The Longest, Saddest Blonde Joke
Blonde is obsessed with pictures of Marilyn Monroe. Throughout the nearly three-hour slog, the aspect ratio changes multiple times to painstakingly recreate the photos. All the hits are there: the beach photos, the garden pictures with Arthur Miller, and the turtleneck and gingham trousers. The director of photography, cinematographer, make-up artists and costume designers have done an incredible job of recreating the pictures; there’s just one thing missing though. The pictures on the screen are joyless.
Decades-old photos viewed on my tiny, cracked phone screen radiate joy. She’s charismatic, she’s glowing, and her smile – even though surely forced in some of the pictures – is effervescent. Blonde ignores all of this and instead opts for trauma porn. It is nearly three hours of unrelenting, pointless misery. Blonde wants to tell the story of a broken Hollywood system of times past, that comments on the exploitation suffered by young actresses. It fails on almost every level possible. Instead of commenting on the exploitation, it just joins right on in; instead of creating the character of a young actress struggling with fame and childhood trauma, it just doesn’t. It doesn’t even bother creating a character at all, Blonde’s Marilyn is just an empty vessel for the camera to follow and objectify as she cries.
A Very Sexy Baby
“For men [Marilyn] is an object of sexual desire that is desperately in need of rescue,” said director Andrew Dominik in the early rounds of the press cycle. Instead of interrogating that statement, Dominik rapes her. There are at least two graphic rape scenes in this film, the first in the first half hour of the movie. In the latter half of the film, there is a graphic blow job scene literally shot from the POV of JFK’s groin; all the audience sees is Monroe’s mouth and tear-filled eyes as we hear a voiceover where she’s willing herself not to vomit. These scenes have both already made their way to porn websites, where they’ll be viewed alongside “Stuck Petite PAWG BBW MILF Gets Rammed By Stepson’s Nephew’s DILF BWC”.
There can be storytelling value for the audience in showing the emotional truth of sexual assault (see Mad Men, The Duchess) but when the camera isn’t actively raping Marilyn, it’s wishing it was. “Look at the ass on that little girl,” says one Hollywood producer immediately before the camera fades in on said ass. We see Marilyn film the famous white dress subway grate scene from The Seven Year Itch, and the camera is practically salivating over it. The actual scene is relatively demure, and the allure comes more from what it doesn’t show. Dominik takes the opposite approach and has prolonged slow-motion shots of her legs, thighs, and panties. Shortly after, we see her topless and tearful getting beat up by her husband (and shot from his POV) for her “too risqué” career. The film objectifies her, and then immediately punishes her for it.
There are no historical grounds for Dominik to brutalise her so often; if it was a choice to show how brutal mid-century Hollywood was, the point is lost in how much the camera enjoys the assaults.
I’m Not Sad, I’m Just Drawn That Way
In about 90% of the film Marilyn is on the verge of tears, and in the remaining 10%, she is actively crying. In one scene, Joe DiMaggio asks Monroe how she got into acting; instead of answering, she starts to well up as we are treated to a rape flashback. The truth is that Marilyn worked her ass off to be an actress; when she was modelling, she would study the photographers and ask questions about the craft. She studied under Lee Strasbourg and was one of the first actresses to create her own production company. By Dominik’s own confession, he’s not interested in that. He’s not interested in anything that would make her a well-rounded or interesting character – he’s barely interested in creating a character arc.
an empty vessel
for the camera to follow and objectify as she cries
We first meet Marilyn as a young Norma Jean, growing up with a mentally unstable and abusive mother. She then joins an abusive Hollywood system, jumps from abusive partner to abusive partner, and has trauma upon trauma piled on top of her. There are about two scenes where she gets to be happy, and they’re immediately undercut by yet another trauma.
People have described Blonde as a psychological horror, but for horror to be effective, there needs to be tension, of which there is absolutely none. We know that Marilyn is going to be miserable in every scene, we know she’s probably going to end up topless and crying; there’s no suspense & the film is too boring and one-note to be tense. By the film's end, you’re practically relieved when she dies – finally, the misery is over, and I can watch Abbott Elementary.
Some Like It Bad
Blonde is a deeply unpleasant film filled with contempt for its main character. I could go on for several more pages about how much I hate this film, from its dismissal of her career to its weirdly pro-life agenda. I hope this film hangs over the career of everyone involved like a black cloud, and for the rest of their working days. From the overuse of the word “Daddy” to the POV vagina abortion scenes to the obsession over her “daddy issues,” this film is pure trash that both hates and lusts after the central character. If Frollo from Hunchback of Notre Dame had access to a Hollywood production team, this is the kind of garbage he’d create.
Everyone go watch Gentlemen Prefer Blondes instead
For more on how much we hate exploitation media, check out our latest episode of What Else Are We Mad At