In the student union here, right now, in 2008, there’s a poster of Marilyn Monroe—it’s the one with five different poses, all obviously from the same shoot, each differently colorized—it’s familiar to me because we had the same poster in my freshman dorm room, in 1991. There is a Marilyn Monroe thing, even now. It amounts to more, I think, than “to a hottie dying young.” Here is how John Irving put it:
… what could Marilyn Monroe’s death ever have to do with me?
“IT HAS TO DO WITH ALL OF US,” said Owen Meany, when I called him that night. “SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY—NOT QUITE YOUNG ANYMORE, BUT NOT OLD EITHER; A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID, MAYBE A LOT SMARTER THAN SHE SEEMED. AND SHE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING—I THINK SHE WANTED TO BE GOOD. LOOK AT THE MEN IN HER LIFE—JOE DIMAGGIO, ARTHUR MILLER, MAYBE THE KENNEDYS. LOOK AT HOW GOOD THEY SEEM! LOOK AT HOW DESIRABLE SHE WAS! THAT’S WHAT SHE WAS: SHE WAS DESIRABLE. SHE WAS FUNNY AND SEXY—AND SHE WAS VULNERABLE, TOO. SHE WAS NEVER QUITE HAPPY, SHE WAS ALWAYS A LITTLE OVERWEIGHT. SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY,” he repeated; he was on a roll…. “AND THOSE MEN,” he said. “THOSE FAMOUS, POWERFUL MEN—DID THEY REALLY LOVE HER? DID THEY TAKE CARE OF HER? IF SHE WAS EVER WITH THE KENNEDYS, THEY COULDN’T HAVE LOVED HER—THEY WERE JUST USING HER, THEY WERE JUST BEING CARELESS AND TREATING THEMSELVES TO A THRILL….”
This passage probably goes on a bit further than it needs to, making even more explicit the parallel between Marilyn Monroe and America, the beautiful mistreated desirable objects of powerful men’s careless use deprived of the right to be ends in themselves … but that’s the right theme, the Fitzgeraldian vast carelessness with the fresh green breast of the new world.
23 comments
May 19, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Vance Maverick
Um, overweight? Do you really, really want to open this can of worms? This is one creepy fetish.
May 19, 2008 at 11:14 pm
rja
Or, in a slightly different key: “Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust”
May 19, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Hemlock
I love John Irving. I know certain sisters think that his “This Is America” theme (running through the works that I’ve read) is a bit redundant. But I think he fashions narratives in a way that allows readers to explore how U.S. past, present, and future contributes to the affective bonds that both tie and destroy “us.”
Marilyn Monroe as a “thing” or “object”? I guess that was the problem, eh? Not that every organism has a sexual self-identity and subjective assessments of “prowess”…but when materialism and media intersect with such an identity in public space…I dunno, bad things happen. Well, perhaps we’re all components of a media commodity fetish. Damn the Frankfurt School, now I’m paranoid.
Andy Warhol likes to make a point, doesn’t he?
May 20, 2008 at 12:35 am
Hemlock
“I shall explain to you the philosophy of the thing.”
– Marshal Lyautey, colonial governor of French Morocco
May 20, 2008 at 3:32 am
drip
There is a story about DiMaggio asking Monroe what was wrong and she replied that no one understood the pressure of being idolized, of having your every move followed or having thousands cheer you. Self-centered luelessness doesn’t even begin to describe it. And I agree that Monroe was much smarter than she was generally credited as being.
May 20, 2008 at 3:54 am
drip
cluelessness. I tried to type clulessness and failed. I am as clueless as, as . . . .
May 20, 2008 at 7:14 am
Megan
In lieu of insightful analysis, here I will tell all y’all that Marilyn Monroe went to my high school. As did Paula Abdul.
Van Nuys High, y’all!
May 20, 2008 at 9:21 am
charlieford
Nice connection drawn from MM to FSF, there, eric. And I like this neologism, “luelessness.” We need to think of a meaning for it. Might describe a Scots-Irish shack in a holler, huh? Something less scatalogical would be better.
May 20, 2008 at 10:43 am
drip
If all my typos and misspellings are turned into words, you will all be sorry, instead of me.
May 20, 2008 at 4:03 pm
urbino
That’s some lovely, thought-provoking prose, but doesn’t it run a bit afoul of that whole not denying women their own agency thing?
MM was a good deal more than “the beautiful mistreated desirable object of powerful men’s careless use deprived of the right to be an end in herself.” She was a participant in her life. She chose as much as she was chosen. What’s tragic is that Norma Jean chose what she chose; what vacuum in her life or psyche both led her to choose it and unfitted her to cope with it.
Also: she had a green breast? Which one?
May 20, 2008 at 4:05 pm
urbino
What’s tragic is that Norma Jean chose what she chose; what vacuum in her life or psyche both led her to choose it and unfitted her to cope with it.
Also, coming full circle, that unscrupulous men then took careless advantage of her inability to cope. But that’s more obscene than tragic, I’d say.
May 20, 2008 at 4:20 pm
eric
doesn’t it run a bit afoul of that whole not denying women their own agency thing?
It’s not about Marilyn Monroe, though, it’s about the Marilyn Monroe thing. Marilyn Monroe is a whole other story.
May 20, 2008 at 5:19 pm
urbino
So you’re not so much removing her agency, as removing her.
May 20, 2008 at 6:01 pm
ac
I like Sheila O’Malley’s posts about Marilyn Monroe—especially on the agency bit. For instance instance.
May 20, 2008 at 7:18 pm
eric
So you’re not so much removing her agency, as removing her.
You’re putting me on, right? how people feel about Marilyn Monroe is not in itself a legitimate object of discussion?
May 20, 2008 at 8:16 pm
urbino
I never meant to suggest such. I was only observing that it does remove her, as a person, from consideration. That struck me as ironic, given that the general theme of discussion on both posts has been that men saw her only as a sexually available desirable object, not as a person in trouble.
I’m not trying to cast aspersions or cut off discussion. Just observing the odd perversity of it all. As I said, I’ve never quite gotten the whole Marilyn fixation, anyway, Owen Meany notwithstanding.
May 21, 2008 at 8:18 am
charlieford
1) “. . . that men saw her only as a sexually available desirable object, not as a person in trouble.” It probably doesn’t need mentioning, but, I will: (many) men (then and now) have adopted this attitude towards women, and have exploited their various vulnerabilities when those manifested themselves, from relative physical weakness, to psychological and economic insecurity, and on and on. And, clearly, (many) women devised a variety of ways to copen with those challenges, ranging from complete refusal to play the game (homosociality, religious vows, etc.), to early marriage, to various forms of manipulation and exploitation in turn.
2) “I’ve never quite gotten the whole Marilyn fixation” Why do you hate America?
May 21, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Walt
Isn’t the famousness in question possessed more by the Andy Warhol painting rather than by Monroe?
May 21, 2008 at 2:43 pm
eric
It’s not the Warhol, it’s a different one.
May 21, 2008 at 3:05 pm
charlieford
No, Walt’s right: more people recognize the subject of the Warhol painting than a portrait of James Monroe.
May 21, 2008 at 4:58 pm
urbino
Why do you hate America?
It keeps sidling up to me with its green breasts and feminine wiles, trying to steal my virtue.
May 21, 2008 at 6:49 pm
The Modesto Kid
charlieford’s comment makes me wish for a book about the evolution of the female figure judged attractive in film, titled The Monroe Doctrine. urbino’s comment makes me chuckle.
March 18, 2009 at 8:15 am
V.E.G.
Marilyn Monroe is the distant cousin (through Thomas Mayhew) of Bruce Wilson Maloy! Maloy is the victim of the worst shooting in the history of the heart of Dixie (that is Alabama)! Maloy is a hero!