The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe - Sarah Churchwell
The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe - Sarah Churchwell
Non-Fiction
Pages: 336
This is an interesting approach to the story of Marilyn Monroe - not so much a biography of her herself, but a biography of her biographies. Perhaps more than any other celebrity or star, Marilyn Monroe's life has become myth, archetype, symbol. We no longer see her, if indeed we ever did. We see in her what we want to see, what we want her to be, what we want her to represent. We like to imagine that the character of 'Marilyn Monroe' was a construct, a shield for the 'real' Norma Jean underneath, the Norma Jean that her biographies set out to reveal - an approach that, as Churchwell points out, no-one ever does for other celebrities with stage or changed names, like Martin Sheen, Judy Garland, Elton John and many many others.
Churchwell sets out to deconstruct how Marilyn's life has been told, cutting through the myth and the hyperbole, highlighting the many many inconsistencies and varieties in the various 'lives' of Marilyn Monroe, the details no two biographers can agree on. On the way she exposes the misogyny and sexual obsession that so many biographers, male and female, display in retelling Marilyn's life - after all, don't we all remember Marilyn Monroe visually, the hair, the pert bottom, the lush voluptuous figure, the red lips and the white skin? Who remembers anything Marilyn said? This obsession with Marilyn's body spills over into the obsession with her dead body - to quote Elton John, "all the papers had to say / was that Marilyn was found in the nude" - and the numerous conspiracy theories surrounding her death, all of which have to do in some way with her sexuality and her rumoured affairs with one or both Kennedy brothers.
Reading this book, I felt tremendously sorry for Marilyn Monroe. Not just as a result of her wretched childhood, hard-scrabble upbringing and tragic death, but for the way throughout her life she was constantly belittled, patronised and disregarded. No-one gave Marilyn credit for having a brain or a will of her own; she was that breathy 'little-girl-lost' in the knock-out body of a sexually voracious woman, every man's fantasy. And that's all she continues to be, in every book and biography - the lost little Norma Jean, subsumed by the artificial construct that was 'Marilyn Monroe'. Because that's who we need her to be, we need to believe that the real struggles against the artificial, that no-one can lead two lives, that her death was tragic and pre-ordained, that Marilyn Monroe's life fits the archetype. Because, as Edgar Allan Poe once said, "The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world." Marilyn Monroe, the most beautiful woman in the world, one again reduced to a trope.
Non-Fiction
Pages: 336
This is an interesting approach to the story of Marilyn Monroe - not so much a biography of her herself, but a biography of her biographies. Perhaps more than any other celebrity or star, Marilyn Monroe's life has become myth, archetype, symbol. We no longer see her, if indeed we ever did. We see in her what we want to see, what we want her to be, what we want her to represent. We like to imagine that the character of 'Marilyn Monroe' was a construct, a shield for the 'real' Norma Jean underneath, the Norma Jean that her biographies set out to reveal - an approach that, as Churchwell points out, no-one ever does for other celebrities with stage or changed names, like Martin Sheen, Judy Garland, Elton John and many many others.
Churchwell sets out to deconstruct how Marilyn's life has been told, cutting through the myth and the hyperbole, highlighting the many many inconsistencies and varieties in the various 'lives' of Marilyn Monroe, the details no two biographers can agree on. On the way she exposes the misogyny and sexual obsession that so many biographers, male and female, display in retelling Marilyn's life - after all, don't we all remember Marilyn Monroe visually, the hair, the pert bottom, the lush voluptuous figure, the red lips and the white skin? Who remembers anything Marilyn said? This obsession with Marilyn's body spills over into the obsession with her dead body - to quote Elton John, "all the papers had to say / was that Marilyn was found in the nude" - and the numerous conspiracy theories surrounding her death, all of which have to do in some way with her sexuality and her rumoured affairs with one or both Kennedy brothers.
Reading this book, I felt tremendously sorry for Marilyn Monroe. Not just as a result of her wretched childhood, hard-scrabble upbringing and tragic death, but for the way throughout her life she was constantly belittled, patronised and disregarded. No-one gave Marilyn credit for having a brain or a will of her own; she was that breathy 'little-girl-lost' in the knock-out body of a sexually voracious woman, every man's fantasy. And that's all she continues to be, in every book and biography - the lost little Norma Jean, subsumed by the artificial construct that was 'Marilyn Monroe'. Because that's who we need her to be, we need to believe that the real struggles against the artificial, that no-one can lead two lives, that her death was tragic and pre-ordained, that Marilyn Monroe's life fits the archetype. Because, as Edgar Allan Poe once said, "The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world." Marilyn Monroe, the most beautiful woman in the world, one again reduced to a trope.