Andrew Dominik’s film Blonde, a story of Marilyn Monroe’s life based on an adaptation of a Joyce Carol Oates novel, has been the subject of much divisive discourse on both sides of the Atlantic. Caren Spruch of Planned Parenthood told the Hollywood Reporter that she sees the film as ‘anti-abortion propaganda’. A tweet that went viral said filmmaker ‘Andrew Dominik didn’t even try to conceal his anti-choice views and hatred for Marilyn’.
She is more profitable as a maiden than she is as a mother, and so she is robbed of that transformation by countless men – those who lust for her and those who earn from her
While the divisiveness of the film comes from the depiction of Marilyn as being either coerced or actively forced into having abortions against her will, the film’s critique is deeper than a simple pro-choice or pro-life argument. Dominik depicts a woman whose body is stuck in constant maidenhood, exploited by Hollywood and lustful men at her expense. Marilyn is a woman perpetually seeking to be the Madonna, and kept against her will as the whore.
In a scene set towards the beginning of her film career, Marilyn becomes pregnant after affairs with two men, one of whom is Charlie Chaplin’s son, just as she is set to star in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Considering her pregnancy vis-a-vis her role, she speaks with her agent and asks what she will make as the title character. Her agent responds that she will earn scale: about $5,000 for the picture. She then asks what Jane Russell, her co-star, would earn: her agent reluctantly reveals that she will probably make $100,000.
Marilyn decides to go through with the film and calls her agent to arrange an abortion. She is shown to have a change of heart in the hospital room, but the doctors proceed despite her last-minute protests. At the film’s premiere, Marilyn is ambivalent and crying. The movie results in meagre earnings, which leaves her with only the adoration of fans and a vicious cycle in which the only prize is more exploitation.
Blonde is a film that depicts a woman in a double bind of being used. On the one hand, she is a wage slave, a worker whose body cannot be pregnant to complete her work. On the other, she is a sex symbol: Hollywood executives use her sexual glamour to trade on the male gaze and sell seats.
Throughout the film, you see Marilyn longing for motherhood, only to be thwarted at every turn by the circumstances of her life. The best possible circumstances for motherhood require a delicate balance of both financial security and enough freedom from work to care for oneself in pregnancy and the baby’s infancy. To become mothers, women need to be able to embrace the transformation that happens to all of us in our transition from maiden to mother, which includes a necessary interdependence with others. This is possible only through a social contract that tells women they and their children will be safe in the care of others. In return, society gets to reproduce and further itself
In the case of Marilyn, at least as depicted in the film, she is more profitable as a maiden than she is as a mother, and so she is robbed of that transformation by countless men – those who lust for her and those who earn from her alike. Blonde shows a deeply tragic woman who does not gain freedom to work through abortion but whose freedom is robbed from her long before she enters the surgical room
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s World edition.
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