If we look at celebrities, most of them have an image to their character. For example, Brad Pitt is the all-American good-looking guy who is tough as displayed by his characters in Troy and The Fight Club. This image that stars portray has to do with the theory of fandom and stardom. With fans following celebrities’ every move, they need to hold on to something that represents them. In other words, they need to possess a trait to symbolize them, some sort of motif.
In the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe, one of the biggest female stars of the time had an image to rely on – sexuality. Thomas Harris mentions in his article, “The Building of Popular Images: Grace Kelley and Marilyn Monroe,” that the star system relied on creating an image for the stars so that the audience can relate to the characters that these stars played on the screen to their off-screen persona, such as in TV appearances, magazine articles and newspaper stories. The image that was constructed for Marilyn was that of an over-sexualized female, as her work out of film allowed for this. Marilyn was known for her racy pictures in Playboy and “the circumstances of her birth, her youthful trials and her early marriage,” which allowed her in the eyes of the public to be a sexual rebel without being morally condemned.
With this, how did Marilyn become a sexual symbol in the media, which even to this day is still prominent? First of all, her characters in films allowed her to be the “eye-candy” of the film for males. This related to Laura Maulvey’s theory of the male gaze, in which the female is what captures the gaze of the male spectator. This is evident in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in the sequence where she is dressed in a bright pink dress, singing and performing for a male audience. The iconography of the scene allows for Marilyn to be the center of attention, focusing the gaze on her.
Furthermore, many of her characters like Richard Dyer argues in Heavenly Bodies, had no biographical information. A lot of her characters had no depth, which can be inferred that her presence in these plots was not to add importance, but only to sexualize them. In some instances, her characters did not even have names.
All of this worked in 1950s society because of social changes happening. For instance, in the media, film had to compete with other leisure activities like television. If film had something that television did not have (sexy females flaunting their bodies) it could attract more spectators. Also, this is when the censorship code began to collapse and films were able to be more explicit in terms of showing off the human body and expressing immoral themes. The 1950s was also a very sexual decade. This is when the Kinsey Report was published, which talked about the human sexual experience. In this same decade we also the first issue of Playboy, in which Marilyn was the first centerfold model. The change in sexuality in America can be portrayed with Marilyn as she did not care about exposing her body and taking very controversial pictures.
Although Marilyn has become a sexual symbol for America, she can still be seen as innocent. Her blonde hair gives her the leeway to the stereotype of “dumb blonde.” Dyer mentions that “The dumbness of the dumb blonde is by tradition natural, because it means that she is not touched by the rationality of the world” (34).
As we can see in this slideshow, Marilyn Monroe is in no form ashamed to show off her body in a sexual way. Her sexuality transgresses her body though. As we see in Gentlemen Prefer Blonder, Marilyn uses her femininity to get what she wants – money! She uses her voice to attract men. She uses her wit (which contradicts the dumb blonde stereotype) to convince her father-in-law that she is a good fit for his son. This sexual image captures one of the ideologies that is evident in 1950s America, and this is one of the reasons why the name Marilyn Monroe is recognized nationally and associated with sex.
Questions
1. Do you think that the character of Dorothy Shaw, based on her appearance as a brunette, could have had the same success as Lorelei (Marilyn Monroe) who was a blonde in terms of sexuality?
2. How can Monroe’s sexuality be seen as both dirty and clean? How can there be two different approaches to a celebrity’s image?
3. Aside from sexuality, is there another image that Marilyn Monroe could have embodied based on her performances?
No comments:
Post a Comment