Andrew Dominik’s Marilyn Monroe portrait is a traumatizing anti-abortion assertion in post-Roe v. Wade America.
[Editor’s note: The following article contains spoilers for “Blonde.”]
Andrew Dominik warned us that his NC-17 portrait of Marilyn Monroe would “offend everybody.” Or slightly, he boasted.
The author-director helmed a three-hour epic tailored from Joyce Carol Oates’ novel of the identical title, forged Cuban actress Ana de Armas to play the blonde bombshell, and credited the #MeToo motion for lastly resulting in the movie getting financed. Oates known as Dominik’s movie “most surprisingly an completely ‘feminist’ interpretation” of her novel, tweeting that the “disturbing” characteristic makes a primary for a male director to “obtain one thing [like] this.”
Properly, that’s a method of placing it.
One other could be to say that “Blonde” is a horrific, tone-deaf reminder of why a feminine perspective must be included, or not less than requested for, when writing about abortion. Sure, whereas “Blonde” made headlines on gossip websites like DeuxMoi for months forward of its launch for disturbing rape sequences (one such rumor that Dominik dispelled included de Armas as Monroe being assaulted whereas on her interval), the actual set off warning is for a trio of CGI fetuses asking why Monroe murdered them.
This is our “feminist” assertion in post-Roe v. Wade America, in line with Oates, in line with Dominik, and, presumably, in line with Brad Pitt’s Plan B Productions?
Dominik’s saga of Monroe being an “undesirable baby who turns into essentially the most wished individual on the planet” didn’t have to incorporate three wished kids of her personal. Dominik depends on the waking nightmare surrealist sensation of Monroe’s physique not belonging to herself: She is raped by a studio head, compelled to present JFK a blowjob whereas excessive, and kidnapped and held down twice by docs as she begs to maintain her infants. The opposite fetus — the one who truly speaks to Monroe whereas she is gardening and asks if she is going to “do the identical” to it as she did to the opposite, i.e. terminate her being pregnant — leads to a violently bloody miscarriage after Monroe journeys over a rock on the seaside and collapses in sand.
Monroe, whose physique is solely being invoked right here for shock worth, continuously disassociates from her flesh to outlive fame. Dominik categorized his movie as capturing “what it’s prefer to undergo the Hollywood meat-grinder” and bragged that his magnum opus is like “‘Citizen Kane’ and ‘Raging Bull’ had a child daughter“… one who appears to have grown as much as be Amy Coney Barrett.
Let’s dissect the “Blonde” abortion scenes: Her first terminated being pregnant begins with Monroe requesting for the studio secretary to assist her “deal with” her being pregnant after realizing her mom’s psychological well being dysfunction is genetic. Monroe has wished nothing greater than to be a father or mother, however with fears of her personal abusive mom, she makes the powerful determination to terminate her being pregnant, full with a funeral procession of carrying black Ray-Ban sun shades and being pushed off in a Hearst-like limo. It’s in that very automotive through which Monroe has second ideas, sees a literal cease signal, and decides she desires to maintain the newborn as an alternative. But the driving force doesn’t flip round and even flinch when she begins screaming. Her screams echo by means of the halls of a hospital as her ft are compelled onto stirrups, and the digicam follows a DNC tube gliding by means of her vaginal partitions. The viewers is trapped watching this sequence, very similar to Monroe is held down on the desk by the aforementioned tube, and it’s clear Dominik’s feedback on offensive content material usually are not about sexual assault however slightly surgical assault on the “Some Like It Sizzling” star.
In the actual world, the one which Dominik’s twisted fantasy has no want to acknowledge, one in three ladies has admitted to receiving abortions. However right-wing politics have argued {that a} excessive proportion of these are compelled abortions, as an alternative demanding compelled births for pregnant ladies, even these with well being dangers or victims of rape. In line with Dominik, which is extra traumatic?
Any such abortion sequence doesn’t occur as soon as, however twice: It’s years later, when Monroe is implied to have been impregnated by the philandering president John F. Kennedy. His goons kidnap and drug Monroe in the course of the evening; she is satisfied the process is a horrible dream, however as she wakes up coated in blood smeared throughout her stomach, it’s clear the nightmare is simply simply starting. There would by no means be that a lot blood afterward, however that’s not the purpose: Dominik is decided to shock and disgust, however at what value?
Certain, “Blonde” has been near 20 years within the making, 20 years when most People believed Roe v. Wade could be upheld. As of 2022, the landmark Supreme Court docket ruling supporting ladies’s healthcare and basic proper to physique autonomy was struck down, leaving greater than half of American ladies dwelling in anti-choice states in peril.
In contrast to Dominik’s Monroe, greater than 95 % of ladies who’ve acquired abortions say that they don’t remorse the process 5 years later. As a substitute, dire penalties for girls who’ve been denied abortions are confirmed by the College of California San Francisco’s decade-long report, The Turnaway Examine. The idea for the research was a response to the 2007 Supreme Court docket abortion case Gonzales v. Carhart, through which Justice Anthony Kennedy (not associated to Monroe’s Kennedy, to notice) speculated that abortions led to “extreme melancholy and lack of esteem” in ladies.
The Turnaway Examine disproved that assumption. Turnaway Examine demographer Diana Greene Foster known as the overturn of Roe v. Wade unfathomable even in her “worst nightmares” in an interview with NPR.
And Hollywood has issued a name to motion, with “Blonde” distributor Netflix among the many corporations supporting worker journey prices for out-of-state abortions. Greater than a thousand showrunners and filmmakers penned a letter for manufacturing corporations to reveal in the event that they had been funding anti-abortion politicians and in addition to stop filming in anti-choice states.
Indie movies like Eliza Hittman’s “By no means Hardly ever Typically At all times” and Venice winner “Occurring” have additionally struck a chord with audiences, humanizing this important surgical procedure as a result of, for thus lengthy, Hollywood and People as an entire have turned away from seeing specifics behind the need of abortion rights onscreen.
Even “Juno” writer-director Diablo Cody mirrored on her 2007 dramedy that includes a teen being pregnant and adoption journey. “I’m emphatically pro-choice and have been my complete life. And you will need to me to make that clear,” Cody informed The Hollywood Reporter. “However, , I can perceive why individuals would misunderstand the film. Wanting again at it, I can see the way it could possibly be perceived as anti-choice. And that horrifies me.”
Cody continued, “If any individual had stated to me on the time — as a carefree, youthful, third-wave feminist — that in 2022, Roe v. Wade could be overturned, I might have been horrified and I might have assumed we had been hurtling towards some sort of inconceivable dystopia, and perhaps I might have been proper. However on the time, it simply appeared unattainable. I took Roe without any consideration, and many people did. I used to be simply creating; I by no means meant the film as any sort of political assertion in any respect. I can’t think about being that harmless once more.”
Is Dominik actually that “harmless” or does he simply not care?
“Unpregnant” director Jennifer Kaityn Robinson made in search of an abortion a sort of highway journey dramedy, one which felt relatable, sincere, and with out the stigmatized disgrace that’s prescribed to ladies post-abortion. Robinson’s newest indie movie, “Do Revenge,” can also be streaming on Netflix, proper alongside “Blonde.” It solely takes a second to marvel what an enormous finances “Blonde” would seem like from Robinson as an alternative.
“Blonde” reveals us that Monroe’s physique isn’t her personal. Her famed curves and iconic smile belong to America as she’s slowly suffocated by Hollywood and her male admirers, each presumably stopping her from having a white picket fence and nuclear household. However as a result of Roe was overturned, all ladies’s our bodies are actually on the mercy of the US — and we will’t simply lay down and take it.
“Blonde” is now in choose theaters and shall be streaming on Netflix on Wednesday, September 28.