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Blonde is a post-Roe nightmare and a cautionary tale of “artistic” liberties overtaking ethics, writes Ciarán Howley.
This article deals with the topics of abortion, miscarriage, and sexual assault.
There have been few films released this autumn as profoundly disappointing as Andrew Dominick’s Blonde, a Plan-B produced horror-thriller distributed by Netflix, centred around the tragically short life, career and death of Marilyn Monroe.
Aside from just being bad, it’s an exploitative tale overly focused on traversing the tragedies of Marilyn’s life in a disturbing and graphic fashion. The real kick in the teeth is that it’s based on a fictional novel by Joyce Carol Oates published in the year 2000, adapted only once as a mini-series for CBS of the same name.
For the American writer, what began as a 175 page novella mushroomed into a 738 page tome ignited by the more salacious aspects of the starlet’s life, nursing the conspiracy she was assassinated by the Kennedys for being a “loose cannon.”
In this adaptation, it’s little but the sensational that Blonde is focused on…None of these are handled in a tasteful or balanced way.
In this adaptation, it’s little but the sensational that Blonde is focused on. The abuse she faced as a child, her mother’s mental illness, her second and third marriages to baseball player Joe Dimaggio and playwright Arthur Miller, rumoured trysts with Charlie “Cass” Chaplin Jr. and John F. Kennedy, bouts of alcoholism, prescription pill addiction, depression, anxiety and, unfortunately, her struggles with miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy.
None of these are handled in a tasteful or balanced way. Ana de Armas spends the majority of the film weeping or screaming, in a performance that cannot save the film. It recalls the kind of movies beloved by TikTok femcels - think Girl, Interrupted, Black Swan or the surreal Mulholland Drive. Even they have abandoned this harrowing saga, possibly because of the discomfort of knowing Monroe was a real person, as untold horrors unfurl onscreen.
The most prominent criticism is for its depiction of abortion and in this instance, ones that never happened.
The notorious foetus scene feels like the kind of video to be wheeled in by a gang of nuns during “sex-ed” in Catholic school. The film’s content prompted American Healthcare organisation Planned Parenthood to issue a swift and damning response.
“You won’t hurt me this time will you?” asks Monroe’s unborn foetus, conceived during her marriage with playwright Arthur Miller.
While Monroe did suffer a number of miscarriages, the film misconstrues these incidents into bursts of manipulative Pro-Life sentiments. There is zero evidence to suggest Marilyn Monroe had an abortion, or was subject to a forced one.
The notorious foetus scene feels like the kind of video to be wheeled in by a gang of nuns during “sex-ed” in Catholic school. The film’s content prompted American Healthcare organisation Planned Parenthood to issue a swift and damning response.
“Planned Parenthood respects artistic license and freedom, however, false images only serve to reinforce misinformation and perpetuate stigma around sexual and reproductive health care. Every pregnancy outcome — especially abortion — should be portrayed sensitively, authentically, and accurately in the media,” said a representative in response to the film.
What was marketed as a reclamation of Monroe’s story - a piercing and honest light in a fickle and overwrought story - is the exact opposite. Masquerading as a biopic, the film denies Marilyn Monroe the agency in her story that she’s been robbed of time and time again.
Instead of balancing Monroe’s unhappy past with honouring her memory as an actor and an icon, Blonde contributes to the same culture that has continually objectified and commodified her.
At a time when women’s access to reproductive healthcare in the United States depends on the state you live in, it’s hard to believe a team of people signed off on the film. Were there no head-scratching producers or concerned third parties who previewed the film and thought it might be offensive, or more cynically, damaging to Plan B’s reputation? Has the commitment to better representation and empowering stories (both in front of and behind the camera) wound down in the five years since MeToo?
Having seen the film in all its grotesqueness on the big-screen, it’s hard to believe at one point the film’s biggest concern was if de Armas’ accent slip-ups had sliced its Oscars chances in half.
Instead of balancing Monroe’s unhappy past with honouring her memory as an actor and an icon, Blonde contributes to the same culture that has continually objectified and commodified her. According to pop culture vlogger Mina Le, Monroe is one of the richest dead celebrities in history thanks to an aggressive presence on merchandise and memorabilia that exploits her figure and body. Not to mention an effervescent muse for those online with a penchant for romanticising tragic female figures, a slew of misattributed Facebook quotes and a revolving door of think pieces…
“Imagine being the most discussed woman in the world, both valued and cursed for your feminine power—what would it look like to be that woman and yet not be able to do what we think women should do,” Lena Dunham wrote, relating to Monroe’s struggle with infertility in a Vogue article published in August.
Entitled ‘What Marilyn Monroe Means to Me’, she makes the case that Monroe’s mainstay in cultural memory is that her story offers “something for everyone.” Lena Dunham isn’t exactly famed for her hot takes, including her recent demands to have her coffin paraded through the streets of NYC during Pride post-mortem but there’s truth in this assessment.
Like Princess Diana, Marilyn remains a Cinderella-esque figure. The media devoured the rags-to-riches life story curated by publicists (with a sprinkling of truth) and it propelled her to stardom and infamy in the eyes of the American public.
It’s just one of the stories that defines Marilyn, alongside her efforts to be taken seriously as an actor, the misogyny she faced in the industry being constantly typecast as a “dumb Blonde” and, as Lena Dunham mentions, her own struggle with fertility.
For the writer and director of Blonde to mix a cocktail of fact and fiction and pour it onto a dominant Pro-Life agenda rippling across America is both negligent and distasteful. And so Marilyn’s spirit lives on like an unsatisfied ghost, haunting our culture until we get her story right. But maybe some sleeping dogs should be, after all, left to lie.