I could not watch the Netflix movie BLONDE (2022) all the way through. After a while, I fast forwarded a lot to the end. What a relentlessly prolonged, dismal, degrading, nightmare presentation of Marilyn Monroe. Ana de Armas generally looked the part, though her slightly Cuban Spanish/Latinx accent tainted the illusion somewhat. That was the least of this awful production’s problems. Ms. Monroe is portrayed as a pathos soaked victim, and this never changes. I went from initially feeling sad to irritated to outraged. The narrative is fictional, but what a tawdry, even sleazy, regressive, disrespectful, misogynistic depiction of an iconic historical figure. Shame on the creators and marketers of such dreck.
Mini Movie Review: BLONDE
Published by The Practical, Fanciful Pagan
I'm gay, married, Pagan, and Progressive-minded from California, raised by hippie intellectuals. I relocated to Massachusetts for graduate school and never moved back to the Left Coast. My day job is that of psychotherapist in private practice, a profession I love with all my heart and a dream fully realized that I'd had since fifteen years of age. These are my rantings, reviews, and reflections. If nothing else, I hope you find something worth reading here and leave the rest. View all posts by The Practical, Fanciful Pagan
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The Practical, Fanciful Pagan 
The saddest things I found about Marilyn (Norma Jeane Morterson) are that she felt the need to kill herself and was so exploited by Hollywood. I will be watching many of her movies after my favorite to watch “The Secret of Roan Inish. Thank you for sharing this informative post that speaks so highly of such a beautiful human being and actor.
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For the longest time, I thought Marilyn Monroe’s birth name was Norma Jeane Baker, but it was indeed Mortenson, as you say, not Baker. I keep intending to watch more of her movies, which I will. I have seen a few all the way through and then only clips of many others.
Interestingly, what often gets left out in much of the public discourse about Ms. Monroe are the ways she was *not* just a victim of abuse and exploitation. She founded her own movie production company in 1954, which gave her a lot of financial leverage to finally no longer be underpaid as a top grossing movie star that, up to then, she was. She is listed as the sixth greatest woman movie star of all time out of the top 100, which is pretty darn good. I grew up feeling very taken with her as a child, starting at about age six, and then, by about ten or eleven, I grew overcome with sadness whenever I thought of her, because of believing she was nothing but a victim. The truth is, she was also *not* a victim, but a successful businesswoman, singer, and beautiful actress who committed to hone her craft in the mid 1950s. Someday, I will seek out the best, balanced biography about her to read and the best documentary about her to watch (if one even exists), which does not perpetuate the extreme perspective that she was nothing but a victim of exploitation and abuse. She was more than that as a gifted, beautiful person, including her being very generous to people she cared about (such as ensuring that the Black singer Ella Fitzgerald finally got a big break). As Ms. Fitzgerald once said, Marilyn was “ahead of her time.” And she was. In more recent years, I have developed a more well-rounded perspective and deeper respect for Marilyn Monroe. She is a tragic figure yet also an icon of success. She was a person who overcame huge odds, given her horrific childhood.
I suspect we, the public, may never fully know all the circumstances leading to her suicide.
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Thank you for sharing your thoughts about Norma Jean. It is with sadness and awe that I think of her as a person.
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