America’s Favorite Marilyn Monroe Cliché
Most films that are widely reviled upon release simply evaporate into their own disfavor. Yet Andrew Dominik’s recent Netflix film, Blonde, has lingered in the public consciousness weeks after its release and subsequent criticism for a simple reason: the enduring star power of Marilyn Monroe.
The film is based on Joyce Carol Oates’s 2000 novel, which promised 20 years ago to reveal, through fiction, the real person behind the celebrated image. “I have to tell you immediately that I never would have written any book about Marilyn Monroe,” Oates in an interview promoting the novel at the time. “I got very interested in writing about an American girl who is Norma Jeane Baker who becomes a celebrity later in life … To me, she’s always Norma Jeane.” It was hardly a new idea then, and it isn’t one now. The idea that Norma Jeane is more important than Marilyn Monroe will not fade away, as both the and its critical make all too .
