Genuinely Entertained: Blonde Broke My Heart & Identity
Did you know Marilyn Monroe was Mexican? Just a fun little fact for anyone still complaining a Latina played her. In truth, Ana De Armas is perfection in showing the fragility and insanity that goes into become a star, despite all the unhealed wounds you carry. For many celebrities and wannabes, fame can appear like the consolation prize for all the poverty, abandonment, and abuse they faced as children, the idea that money and publicity coats the hurt. Yet, for Marilyn, it never did, and the fact that it did not made her succumb to the very demons she thought they would exorcise.
In a way, it makes sense, if I felt so lonely when nobody saw me, and now that everyone looks and even dreams of me….. I should feel whole. Frankly, that mindset seems logical, but it never feels true. The real truth is that if you never look at yourself, and become for yourself what you wanted the world to be for you then you end up empty, and Ana De Armas is stunning and enrapturing as she makes Marilyn feel like the most hollow, full person ever.
Directed and written by Andrew Dominik, based off of Joyce Carol Oates´ nove, from the start he claimed the film would be controversial, but, frankly, I think the film confronts a truth we ignore about ourselves: we are materialistic. Even a poor person, defined their world by material lack, and in many ways, Marilyn was just a poor girl that struck it rich and but never managed to shake her broke/broken mindset. The film is very clear that Norma Jean was an abused child from a mentally ill mother, and was tossed around like a packet of ketchup around a table when it came to men/ family members. Thus, I wondered if his perceived ¨potential controversy¨ comes not from the film’s discussion of body, weaponizing sexuality for power, or how it can get explicit with nudity and the raunchiness of being abused as a sex object. For me, it seems that the latter becomes controversial via the icon´s fragility, and seeing people break into her body because her spirit was broken first.
In a world of Trumps and Kanyes, it seems like society is awed, for better or worse, by the men and women that pummel through their fears, turmoils, and cruel choices to make themselves come off like gods. Perhaps, there is a Marilyn, in all of us, that wishes to ¨fake it until she makes it,¨ and Armas makes Marilyn feel like a cautionary tale on believing what is outside you can truly fill what is within and that appearing strong actually makes you it. In essence, Blonde shows that that mechanism is protective as much as it is toxic, and there are scenes that will make you cringe and crawl for the sheer shattered spirit of Marilyn, whom, in truth, was always little girl Norma: looking for healing outside of herself because, inside the wounds felt too big.
