Marilyn

The other day I was looking at a framed photograph of Marilyn Monroe I have, imagining I might write an essay on her. While I was in this moment I heard Maurice Ravel's "Pavan for a Dead Princess” playing on the radio. What a provocative juxtaposition I thought. I must act on it.

What can I say about Marilyn Monroe that hasn't been said before? Well, I can say I have a photo of her that I don't think many people have seen. She looks so young in the photo that I think she may still have been Norma Jean, before she changed her name and became an actress. She is standing in a garden looking straight at us, with trees providing a perfect backdrop. She is wearing a modest white jersey with a necklace composed of stones. This black and white photo was given to me several years ago. I think it's original. I framed it in what I call a serendipitous frame that I made in a moment of inspiration. I think the combination of the two is great.

The picture hangs in my apartment. It is hanging on a white stucco wall, softly lit by floodlights from above. However, until recently it hung in my framing shop. While it hung in the shop I surrounded it with other pictures of Marilyn, copies of course. People who saw this display would ask me if I had a 'thing' for her, and was I a fan. I said, not really, I just had empty frames and what better subject than Marilyn to fill them.

Come to think of it, almost everybody has a think for MM, in one way or another, if not consciously, then subconsciously. Mine was subconscious. Who wouldn't have some feeling for her considering she was one of the greatest enigmas of the 20th century. And that's what gave her such an appeal and following, her enigmatic, equal opportunity quality, which appeals to both men and women alike.

Marilyn Monroe was certainly an enigma, a person that was puzzling, ambiguous and inexplicable. Enigmatic characters are seminal people in that they exude something that allows others to shape and stamp their own personal interpretation on them. None of those interpretations would be wrong since the enigma represents a spectrum of the human condition. And in interpreting and trying to figure out an enigma the one who's doing it comes away with part of the enigma. In the process, and this too reflects on an enigma's seminal quality, one cognitively gains something from the enigma about life and its complexity. Marilyn's enigmatic character afforded something for everybody, hence hardly anybody not having a feeling or opinion about her. In their capacity enigmas tend to draw out emotions we would otherwise not reveal. The enigmatic chemistry Marilyn exuded was enticing and bewitching.

My favorite movie with MM is "Seven Year Itch". Rachmaninoff's brooding piano concerto #2 may seem out of place in the movie but it certainly speaks to her romantic, lost nature in life. Actor Tom Ewell plays the piano music in a seductive dream sequence. In real movie life he can only play chopsticks.

I think Norma Jean became Marilyn Monroe because she wanted to escape Norman Jean. She went into acting to create a new persona, as so many others who went into acting did.

It was argued that if Marilyn had been allowed to act and be herself in marriage her marriages might not haves failed. However, I think that her marriages failed because she was really being herself in them and that her real self was difficult to live with. She was emotional immature.

Men fell in love with her because they wanted to take care of her and right everything in her world. They pictured themselves as men in shining armor and Marilyn obliged them. Her men did fall in love with the real Marilyn, the vulnerable Marilyn. That is what was so appealing about her; the vulnerability that she didn't disguise. However, her men were as much in fantasyland as she was because they, like her, projected their own false impressions of who they were or what they wanted.

Marilyn's men wanted to protect her. They also were old fashion. They wanted her to stay home and be a housewife. However, apart from wanting to be loved and protected she was rebellious and wanted independence. Those contradictory characteristics were also factors that contributed to the failure of her marriages.

Marilyn Monroe died 45 years ago last month.