foreordained, the inevitable consequence of Marilyn's fragile psyche and her loveless childhood. Under the best of circumstances, to achieve fame as the most beautiful woman in the world is a heavy burden, an invitation to narcissism and panic at possessing such a powerful yet dwindling commodity
Marilyn Monroe has been dead all my life, or at least all my conscious life. Yet even so, the idea still doesn't sit right. "Marilyn Monroe is dead." That's like saying life and joy and sex and fun are dead. How screwed up does the world have to be that it can't even keep Marilyn Monroe alive?
She died 50 years ago tonight. Maybe somebody killed her. (Just the thought makes you want to grab your head and scream.) Maybe she killed herself. (I still want to grab my head and scream.) Or maybe she died by accident. (Better, but still awful.) And yet in the years since, no one who has died has seemed less dead.
Indeed, it's safe to say that in the entire history of the world, the image of no woman dead for half a century has maintained the same allure or the same modernity. We can look at a picture of a supreme beauty like Ava Gardner or Rita Hayworth and wonder what she was doing with that haircut or that outfit. They are of their time. But I would venture to say that there is not one photograph of Marilyn and not one frame from one of her movies in which she looks anything other than fresh, immediate and timeless.
What is this thing she had, that she still has? She was beautiful, beyond belief beautiful, and yet her beauty had to have something to do with her, with who she was as a person. Otherwise, why was her beauty undiminished on those occasions when she looked puffy or drugged or chubby or haggard or silly or exhausted? She was insanely sensual - even a photo of her reading a book looks like the prelude to a carnal romp - and yet again, it wasn't just her body, but her soul. The camera saw this, and we recognize it.
True worth
One crucial aspect of her appeal, intrinsic to that combination of physical beauty and spirit that she was, is this: Marilyn makes people watching her feel that, if she knew them, she would like them. But no, it's more than that. She makes them feel that she would see them and their true worth, their true virtue. It's not just men who feel this. Women feel it, too, and like her. So do children.
Needless to say, with a grown man this reaction becomes all the more powerful, tied up with dreams of sex and love: Almost unique among the most beautiful women of the past century - Jean Harlow is the only other possible exception - there is nothing mean about Marilyn's sexuality. She's not scowling or threatening or even particularly challenging. If you met her at a party, she would be the easiest woman on Earth to pick up, but of course only you could do it, because she'd want to be loved by you, just you and nobody else but you. What Marilyn offers is complete and total and absolute acceptance.
That's why we call her "Marilyn" and not "Monroe" - not because we know her, but because we feel she knows us. She has been looking at us all our lives saying yes, you're great, you're so smart, and you're so funny, and I love you. Let's have fun forever!
Rescue fantasy
And this is why she has been and remains the ultimate rescue fantasy. If she loves us and us alone, then only we can save her. Thus every man in the real life she lived (dumbo Joe, smirky Miller, goonish Sinatra) becomes repugnant to us, and why her death, as well as every sordid detail of it - lying sideways across the bed, hand on the phone, face down in the pillow - remains a fresh affront. It's a story with the wrong ending.
Some may see that ending as foreordained, the inevitable consequence of Marilyn's fragile psyche and her loveless childhood. Under the best of circumstances, to achieve fame as the most beautiful woman in the world is a heavy burden, an invitation to narcissism and panic at possessing such a powerful yet dwindling commodity
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