She is not merely objectified (the first shot we see of her is her backside during the shoot of The Seven Year Itch), she is prodded, examined, raped, subjected to two forced abortions, and abused physically and emotionally. In Blonde, Dominik fixates on Marilyn's body to a gynaecological extent. During her lifetime and beyond, Marilyn's body has been 'used to sell a dream of desirability', posits Yhara Zayd in her video essay Selling Marilyn: A Life Merchandised, about the posthumous commercial exploitation of Monroe's image.

It's classic Laura Mulvey stuff,' she says, referring to the pioneering academic's ' male gaze' theory. 'It's objectification, it's fetishisation, it's ownership. As Dr Lucy Bolton, a reader in film studies at Queen Mary University of London, says, the actress was often 'cut up into segments in her films,' with shots that focussed on her breasts, her crotch, her mouth. However there is, at least, an element of bratty joyfulness to this Marilyn as she enjoys her success, and the film ends without putting her (and us) through her sorrowful demise.ĭominik turns Marilyn's story into a body horror. 'Let's drop the goo-goo routine, you can't be as dumb as you look', the studio head known as Mr R (an avatar for 20th Century Fox boss Darryl F Zanuck) tells her just before he sexually assaults her. Montgomery plays Marilyn as an overly grateful and naive woman-child, saying please and thank you to the very men who dismiss and debase her. Both Marilyn and the men she was close to get to have their say.

With each character speaking directly to the camera, verbalising their point-of-view as the scenes unfold, it's a less exploitative adaptation and a more psychoanalytical one. Chopra's version channels the cruelty of Marilyn's life without displaying the surgical coldness of Dominik's film.

Dominik's is not the first Blonde screen adaptation – that was Joyce Chopra's 2001 TV movie, which starred Poppy Montgomery. Oates' Pulitzer Prize-winning book is a fictionalisation of Marilyn's life, narrated from the point of view of a deeply traumatised and lonely woman, in love with movies and the idea of love, but desperately crippled with daddy issues that infect every single relationship she develops.

Sister of marilyn monroe