#头条创作挑战赛 #
Because of a Netflix biopic, Marilyn Monroe was pushed to the forefront again.
This so-called large-production, large-scale movie encountered a series of bad reviews after its release, and the contrast between the words before and after made me curious, so I found this movie of nearly 3 hours and watched it carefully from beginning to end.
There were several times in between, and I had to press the pause button to resist the urge to vomit.
If consuming Monroe's pain, spying on Monroe's sex, judging her as an oedipal father, and a vulnerable woman with promiscuous intercourse can be called her biographical film, it is not unjust to be badly reviewed.
When Monroe was sexually assaulted by executives of the film company in the movie, the audience's eyes and spirit were also raped by this voyeuristic movie.
After 60 years, when will people stop scrutinizing Monroe's body full of "sexual playfulness"?
This is not the story we want to see Monroe, at least not as a "sex thing" presented to everyone.
I want to retell her story.
It all starts with a little girl named Norma Jane.
The little girl was born in Los Angeles in 1926, her mother was a film editor at a Hollywood studio, and her fatherhood was a mystery that never appeared in her life.
Her mother was busy with work and had no time to take care of her, so she had to entrust her to the care of a friend. In a childhood without her parents, loneliness was Norma's only companion, and in a one-man game, she often fantasized about her happy family, fantasizing that she would come home from school in the rain, and her father would stand at the door and wait for her to return, blaming her for not wearing rain boots.
This was the beginning of her love for acting, because only when acting, the script of life can be written by herself: "When I was 5 years old, I started wanting to be an actor, I liked acting, I didn't like the real world around me because it was a bit cruel. ”
When Norma was 7 years old, her mother was taken to the hospital for mental illness, and since then, she has been a regular visitor to the orphanage. "I used to stand by the window of the orphanage and cry because I saw the neon sign of Raidenhua Film Company on the roof in the distance, where my mother used to work as a film editor." But just as her mother will never come home from the film company, Norma will never be able to live with her family again.
Monroe and her mother
In just 10 years, she has been kicked in leather ball, adopted and abandoned more than a dozen times, and most of these foster families have children of their own, but as long as they take in orphans, they can receive a $5 a week, and they all need the $5 without exception.
In her host family, Norma does a lot of chores, doing laundry, washing dishes, cleaning floors, and learning to "never complain, never ask," exchanging a child's precocious maturity for a bite of food and a bed under the fence.
In these families, the biological children of the adoptive parents always came first, they had all the toys and beautiful clothes, and Norma always wore two blue dresses that had been washed and faded in the orphanage. Even when she bathed every Saturday, she was the last, because water was so precious that the whole family could only use the same basin of bath water repeatedly, and the more who bathed first, the cleaner the water would be.
Sometimes, sitting on a church bench, Norma felt the urge to strip naked because she was ashamed of what she was wearing—only when she was naked could stand before God on an equal basis with everyone else, and for her, the orphan's uniform and the cold eyes and ridicule it brought with it were more shameful than naked.
These days continued until Norma was 16 years old, and in order to get rid of her orphanhood, Norma, who had just reached the legal marriage age, married her neighbor Jim, who was 5 years older than her.
Shortly after marriage, her husband was conscripted to participate in World War II, and Norma also went to work in an arsenal near her home in order to support her family, where she ushered in a turn of fate.
Monroe got married for the first time
The photographer of the military industry department was looking for a young girl in the factory to take promotional photos and chose Norma. At less than 20 years old, her figure has developed quite mature, her face is also outstanding, and what is even more surprising is that she can skillfully and naturally show her beauty in front of the camera.
She had fantasized about this scene countless times in her mind: she went into the spotlight and received a steady stream of praise and love. The day has really come.
Norma soon signed with an advertising agency, and 2 years later, she became the most popular model on the entire West Coast of the United States. But along with fame came the opposition of the husband and the discussion of the people around him.
In those days, women's vocation was still housewives, it was a dereliction of duty to show their faces, and the pursuit of a career was seen as rebellion. The wife's frequent display of her figure and smile on the covers of major magazines is an unbearable betrayal in the eyes of Norma's husband.
Norma had no intention of returning to the so-called female job, she divorced without hesitation, and took the olive branch handed over by Twentieth Century Fox and stepped into the film circle.
Fox executives gave her a stage name, which is full of beautiful style, and when she pronounces it, the collision of lips and tongues is soft and sweet: Marilyn Monroe.
"I know how third-rate I am, and I can feel the lack of talent, like wearing cheap and vulgar underwear. But, God, how eager I am to learn, to change, to improve. ”
This is the uneasiness and embarrassment that Monroe felt when she first entered Hollywood.
At that time, she lived in poverty, and every time she attended a high-end occasion arranged by the film company and went to audition for entertainment, she felt uncomfortable and did not dare to move a little, so as not to expose the threads or patches on her socks.
In the entertainment industry of paper drunk gold fans, whenever I saw the powerful people on the gambling table exporting hundreds of chips, Monroe remembered that when she was a child, she queued up at the door of the bakery, when she had to pay 24 cents for a bag of bread that was about to expire to maintain a week's life.
This gap is too huge, and it also aggravates Monroe's low self-esteem. The only thing she could do was study like crazy to make up for her previous lack of education.
The film company once arranged overnight school classes for her, and every time Monroe went to class, her appearance caused a commotion in the class, making other students unwilling to listen, so the course could only be terminated. But Monroe still seized every opportunity and time to improve herself.
Years later her friend contributor Bakken recalled her, saying, "She was gentle and lovely, and that was her charm." She also doesn't feel safe. Marilyn didn't finish high school, so she was very eager to improve herself intellectually. I once told her that when I studied at Notre Dame for three years, she thought I was God. She kept calling me and asking me what she should read. ”
In addition to the study of general education, Monroe spent most of her salary on learning drama, dance and singing, and even secretly took away the script and practiced all night in front of the mirror.
Monroe's first film role was as a waiter in "Age of Danger"
Even so, she can only receive some tricky roles. After the half-year contract expired, the company decided not to renew Monroe's contract, believing that she had "no potential".
Without financial resources, Monroe was once in a difficult situation, living on only 30 cents a day. In order to make money, she once took on a job of taking nude calendar photos, which was later known as "red velvet nude photos", and the use rights of this group of photos were bought by Playboy magazine as inside pages, putting Monroe on the road full of criticism of porn star.
Monroe also really touched the door to Hollywood at this time - here, no one cares whether you were an orphan or poor in the past, or even whether you worked hard enough. The most concerned about a woman is always her face and ass, and as long as you are beautiful enough and know how to take advantage of this beauty, the door of Hollywood will always be open to you.
Monroe and Schenck
In 1948, Monroe met 69-year-old Fox president Joseph Schenck at a party and became his lover, and Monroe signed with Columbia Pictures again.
At that time in Hollywood, pillow was the unspoken rule in the industry, and this circle dominated by male directors and producers was a natural hotbed for male desires and interests.
But Monroe knows how to take advantage of this rule. She did not shy away from her position, and once generously admitted: "Yes, I slept with the producer, everyone is like that, you don't do it, there is another girl waiting outside the door." She also boldly said, "Sleeping with men is my way of expressing my gratitude." ”
Americans like her, not only because she is beautiful, but also because she is honest and does not pretend, when the red velvet nude photos were exposed by the media and she was scolded by everyone, Monroe did not deny or apologize, but said dashingly, "I hope that men come home from work one day and see such photos, and can recover their spirits and shout 'ah'." ”
"The Night is Not Quiet" is Monroe's word-of-mouth work
Her fame was also opened by several glamorous movie roles, in those movies, as a supporting role, she was so beautiful that people couldn't take their eyes off, and she could no longer find a person who could interpret innocence in temptation like Monroe and childishness in sexiness.
Sexiness is Monroe's weapon.
The weapon opened her way to Hollywood, but also became a source of pain for her later career, "I don't mind being burdened by glamorous and sexy, but it can be a real burden with it." The symbol of sensuality becomes a thing. I just hate being something. ”
Being a vase seems to be the fate that all beautiful girls cannot escape.
"Men would rather pay $1,000 for your kiss than pay 50 cents to listen to your soul."
At the peak of her career, Monroe starred in several blockbuster movies such as "Gentleman Loves Beauty" and "Willing to Marry the Golden Turtle Son-in-law", in which she played the roles of a gorgeous "blonde silly" with an empty mind.
There can only be one online brain and appearance, which seems to be a long-standing prejudice against women: beautiful must be stupid, sexy must be degenerate, and the audience is expecting to see her scratching her head on the screen and showing off her style, while cursing a "slut" after walking out of the cinema to occupy the moral high ground.
"Gentleman Loves Beauty" plays a gold-worshipping girl
In Monroe, this prejudice has become a fixed label, the audience only expects her to continue to play the sweet silly girl with big breasts and brains on the screen, and the production company only hopes that she can wear a tights jumpsuit to release erotic signals in front of the camera, Marilyn Monroe is completely objectified into a commodity composed of red lips, blonde hair, and a mole on her cheeks, a pornographic symbol.
What Monroe really wants to act, no one cares.
"Some people are very unfriendly, if I say I want to grow up as an actress, someone will look at my body, if I say I want to improve and learn acting, they will laugh out loud, they don't really think I'm going to take my performance seriously." She was so tired of playing blonde beauties with no meaning, "I had to beat my heart to play those stupid girls and ask stupid questions." What the hell am I supposed to do – to look smarter? ”
She actually put a lot of effort into reversing these prejudices.
Monroe plays a nervous breakdown nanny in "No Need to Knock"
People say she has no acting skills, so she tries to broaden her acting path. In "Night Conflict" and "No Need to Knock", she got rid of the traditional beauty image and presented more inner drama, and her acting skills are actually quite explosive.
Squeezed by the company, she also rebelled. At that time, Hollywood actors had a very low voice, and actresses were even more so, sometimes a movie earned millions, but the protagonist himself could only get a few thousand.
Monroe has been tough with Fox for 2 years for this reason, in order to protest her refusal to take on the homogenized role, she will not give in to being hidden by Fox. The confrontation ended with Fox and Monroe re-signing the salary agreement. Let the big Hollywood factories bow their heads, Monroe was the only one back then.
Monroe with her second husband, Joe DiMaggio
Regarded as "possession" by men, she resolutely divorced. Monroe's second husband Joe DiMaggio is jealous, and when filming "The Seven-Year Itch", Monroe was asked to bare her legs in front of everyone, and DiMaggio looked "ugly like a dead man" after witnessing this filming process on the set. After Monroe returned home from work, DiMaggio moved his hand and "whipped her in circles".
Monroe did not tolerate, and at the public press conference, she announced the end of this marriage that had lasted less than a year.
It is generally believed that she is shallow and has no connotation, but Monroe reads more widely in private than many people. Her list of books covers Dostoevsky, Hemingway, and Beckett, and one of her favorite books is the tome Ulysses, which many people can't read. In the books and notebooks she left behind after her death, you can see the notes she made and the poems she wrote everywhere.
The highest evaluation of Monroe's literary literacy should come from a writer she admires very much:
"She is resolute, beautiful and kind, confident, gracious and straightforward and frank, she never gets tired of her work... She has a strong literary sensibility... She is very familiar with my work, the countries, peoples, people I describe, life and death, honor and morality, and the many issues of outlook on life. ”
That writer was Hemingway, the tough guy anti-war man who won the Nobel Prize.
Monroe with her third husband Miller
Monroe's third husband was the famous writer Arthur Miller, author of "The Death of a Salesman", who once described his wife as follows:
"She was a poet standing on a street corner, trying to read verses to the crowd of people vying to pull her clothes down."
Unfortunately, no matter how loud these recitations that strive to correct their own names are not louder, they are no bigger than the feverish cheers of the crowd.
No matter how dazzling the camera's flash is, it can't penetrate her painful and struggling heart.
There is only Marilyn Monroe left in the world, and no one knows Norma Jane anymore.
In 1962, Monroe was found dead in her apartment, when she was 36 years old.
There are different opinions about her death, some people say that she committed suicide because she became popular in Hollywood, but could not get rid of the "beautiful and stupid" image, Hollywood hairstylist Sydney Giralov ridiculed Monroe's death: "I am glad that she died on the spot, she could not bear the wrinkles on her face, she had nothing but beauty." ”
It is also said that she died of an unclear extramarital affair with US President Kennedy, and she attended Kennedy's birthday party 3 months before her death and sang the famous song "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" for him, and it is speculated that she was assassinated because her bold move threatened Kennedy's marriage to Jacqueline.
Monroe and Kennedy
The autopsy given by the police claimed that Monroe died of an overdose of alcohol and sedatives. In the last years of Monroe's life, her mental state deteriorated, and she was even treated in a mental hospital, but she only suffered more torture and pain there.
Multiple miscarriages, external pressure, and a family history of mental illness pushed her irrevocably into that bottomless vortex.
Her attention is often scattered, she can't remember lines, and a shot has to be shot dozens of times to pass, and Billy Wilder, the director of "Passion Like Fire" with her, said Monroe "has a chest as strong and tall as granite, but her brain is full of holes like cheese." This also became a stain on her later criticism of being stupid and unprofessional.
But at that time, Monroe had no time to pay attention to these external sounds, and she often had to rely on a large number of pills and strong alcohol to barely stay awake and come to work on the set. When she died, the room was littered with empty vodka and pill bottles.
Monroe's last video
To this day, the cause of Monroe's death is still a mystery, and perhaps people don't want this matter to have an ironclad conclusion, because only in this way can they chew the mysterious and fragrant death of this superstar again and again - in the summer of 1962, when Monroe passed away, all the media reports were the same: "Marilyn died naked." ”
They described in detail how she died naked and in what position, and happily speculated about the possibilities behind her death. Until the last moment of her life, Hollywood remained like a ruthless machine, tirelessly consuming her body and sexiness.
And 60 years after Monroe's death, her image is still repeatedly lifted in one biographical film after another, and her legs are opened. "Blonde Monroe" is called "one of the greatest movies in history", but all it does is turn Monroe's pain and vulnerability out for people to pry, and the director even fictionalizes a fairly large-scale 3-person romance, her sex and trauma are infinitely magnified on the screen, and her subjectivity as a woman disappears.
The efforts she had made and the struggles she had made had retreated behind a woman's helpless tears.
Reading this, I think you may still be looking forward to seeing Monroe's famous photo of covering her skirt at the subway entrance in this article.
If so, you may be disappointed.
I know you've seen this photo countless times in many other places, but this post is not intended to reinforce her label as a sexy symbol.
Just as after learning about her life, I don't like to use the words "charming" and "beautiful" to sum up everything about her, I find it very sad, because each of us knows what those words refer to, and people are keen to stare at those parts of her, fluttering eyes, graceful figure, and so on.
It is said that when the photo was taken, more than 2,000 fans gathered at the scene, and Monroe wore two pairs of bottoms to prevent her from walking naked, but it seemed that no amount of fabric could block the gaze projected between her legs.
This time, I don't want to use this gaze to explore Marilyn Monroe that only exists in flash, because she is just an illusory dream packaged by the film company.
This time, I just want to get to know Norma Jane again.
A long time ago, she had already decided in her heart the fate of her fate:
"Fame will fade, goodbye fame, I always have you." If it fades away – and I've always known it is fickle – at least I've had that experience, but that's not where I lived. ”