Days after the release of yet another film about Marilyn Monroe, Emily Ratajkowski gave her opinion on the backlash that the movie received. Social media has been spurting words such as “vile,” “disgusting,” “disrespectful” and “dehumanizing” to describe the 2022 film “Blonde.” The 31-year-old model claimed that the movie seemed to be fetishizing female pain. She referenced examples of society fetishizing women’s struggles, such as obsessing over the late Princess Diana’s death, the downfall of Britney Spears and the romanticization of serial killers. As a victim of coping the same way, Ratajkowski admitted that she also has fetishized her struggles as a way to appear like a girl in need of saving in a sexual way. She does not want to feel like her struggles need to be tended to. Her response is that as women, we need to be in our b*tch era.
Tiktoker Jbunzie got the opportunity to go to the “Blonde” premiere and watch the film before it was released to the public. She claimed, as a Marilyn Monroe fan, she felt that the director exploited Monroe’s sexual assault, portrayed her as a hypersexual woman and made her out to be a joke while blatantly lying about aspects of her life. Jbunzie urged people not to watch the film to avoid putting it on Netflix’s “Top Ten” list and to not “kill [Marilyn] twice.”
YouTuber ModernGurlz has a great video that agrees with Ratajkowski’s opinion: “…the movie feels like [Andrew Dominic’s] way of punishing her for things he deemed to be character flaws… he seems to lust after her in the same moments he admonishes her.” While this article is not to criticize “Blonde,” does the narrative sound so far-fetched? Males, especially directors, have long fantasized over damsel-in-distress stories for their own egos. As a public figure and as a director, storytelling is an immense responsibility and it is not something to be taken lightly.
The director of “Blonde” admitted in an interview that the film is a “rescue fantasy.” Dominic goes on to state the movie is less about reality and more about the fantasy that was Marilyn Monroe; “that’s the attraction to Marilyn, that feeling that we’re the only ones who understand. That we could have saved her somehow. And maybe the flipside of that is a punishment fantasy, or a sexual fantasy.” This is a confirmation of how males view troubled women and the treatment we are subject to by treating it as a fantasy.
Shows such as “CSI,” which Ratajkowski mentioned, also seem to want to fetishize female pain and death. How many films and shows about Princess Diana have there been retelling her story and unfortunate death? When do these women get to rest?
Emily Ratajkowski claimed that in order to take a stand, we need to get angry. Stop romanticizing pain and struggle and get angry. If that makes people uncomfortable, so be it. It is no longer marketable to fetishize us as women and our struggles, and it’s definitely not acceptable to create false storylines of a persona that fits within an agenda created by a man.
Ratajkowski ended her video dryly stating, “I’m just going to get angry” with a threatening smile, that we all need to practice more.
Siri, play “The Man” by Taylor Swift.