When Marilyn Monroe’s name is mentioned the first thing that pops in to most people’s head is how she is a beautiful iconic sex symbol of the fifties. The majority of the roles she played allowed her to be seen as a male gaze. The image that she held on screen was also seen off screen in her normal everyday life. While I was reading Richard Dyer’s Heavenly Bodies he mentions that she is seen as a victim as a sex object, Megan Fox and Anna Nicole Smith came in to mind. Megan Fox is not necessarily thought of as a great actress, but is someone who is sexy and carries the same kind of qualities Monroe upheld to contribute to the male gaze. On the other hand Anna Nicole Smith, seen as less of an actress than Megan Fox, holds the image of the over the top dumb blonde that Dyer mentions, which is more of Monroe’s onscreen persona.
I feel like the Dyer’s theory on the dumb blonde character that relies on men for money and stability has changed dramatically through the years. One movie that immediately popped into my mind was Legally Blonde. This movie tried to play against the typical blonde stereotypes that had been enforced in prior movies about women. I think that the “dumb blonde” is talking about any attractive women who are seen as only people who get by based on their looks and purely that. Like Monroe’s role in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes her character relied on men for money and attention to feel good about themselves. This reflects the issues that were present at the time in the fifties where women were the homemakers and the men were the breadwinners and they had to rely on them for money and dependence. Unlike Reese Witherspoon’s character in Legally Blonde she demonstrated that girls do not have to be objects of the male gaze and they can be self-sufficient, which shows how dramatically times in society have changed.
The male gaze that Monroe demonstrates onscreen by through the handsome men memorization by her stunning looks. The male gaze consists of a shot of the woman, in this case Monroe, a shot of the men looking at her stunning looks, and then a shot of the woman from their point of view. As I watched Gentlemen Prefer Blondes I noticed that they whenever there would be a setting with new characters Monroe would be shown in a captivating light that would then show a man or group of men noticing her stunning looks, and then they would approach her.
Monroe’s star persona and image that Dyer said how “pretty girls are sought out in films” reflects the understanding of how an image can be so influential that fifty years later we still look to her as one of the greatest sex symbols.
1. Who else can be seen as someone who represents the same qualities on and off screen like Monroe?
2. Why are women criticized as being gold diggers?
3. What are men criticized for?
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