"Art's not meant to be comfortable!" So rich of them to say when they're not the ones being caricatured, degraded, violated onscreen, or stereotyped as a gender.

"What does Marilyn Monroe mean?"
Bruh, she's a person, not a vocabulary word.

Why does nobody ever talk about how Marilyn had her own production studio in Hollywood?!? Tidbits like that are MUCH more interesting to me than Blonde.

Blonde felt like someone's Wattpad version of Marilyn.

That director is the absolute embodiment of the word "wanker".

Oates and Dominik are like two college freshmen who just discovered Marilyn Monroe and think they're blowing everyone's minds by telling them she was, like, really sad all the time. Lol

Also, Andrew and Joyce keep saying “killed herself” when in reality we do not know if it was an accidental overdose or not. Not to mention filming in the actual spot where she died just feels so exploitive.

I grew up thinking she was a ditzy bombshell. But when I started watching her films, I noticed how funny she was and how good her acting was. She had great comedic timing. Marilyn deserves to be seen as a full human being, instead of becoming an idea filtered through the male gaze over and over again.

Just before the Oscars this year, Turner Classic Movies put out a video where the nominated artists reflected on their favorite films and performances. Guillermo del Toro talked about "Some Like It Hot" and spoke so admiringly of Marilyn's knowledge of literature and how well she understood acting in front of a camera. It's a short snippet, only 28 seconds, but it treats Marilyn with more respect than Blonde does in 3 hours.

When the actress portraying Marilyn complained that people were putting clips from this movie on porn hub and that that was disrespecting her right to control how her own image would be portrayed, without realizing that making explicit sex scenes while impersonating another woman who fought her entire career to be acknowledged as more than a sex symbol was the same kind of fucked, I realized this movie would be a problem.
I refused to give it a chance so I didn't know if I was right, but now I see my suspicions were confirmed

You know which scene truly pissed me off? The one in DiMaggio's place with his relatives, they ask her something about being famous, maybe, and Marilyn responds: "Oh, I'm just the blonde from the movies." Then someone goes "So the hair is real?" And she says, aloof, "No." When they all laugh she just looks confused and doe-eyed, like, you mean to tell me that Marilyn "I just wear Chanel no 5 to bed" Monroe wouldn't have made that joke on purpose???

It amazes me that people still don't realize how much part Marilyn had in shaping her image and persona. There was an intelligence and subversion in how she portrayed herself, knowing and self-aware in ways most stars during that era couldn't possibly fathom. And why must we always magnify the tragedy? These would-be chroniclers never talk about her incredible wit, her desire to sharpen her skills with Strasberg, or even the creation of her film production company. She was a focused, dedicated actor with a budding business sense. If we must constantly speak her name, then let's speak of her as the complex, multifaceted being that she was.

My favourite story about Marilyn Monroe was her friendship with Ella Fitzgerald.

That whole quote about women not being empowered if they killed themselves made me feel so sick. Not only as a women that deals with depression but because I admire so many women writers that had taken their own lives. What they did while alive was wonderful, killing yourself doesn’t make you less

Calling her performance in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes “romanticized whoredom” says everything you need to know about the director. GPB is (first of all amazing) but more interestingly, about two women who do what they want, enjoy sex, have fun, give smart and convincing justifications for why it isn’t wrong to want nice things, and ultimately *are not punished for it*. Like how do you watch a movie like that and get to “sad prostitute, I’d rather watch her be sad, hate everything, and die”. It’s borderline Puritanical.

Also serious but rhetorical question for the culture: would any of these straight men (and I’m looking at Sam Levinson rn) make  media about women with addictions and mental illness if the women in question weren’t conventionally gorgeous? Because sometimes it feels like intellectually they’re operating on the level of “Nooo don’t kill urself ur too sexy 😭”.

Honestly, I’m disappointed in Ana de Armas for thinking this was the biopic that we’ve been waiting for. All her talk of “visiting her grave” and feeling Marilyn’s presence in her while shooting seems equally as exploitative as whatever this director thought he was doing. I hope this (and Elvis) get few to join awards and turn studios off these weird, needlessly hyper-sexual “biopics”

I’m going in having not even watched blonde, partially because I love this channel that much, and partially because I just refuse. Can we please let Marilyn Monroe rest? The poor woman spent her whole life being exploited and not even death could end it for her

I find an it weird when people such as Joyce Carol Oates say that unless we frame women as victims we're ignoring the hard truth of sexism and choosing instead to just see the palatable image that we want to see. I think you can acknowledge sexism and violence towards women without reducing women to mere victims. In fact, framing women like Marilyn, who endured assault and abuse, as simply victims is another way of disempowering them. 'Blonde' could have told a nuanced story about Marilyn's skills, intelligence and her fight to be taken seriously as an actor rather than merely as a sex symbol, but instead the film reduced her to her body and her treatment at the hands of men. It entirely portrayed her through the male gaze and ignored her personality. Perhaps the film feels uncomfortable to watch because in a sense it mirrors those assaults; it objectifies her and makes her suffering into an unnuanced spectacle that reduces her to a symbol rather than a person.

May i also add, i think one of the reasons why her fans are so protective of her is because of films like Blonde. Marilyn is a tragic figure. And thats all anyone ever talks about. No one does care about her and who she really was, we want to rescue her because we hate seeing her tragety, her pain, be - once again - monotized by another man for HIS sake. Not hers. The woman was so sexualized that EVEN IN HER OWN GRAVE she is buried between two men, one of whom is supposedly entombed face down so that he could "always be on top of her." When a woman like Marilyn, who i believe never had the chance to actually achive the Dolly Parton style fame, is constantly redused to just her tragity a film like Blonde is just tragity porn and does nothing but continue that narrative of her only being tragic. Its frustrating and only encourages us to protect her.

I'm tired of seeing her suffer. Its disturbing to me. She suffered in life and now we keep dragging her ideal not her personhood through the mud.