let's discuss: the obsession with marilyn monroe

- Hello my beautiful pigeons, my name is Mina and welcome back to my channel. (upbeat music) Given recent events, the Met Gala, and the fact that I believe Christie sold Andy Warhol's portrait of Marilyn Monroe for the affordable price of $200 million. I thought it would finally be a good opportunity to make a video about Marilyn Monroe. (soft, upbeat music) I've only covered one other star on this channel so far, which was Audrey Hepburn, who I liked months ago, so if I could redo that video today, it would probably be a lot more extensive. but I digress. It is what it is.

But similar to Audrey Hepburn's video for this video, I'm not going to delve too deeply into Marilyn's actual biography or all of the events in her life, but rather focus more on her cultural impact and why people are so obsessed with her still today. Similarly to Audrey Hepburn, who lived under brutal war conditions as a child, only to become one of Hollywood's most beloved actresses. Marilyn also had the makings of a Cinderella story. Born Norma Jeane, Marilyn's studio publicists initially crafted a story about her difficult childhood being moved from one unpleasant foster home to another, to provide a story that would make her a more identifiable figure for the watching public.

Before Marilyn had any starring roles, Robert Cahn described her in an article as "a blonde apparition in a strapless black cocktail dress, "a little breathless, like she was Cinderella, "just off a pumpkin carriage." . Many of Marilyn's films also reinforce the Cinderella trope with her fictional counterparts, starting out as a lost innocent girl who ends up with a rich love marriage at the end. So there's a lot to unpack for this video, so let's dive right in. (soft, upbeat music) Marilyn Monroe remains one of the highest-earning dead celebrities for years, which of course is a morbid and somewhat inappropriate industry to start with.

According to Forbes last year, the total earnings of the 13 highest-compensated dead celebrities were $1 billion. The reason is that when Marilyn died in 1962, she died with a net worth of $800,000, which is roughly equivalent to $7.5 million today. But due to her generous spending and generous donations, when her estate was settled, her net worth was actually $370,000. In her will he divided her money between her personal secretary, some of her closest friends, her half-sister and also left a significant trust for her mother. The important thing here is that she gave her acting coach Lee Strasberg 75% of her intellectual property rights and 25% of her intellectual property to her therapist, Dr.

Marianne Kris. When Strasberg died in 1982, his share passed to a second wife, Anna Mizrahi, who I'm not sure ever met Marilyn because she married Lee in 1967. Anna later signed agreements that allowed Strasberg's name and face to be Marilyn were stuck on all kinds of objects. of different products. And then in 2011, she sold her stake to Authentic Brands Group for between $20 million and $30 million. Also in 1999, Christie's sold some of Marilyn's belongings for $13.5 million, including her driver's license sold for $145,000 and some photos of her dog Maf sold for $222,500 because these money-hungry corporate bosses who have virtually no attachment to the real Marilyn, are the ones who make the decisions about where to put Marilyn's face and name, it's no surprise that her face is literally plastered on all kinds of products, from Absolute Vodka to Mercedes-Benz like yada yada yada.

And because her face is literally everywhere, that also leads to this long-standing cultural fascination with her. It's also worth noting that most of these photos of her are the same famous ones, her standing on the subway fence in her white dress, the publicity photo of her for the movie Niagara, which is the same photo as Andy Warhol used in her collage. I literally remember learning about Marilyn Monroe before I even saw any Marilyn Monroe movies. I knew about the subway grate scene before watching The Seven Year Itch, which is where the subway scene comes from. And because images of her are disseminated so widely and so carelessly, Marilyn has become, as an ever-glamorous image, practically a brand in our popular imagination.

According to Virginia Postrel in her book "The Power of Glamour," "promotional photographs turned ephemeral scenes" into permanent still images. "We remember many of the most famous movie scenes, "not by seeing them flash by on the screen," but by repetition as printed photographs, "such images take scenes out of the narrative flow, "intensifying their grace" and with their glamor , like wedding portraits "or vacation postcards," the photographs preserve transient experiences, "distilling them into ideal moments." (soft, upbeat music) Although when we think of the sexual revolution, we think of the sixties and seventies, Richard Dyer notes in his book "Heavenly Bodies," "sex was seen as perhaps" the most important thing in life in the fifties in the United States. "He deduced this because there were two Kinsey reports, one on men that was published in 1948, I think.

And then the one on women that was published in 1953, anyone who is not familiar with the Kinsey reports, Kinsey's research argued for the normalization of sexuality and diversity and fluidity and his books were so popular and controversial at the time that the New York Times even dubbed him "The Father of the Sexual Revolution" in 1997, also in the 1950s Confidential Magazine and Playboy released their first books. numbers, Betty Friedan notes in "The Feminine Mystique" that "from 1950 to 1960, "men's interest in the details of intercourse" paled before women's avidity, "both as shown in these media and in their audience".

Part of the reason is that 1950s movies competed with many independent, relaxed domestic activities, such as television, reading, and sports at home. So one of the things Hollywood tried to do to differentiate the films was to experiment with more provocative material that wouldn't be appropriate to broadcast on television. Of course, the widespread availability of pornography did not occur until much later. And then the Hays code was still in effect in the 1960s, but Hollywood was definitely starting to relax its production code. And Marilyn Monroe, intentionally or not, pioneered this change in Hollywood. Sarah Churchwell writes in her book "The Many Lives of Marilyn" "part of the reason Marilyn came to identify so much" with a static concept of sexuality" is that she began her career as a pin-up. "A pin-up It sold a timid and sanitized image of the sexually available woman.

Most famously, she modeled nude during a photo shoot with Tom Kelly in 1948, when she was struggling to make ends meet in Hollywood. She made $50 from the photo, which is known as Golden Dreams, and the negatives were sold to a company that made calendars. . In March 1952 it became major news that Marilyn had posed nude for a calendar company. But at that time relatively few people got these calendars and saw these photos. Then, in 1953, Hugh Hefner purchased the negatives from the calendar company and used the photographs to promote the new issue of his new Playboy magazine. He bought the negatives for only $500 and, of course, made millions from Playboy, without ever paying Marilyn a cent of the profits. - Oh brother, this guy sucks. -Marilyn tried to save face by choosing her innocence at the time when she was questioned by the press.

In an interview with Alene Mosby, Monroe said that she "had taken the photo 'because I needed the money'" that Kelly's wife was present at the time. "And I'm not ashamed of it, 'I've done nothing wrong.'" Time magazine wrote the whole thing, Marilyn believes in doing what comes naturally to her. Unfortunately, all of this laissez-faire behavior led to this societal belief that Marilyn was inherently a very sexual person, which is totally a good thing now. But in the 1950s, society was much more puritanical and therefore her sexuality was sensationalized and used as an excuse to ogle her body and diminish her acting skills. .

In 1956, Monroe had Time magazine's only cover of her, which included an extensive profile. The writer noted: "Marilyn Monroe moving her hips and moving her lips, "a playful and simply sensual figure" is the latest bend in the road of erotic progress" that has taken Hollywood from the slithering vampire "to the good-natured tramp." . In Coronet, Grady Johnson calls her a "luscious blonde with tree-ripened sex appeal" and a girl with full lips and voluminous breasts "who has hitched a sex bandwagon" to Hollywood's fastest-rising star, "coming so far as to claim "that she is developing a singularly unnecessary skill" as an actress.

The view that Marilyn was not an actress but a model was very popular, Laurence Olivier, who directed and starred in The Prince and The Showgirl with Marilyn Monroe, said. This about Marilyn. - Rather, she is somewhere inside, she doesn't want to show herself. That's something else. She is a model by accident or by a villainy of nature. That is the answer for her. - First of all, Marilyn Monroe did The Prince in Showgirl after studying Method Acting with Lee Strasberg at the Actors studio. And for anyone who doesn't know who Lee Strasberg is, he's like the father of method acting.

He has trained a lot of people like Al Pacino and etc., he is very well known in the acting space. And while I don't defend the fact that he had a hard time memorizing his lines and was often late when she saw this movie, anyone can see that she does a much better job than Laurence in terms of comedic acting. So I really don't know what he's talking about. Another important thing to keep in mind when it comes to Marilyn's attractiveness is that in the mid-20th century, white women were seen as the most prized possession of white men, which is why in many older films there is this constant theme of be white men protecting their white women.

Probably the most racist and offensive disturbing example is The Birth of a Nation, which was a film that was released in the 1910s and glorified the KKK. Dyer also maintains that her blonde hair was frequently associated with wealth and platinum blonde, which Marilyn for a time visually rhymed with silver or gold dresses and jewelry. Blonde is generally racially unambiguous because not many people of color have blonde hair, as if it is associated with whiteness. And something that's important to keep in mind is that during the 1950s, interracial marriage, I think, was still illegal in many states and in many Hollywood films and plays, focused on the scandal of being mixed race.

Take, for example, the 1957 film Raintree County, starring Elizabeth Taylor, a prominent brunette actress of the time. And her character in the movie: There is a moment where she goes crazy because she thinks she might have a black mother or another example is the 1959 remake Imitation of Life, which features the stories of two girls, the white brunette, Susan Conner , who plays a passing white black girl, Susie, and blonde Sandra Dee, who plays the white girl, Annie. In the film, Susie deals with internalized racism and constantly attempts to deny her blackness. Dyer recalls how Marilyn's blondeness and later whiteness was often emphasized in many of her film roles. - Look at it shining there. - So pale and white. (soft, upbeat music)-So Richard Dyer refers to Marilyn's archetype as "The Girl," which she succinctly describes as defined solely by her age, gender, and sexual attractiveness.

He explains: "she is woven into the film's plot" through point-of-view shots placed on male characters, "even in the later films and virtually always" in the earlier ones, "she is presented as an object of vision." masculine." sexual gaze." Her character in The Seven Year Itch is probably the most representative of this trope because in the film the character of Marilyn, she doesn't actually have a name, is portrayed as this innocently desirable girl, who has been the target of many jokes. And the movie even promotes the idea that Marilyn is literally her character, because one of the jokes is when the main character, Richard, wonders who his upstairs neighbor is and sarcastically says - Maybe it's Marilyn Monroe - Los.

Marilyn characters tend to embody both the sexual and the naive. - Are you sure you want to waste your champagne now that you know I'm married? - I think it's wonderful that you're married, I think it's just touchy. lying on the floor in the middle of the night in a man's apartment drinking champagne, if he weren't married - That's a very interesting line of reasoning - And unlike other Hollywood actresses who were cast in a sexual light. , Marilyn never wasAn ordinary girl, her sex appeal was almost always exaggerated and she brought humor and levity to most of her roles.

Another good example of this archetype is found in the movie I referenced earlier, which is "The Prince and the Showgirl." There's a scene in it where Laurence Olivier, who plays the regent, gives this poetic speech. -I have never known what it is to love or be loved. It's like the legend of the sleeping princess. Only here it is the prince who sleeps and waits for the kiss of the beautiful young maiden who will bring him back to life. - Do you mean you want me to kiss you? - You are so literal. - Marilyn is actually a great comedy actress, very funny. - Isn't that nonsense? - What is it, stigmatism? - No, just blind is a bat. - Me too. - Oh really?

Then why aren't you wearing glasses? - And I don't think people appreciate this enough because I don't know why comedy is seen as a minor, less serious film medium in the film commentary space. But I think it's because it's so hard to make good comedy because a lot of actors are really bad at comedy because comedy requires you to have really good, downright good line delivery, comic timing, and facial expressions. There are many things that many people do not appreciate. Marilyn's specific style of comedy was based on incongruous literalism and poor acting. And this is the kind of comedy she had in real life too.

For example, in 1952 she was quoted in Time magazine, when she was asked if she had anything on during the nude photo shoot, she said, "I had the radio on." Sarah Churchwell writes that "literality became part of her comedic persona on and off screen, helping to blur the boundaries between the two." And this confusion was a problem because critics began to think that Marilyn was simply playing herself in many films. These films, one critic said, "like a flower," Marilyn has always given her best simply by being. And although it's possible that she Marilyn didn't have the range or she didn't have the opportunity to develop a range.

I think just dismissing her acting ability by saying, oh, she's just playing herself is incredibly reductive. The truth is that Marilyn was acting all her life. Marilyn Monroe's persona was something she created herself and something she had to maintain during any type of public appearance. And while it's probably the most famous case of someone adopting a persona, it's definitely not the only one. As I mentioned in my Audrey Hepburn video, Audrey was known for playing these quirky, no-nonsense girls next door, which is evidently why she was cast in Breakfast at Tiffany's even though the story's writer, Truman Capote said he wanted Marilyn for the role.

The studios at the time were worried that the movie would be too raunchy if they cast Marilyn as Holly Golightly, because in the book, Holly Golightly is a prostitute. So they decided to cast Audrey to make the movie more censor-friendly, which is a little ridiculous because Audrey still likes playing a prostitute. But because Audrey had a reputation for being like this lady with a lot of class and elegance, they felt that casting her would balance out some of the more sexual undertones of the script. And they also like to rewrite many scenes in the script. So I will say that, I think that although Audrey Hepburn was known for these specific character traits and was cast in many very similar roles, she was not as tied to a person off screen as Marilyn Monroe was, but in general, the Studio-era stars were pushed to adopt these archetypes so that companies could capitalize on their previous successes.

For example, if we think about it, imagining that a celebrity is the exact same person as the character she plays leads to these parasocial relationships because the audience believes they know this person based on what they see in the movies. All of this is to say that I don't think Marilyn Monroe should be undermined at all in terms of acting ability, because she was basically forced to play this character, both on and off screen, which takes a lot of talent and work. . In summary, Conkle writes: "Contrary to the belief that this meant that she could not act, Monroe gave such a convincing performance in all areas of her public existence, that it was believed that her ability to maintain this type in her film roles was not was enough." performance at all." In the second half of her career, Marilyn attempted to break away from this archetype and moved to New York.

She left Hollywood in protest against the Fox studio because she believed, one, that she was not getting the roles she wanted to play, and two, because they were paying him less relative to the amount of money he was making them as a rising star. While in New York, he began training with Lee Strasberg at the Actors studio. method acting, which is a whole can of worms that I don't really want to reveal in this video. I'm personally against method acting because I feel like it's very dangerous and unhealthy because it's basically like pulling from your own traumatic experiences to create emotions. authentic, and I don't know, it just doesn't seem that great.

But that being said, it was definitely a style that was gaining credibility in society at large thanks to the successful method of actors like Marlon Brando and James Dean. Then, in December 1955, he negotiated a new contract with his studio that gave him better compensation, required him to make only four films instead of 14 over the next seven years, as well as the ability to approve the films' directors and acting in outside films, including those for her own production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions. Unfortunately, she still didn't get the kind of freedom she wanted to choose the types of roles to play.

So while I think her acting is better in the latter half of her career, she was still forced into this "girl" archetype. However, in saying that, I think the performances of her, the new performances of her, were interesting because they offered a meta-commentary on how Marilyn was forced into these roles. So if that doesn't make any sense, but let me try to clarify that for you, Laura writes in the film: "If Monroe was going to continue receiving sexual roles," she could still use her training method "to imbue the performances with she". "with commentary on what it means to "continually be seen as a sexual product." For example, in The Showgirl Prince, which was produced by Marilyn Monroe Productions, the focus is on her character Elsie, who is, like many of the other characters by Marilyn, a showgirl.

However, there is one scene that really catches my attention, and it is the one in which the regent ignores Elsie to make phone calls and the camera focuses on Elsie, who is entertaining herself - Ah, miss. Marina, would you like some champagne? Oh, I don't know, your grand ducal, do you really think I should? Well, maybe just a sip, maybe... - Elsie's private performance here is essentially her change. to this sexpot personality. And when we watch the scene, we can see that the whole personality is something that Elsie and therefore Marilyn Monroe can turn on and off whenever they want Misfits is another film that really stands out from the Marilyn Monroe cinematic cannon. , mainly because it is the only film where the role was written in response to his request for a new acting challenge; the script was written by her then-husband, Arthur Miller. - What makes you so sad?

I think you are the saddest girl I have ever met. -Marilyn's character in the film is Roslyn, who is currently in Reno to quickly divorce her. She decides to help these two cowboys she knows redecorate one of her houses. There's a scene where she shows Guido one of the jeans, the work she's done for her house, and he opens the door to a closet that has a bunch of old photographs of the real Marilyn Monroe. She quickly closes the door saying, oh, don't look at those, they're nothing. Guido insists on opening the door again and she closes it again.

When I see this, I read it as Marilyn desperately trying to leave behind this persona that she became famous for, leave it in the past, while she pursues more serious acting roles. I also see it as the real experience of her nude photos appearing in the centerfolds of Playboy, without her consent. I think this is probably Marilyn's best role in terms of highlighting her acting abilities. The subtle facial expressions she makes are extremely natural and show the deep sadness that undermines her character's circumstances. Of course, these films are not without criticism. Richard Dyer points out that Roslyn still has no biography and is reduced to a divorcee still dependent on Marilyn's naïve sexual personality.

And she has still been the object of the male gaze on multiple occasions. And in The Prince and the Showgirl, one of the first sequences is Marilyn's boob falling out of her dress. So while there's this underlying meta-commentary, there's still this insistence on showing off Marilyn's body and having her play roles adjacent to a character she's already known for. (piano music) Photographer Richard Avedon, who worked with Marilyn in real life, once said of her: "There was no such person as Marilyn Monroe", Marilyn Monroe was her invention. "A brilliant invention that she created, "like an author creates a character." In fact, there are many testimonies that point out the difference between the real Marilyn and the Marilyn seen by the public.

Another photographer, Philippe Halsman, wrote in Life magazine . in 1952, about his experience with Marilyn, "I found Marilyn anything but stupid with an astonishing candor" and a good sense of humor and her company stimulating, "even in the spiritual sense" the trait that most struck me. It was a general benevolence, "an absolute absence of envy and jealousy," which in an actress was surprising. These inconsistencies between Marilyn's personality and the real Marilyn were accentuated even later after her death. But unfortunately, when is about someone who dies under uncertain circumstances, whose real life became unknowable to most of us and who was no longer present to verify or deny any testimony that emerged after his death, it is not surprising that his subsequent biographies have been based on a high degree of fictionalization and speculation.

For example, Marilyn had a drug abuse problem, but there is a conflict about how she got the drugs in the first place. In Norma Jean and Marilyn, she receives them from Ted Lewis, in Blonde, one of her lovers, Cass, introduces her to pills, in The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, Johnny Hyde gives her drugs to calm her down on the set of All . About Eve. But these fictionalizations or speculations are really disrespectful to me because Marilyn was a real person and I feel like they like to ruin her legacy, but I understand why they do it.

I think it's wrong, but I understand why filmmakers and writers feel like they have to fill in these blanks because there's so much modern interest in who she is and who, or who she was. And people just want answers to her questions. And once again, a lot of the interest in her is because her image is literally plastered everywhere. Steven Cohen analyzes several biographical films of Marilyn in his article and notes that "gossip about her affairs, abortions, and impossible or impossible murders" also reinforces her immortality, "because her veracity is always debatable" and debatable, giving the story of his life "his sense of continuity".

There are definitely parts of her story that are true and tragic. Like the fact that her mother had schizophrenia and couldn't care for her, which landed Marilyn in numerous foster homes. The fact that Marilyn had three failed marriages. , the fact that she had trouble conceiving and had endometriosis, the fact that she was mentally ill, the fact that she was basically bullied and exploited by the Hollywood machine, and the fact that she died early at the age of 36. Conkle also notes that Marilyn's Personality reflects the story of a woman who was the "famous damaged one." The damage of fame includes mental health problems, addictions and bankruptcies, which evidently brings people closer to the wounded celebrity.

Therefore, Marilyn's series of struggles endeared her to others. People love to see themselves represented in celebrity narratives, because I feel like people like having someone to work through their problems with, like they want someone to start the conversation for them when it comes to things that they're dealing with. internally. During Marilyn's life, her inability to have a baby was a frequent conversation among fan magazines. A Photoplay article imagined Marilyn saying, which I think is totally inappropriate, but anyway, the article said, "someday, when I'm older, I'm going to have a girl of my own" and I'll never have to leave her, never, ever. " Marilyn was essentially a vehicle for these women to talk about their issues related to reproductive health and motherhood.

Recently, we've seen Kim Kardashian wearing two of Maryland's royal dresses. We haveseen numerous representations of Marilyn Monroe in pop culture, whether it be a recreation of a gentleman, a favorite blonde sequence or a recreation of her photo shoots. Earlier this year, another Marilyn Monroe documentary came out, which attempted to reframe the narrative of her as empowering to reflect the cultural tendency of her to boss women around everyone and everything. Marilyn's relevance seems to always be constant. -Seeing a woman so responsible for her sexuality as something extremely empowering. This woman is so comfortable in her own skin that she was rolling the dice on her career in very real terms. -Overall, I think all this reframing to make Marilyn like her, representing a movement to push an agenda is a disservice and disrespectful to who she was, who was a woman in the 50s, dealing with problems of the 1950s.

But at the same time, I think projecting yourself onto Marylyn on a personal level is fine, because that's exactly what celebrities are, their figures that people can project onto and help make sense of their own. lives. It's just about learning how to navigate those things without being disrespectful or tarnishing the legacy of a real human being. Anyway, thank you so much for tuning in, this is the end of the video. Let me know in the comments what you think about Marilyn Monroe and what you think about recent events involving Marilyn Monroe. I don't know when I'll make another vintage Hollywood-themed video, but I'd love to hear suggestions for other figurines or vintage Hollywood videos you'd like to see from me.

And yes, thank you very much for tuning in. I hope you have a happy rest of the day and see you next time, bye.