MM: the Self-Perpetuating Machine

If you're expecting an adoring essay on Marilyn Monroe... turn away.

It was fifty years ago today that Marilyn Monroe was living the last 24 hours of her life. The date of her death is usually listed as August 5th, but it seems much more likely that she died in the late hours of August 4th.

Why are we even remembering her today?

Because she is an icon - meaning a public figure easily recognised, and even more easily reduced or "summarised", in just a few traits. The fewer traits are needed to signal the figure, the more iconic it is.
(Hitler is another such icon - probably the most iconic figure of the entire 20th century. The fact that a house has been found to look like him says it all.)

But icons are not born. They are made. Whatever efforts the "icon" has invested in its own making (as it is the case with MM), they are ultimately codified and perpetuated by others. And so, it's no surprise that icons tell more about those who gaze upon them than about the - often paltry - self hidden behind the Wizard-of-Oz-like facade of the icon.

MM was made after her conveniently early death at age 36, by the likes of Andy Warhol and, especially, the lying over-compensating braggart that was Norman Mailer, may he rest in peace, and later appropriated by all sorts of "interest groups", becoming the glamorous queen bee of losers.
In effect, she glamourised loss.

[One of the most surprising - and surprisingly stubborn - incarnations of the icon are the allegations of supposed "feminism" in MM (all the while uncritically perpetuating MM's own fibs and gross exaggerations about her childhood abuses and assorted abandonment "issues").

This was the woman who said: "Joe is the head of our family, we'll go wherever he says" and "I don't mind being a girl as long as I can live in a man's world", and who relished in calling herself "Mrs Joe Di Maggio" and "Mrs Arthur Miller".

There is nothing wrong with that per se; it's certainly a few planets removed from who I am, for example, but everyone has their own path in life, so I am not going to judge. At all.
It is, however, more than a little ridiculous to try and bend her into a feminist icon.

It seems to me that many of these third-generation self-proclaimed "feminists" (I consider myself a feminist - which to me means no "agenda" and certainly no man-bashing - therefore no quotation marks for me) need an excuse for indulging in the sort of "old-fashioned" femininity she incarnates (and it certainly is old-fashioned, not to mention very limited and limiting). 

Well, sisters, if you really need excuses freely to enjoy the forever ambiguous interplay of hormones and mind... let me tell you, you aint' much of a feminist.]

But why MM?

There were and are better looking faces, better looking bodies and, God knows, much better actresses, then and now.

She had a bone structure that photographed well: expanses of flat surfaces that reflected the light. That "minor" cosmetic surgery to enlarge and bolster her chin that she underwent around 1950 - after having been called "the chinless wonder" by studio bosses - was anything but minor; it proved a pivotal point in her career. Because it gave her a more photogenic face it also gave her the edge of confidence that is needed in order to concentrate on projecting one's image. An image that was constructed from within but needed the lights of a film or a photo shoot set to appear. 

MM wasn't an actress - she was an illusionist.
However, the "luminosity" that was caught by the camera - and live when she turned "her" (the MM persona) on - was not entirely physical. It was the residue of the energy she summoned to create a vision of all the intangible yearnings and glimpses of bliss that are our main driving force through this life as they were hers.

She gave up on attaining any of that - if she ever really thought they could be hers. (She seems to have had remarkably little talent for happiness - and I am quoting her, albeit loosely.) 
Instead she gathered the scattered flickers of that eternal warming light and projected them into an image. She offered that image to the world outside her to receive in return the reflected light and warmth of other people's intimate yearnings. Those yearnings, of course, weren't about her - but they could be projected onto her, and she could bask in their reflected warmth and light.

"Being liked" was her main goal in life (that could be expressed in words).
This compulsion, based on the absence of any feelings of self-worth, was so strong that apparently she didn't even care that the "love" she received was illusory. It gave warmth while it lasted, and that was enough.
Until it wasn't.

I don't know if Carl Gustav Jung ever wrote about her or even remarked her - he died in 1961, so he may have (however keep in mind that her "iconic" status actually evolved after her death) - but I am sure he would agree that her strength (as a public image) was the absence of her own Self. By being absent, barely there, almost non-existent, Norma Jeane made room for Marilyn Monroe: an appealingly light empty space that acted as a mirror. Marilyn Monroe exemplifies Jung's concept of anima perfectly. Her strengths are all borrowed from other people who willingly invest her image with them. They see themselves in a mirror - and they like what they see. Even her weakness. Or especially her weakness. We all want a little respite; and we all want to be acknowledged as the wounded innocent children we were and still are.

And this is also the reason why many people cannot stand MM.
They see the process - the projecting - that is going on, and they resent the lack of attention that they deserve too, and for the same reasons.
They want their own vulnerability, their own wounded childhood, their own yearnings - their own beauty - to be acknowledged, too. 
And they have every right to it.

So, my friend, on this day that marks the fiftieth anniversary of the birth of an icon - a flicker of borrowed light that is coming from you - look around and find that same beauty, the same wounds, that very same "special" quality, that very same light in others, including yourself. It is there, and I don't mean it metaphorically.
You owe it to yourself to find it and revere it, instead of showering praise and virtual flowers and tears for your own self on the shadow of an image.

No, it's not an "iconic" image.

If you'd like those, visit this marvellously rich blog from where it was snatched.)

FURTHER READING:

If you though this was harsh (which, of course, it wasn't), let me know what you think of Clive James's marvellously chiselled essay, Mailer's Marilyn (a lot more than "just" a book review). Give it a read; it will be time well spent.