The Persistence of Marilyn Monroe As a Cultural Icon
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FFC 4 (2+3) pp. 121–143 Intellect Limited 2015 Film, Fashion & Consumption Volume 4 Numbers 2 & 3 © 2015 Intellect Ltd Editorial. English language. doi: 10.1386/ffc.4.2-3.121_2 EDITORIAL LUCY BOLTON Queen Mary University of London #Marilyneveryday: The persistence of Marilyn Monroe as a cultural icon In April 2015 I was travelling in Istanbul and, on leaving the Grand Bazaar 1. Food stylist is Claire through the Spice Market, I walked out into a side street of shops and cafes. I Clark, and props stylist is listed as Sue was immediately struck by an accessories shop, the hoarding for which was a Rowlands. huge image of Marilyn Monroe’s face, wearing some just-discernible dangling star earrings (Figure 1). Alongside this image was a series of other photographs, some featuring accessories such as pearls (Figure 2), but the overarching attrac- tion was Monroe’s face. Not long after this, in my local coffee shop, I came across a photographic illustration of a recipe for macarons in a cookery book called Indulge (C. Clark, 2007). Upon closer inspection, I realized that the macarons had been strategi- cally arranged over the famous Cecil Beaton photograph of Monroe holding a rose (Figure 3). These macarons were side-on, covering her eyes, aligned – or juxtaposed – with her mouth, resembling lips, and perhaps suggesting breasts. Her face, and her eyes, could not be seen. The pale, luxurious indulgence of the Beaton image of Monroe was sufficient, at least in the mind of the food and props stylist, to convey the requisite degree of indulgence to set off these confections: displayed as all edible and ripe for devouring with delectation.1 These encounters with the images of Monroe, totally divorced from her film work, being used in the selling of products, aspirations and concepts, 121 FFC_4.2&3_Editorial_121-143.indd 121 6/6/16 11:17 AM Lucy Bolton Figures 1 and 2: Marilyn Monroe advertises accessories in Istanbul, April 2015. Photo: Lucy Bolton. Figure 3: Monroe as a backdrop for macarons (Clark 2007). Photo: Lucy Bolton. 122 FFC_4.2&3_Editorial_121-143.indd 122 6/6/16 11:17 AM #Marilyneveryday drove home to me how ubiquitous the Monroe image is. Having taught a 2. There is a Harpers Bazaar article class on film stardom for over ten years, I find that each year students are considering ten well acquainted with the image of Monroe in the white halter-neck dress over actresses who have the subway grating, even though only a handful of them will have seen any played Monroe on film http://www. Monroe film, let alone The Seven Year Itch (Wilder, 1955). (If they have seen harpersbazaar.com/ one, it is likely to have been Some Like it Hot [1959].) culture/film-tv/g5775/ There is an instance of the image of Monroe not being instantly recog- actresses-who-played- marilyn-monroe/; also nized. The famous Bert Stern photographs of The Last Sitting were stolen in a New York Times video 1981, and found later that year by a construction worker in a dumpster outside showing Michelle Williams getting into a fast food restaurant in Brooklyn. The construction worker, John Vassos, did character for her role in not recognize the model as Monroe, and only reunited them with photogra- My Week with Marilyn pher Bert Stern when a friend told him about the advertised reward. Stern http://www.nytimes. com/video/magazine/ paid Vassos $5000 for the stolen photographs, which had been taken in 1962 100000001173082/ at the last photo session Monroe sat for before she died. In 2000, the whole michelle-williams-as- 2,571 photographs taken at that sitting were published, even the ones that marilyn-monroe.html. Monroe had clearly rejected by scratching crosses into the negatives (Carlson 3. For example, Lisa 2013). This rather sorry story conveys the idea of a somewhat arbitrary and Eldridge’s video https:// www.youtube.com/ fluctuating value attached to the Monroe image, as well as Monroe’s lack of watch?v=RAneUTr8mog ownership of her own image. (accessed 25 March 2016), and beauty tips Undeniably, Monroe is part of our everyday culture. Her image appears articles such as this one all over all manner of artefacts, from mugs and handbags to ties and teddy in Marie Claire http:// bears, as well as appearing as fancy dress outfits, drag acts, tribute acts and www.marieclaire.com/ beauty/news/a16013/ in biopics such as My Week with Marilyn (Curtis, 2011) and The Secret Life marilyn-monroe- of Marilyn Monroe (Collyer, 2015).2 Monroe is undoubtedly a cultural icon, beauty-secrets/. inspiring numerous hair and beauty articles in magazines and ‘how to …’ make-up and hair tutorials on YouTube.3 There are innumerable Pinterest boards devoted to her, dozens of Facebook groups and pages (includ- ing ones for Marilyn Monroe’s grave and a Marilyn Monroe café), and countless Instagram accounts. This led me to set up the Twitter hashtag ‘#Marilyneveryday’, in order to highlight the frequency with which one encounters an image of Monroe in daily life. This special issue acknowl- edges the cultural ubiquity of Marilyn Monroe and assesses some of the reasons why this is still the case: why is she still so popular and why is her image so frequently used in advertising and publicity for seemingly unre- lated items? The contributors to this journal each work with Monroe in very different ways. Sarah Churchwell read 300 biographies in her research for writing The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe (Granta, 2004) and so is uniquely well placed to reflect upon the obsessions and preoccupations of biographers. Cathy Lomax is an artist whose work is inspired by the make-up and fashion of female film stars and has produced a series of paintings of Monroe’s white dresses, ghoul- ishly absent from her physical body. Through her expertise on the relationship between film and fashion, Pamela Church Gibson is able to assess Monroe’s relationship to class and culture through her clothes, and to examine both her fashion impact and her legacy. The issue of how to curate the work and image of Monroe is explored in the in-depth interviews with curators from the British Film Institute (BFI) and the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), who offer unique insight into the operation of Monroe as a contemporary cultural attraction. My contribution to this issue is twofold. In this introductory article, I will set out the context for the ‘#Marilyneveryday’ project and the events at the BFI Marilyn Monroe Season in June 2015. At one of these events I circulated a brief questionnaire to the audience that asked three questions: 1) 123 FFC_4.2&3_Editorial_121-143.indd 123 6/6/16 11:17 AM Lucy Bolton 4. Jackie Stacey’s Why are you attending the study day? 2) Why do you think Marilyn Monroe ground-breaking work progressed the field of endures as a cultural icon? and 3) What is your interest in Marilyn Monroe star studies by actually (fan/films/fashion/academic study/other)? In the spirit of Jackie Stacey’s Star speaking to women Gazing (1993), I seek to show what people love about Monroe and the basis of about how they 4 related to Hollywood her appeal – and this is not always what one might expect. Second, I had the stars, mainly through pleasure of interviewing the curators of the Monroe film season and events consumption of their at the BFI, and the curators of the Monroe exhibition at the NPG, and have image. This research revealed how women attempted to convey the conceptual and practical complexities of their tasks styled their clothes in the section called ‘Curating Marilyn Monroe’. In this introductory article, and hair like the stars, but also how they saw therefore, I will attempt to convey the magnitude of Monroe’s cultural pres- stars as transcendent ence, and to indicate some of the realms of her influence, which the rest of the beings and role models. issue will develop. For an overview of the field of star studies as a discipline, THE MONROE INDUSTRY Martin Shingler’s A Critical Guide (2012) is There are several books on the topic of the industry that is Marilyn excellent. Monroe. In Marilyn Memorabilia: Putting a Price on the Priceless Performer, Clark Kidder (described on the cover as ‘a highly sought-after appraiser of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia’) writes that ‘although Marilyn Monroe was with us for only a brief moment in time, she left such an indelible impres- sion on the world that she will be remembered for an eternity’ (2002: 5). The book demonstrates the mechanics of how this works, by cataloguing over 200 pages of memorabilia, from dolls and magazines, to records, ciga- rette cards and stamps, including a section on how to begin your collection on Marilyn Monroe, how to trade with other collectors and how to spot forged signatures. There is also a volume by Kidder called Marilyn Monroe: Cover to Cover (in two editions), which arranges magazine covers chrono- logically from 1946 to 1963, constituting a cavalcade of posed, enhanced and colourized images of Marilyn’s life in two dimensions. The number of books, photographic collections, reminiscences, dolls and other products is inestimable and ever increasing. There is a recent volume in the series Fan Phenomena on Marilyn Monroe (Block 2014), which examines her online presence, imitators and impressionists, fashions and biopics, including the television series Smash (2012, 2013), about the making of a Broadway musi- cal based on Monroe’s life. There is even a memoir by Monroe’s dog, The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe (O’Hagan 2011).