The Smu Reviews

Marilyn at 100

Marilyn Monroe would have turned 100 this week, and the internet is filled with references to her ‘centenary year’. As a lifelong fan, I’ve felt I should acknowledge it in print somehow, but if I’m honest, I find the concept of a centenary celebration for someone who died at 36 a bit weird. Still, I kept coming back to the idea that I should ‘do’ something.

But what is left to say about someone so exhaustively visualised, so meticulously dissected, and whose human self is so hard to excavate? It’s tempting, but too easy, to lean into the cultural shorthand – the red lips, the blonde hair, the symbolism of it all. At the same time, I loathe dismissing the artifice in pursuit of the ‘real’ Marilyn – as though Norma Jeane could simply be detached from her public persona and authenticated like a stamp.

I’m far from immune to the mythos. I enjoy a tacky collectible as much as the next person, and the many bits of Monroe-related detritus I possess will attest to this. But the more I saw and read of the ‘centenary celebrations’, the less I wanted to go down a campy or iconoclastic route. It felt both not enough and too much at the same time.

The anniversary has materialised most clearly in a wave of merchandising opportunities for every kind of brand from handbags to homewares. Depressingly, her estate has used it to launch two separate auctions of her personal effects. This has been happening for decades now, with everything from movie costumes to kitchen spatulas and half used lipsticks going up for grabs. Undoubtedly the nadir was the sale and re-sale of various medical documents, including X-rays of her chest and pelvis. The outside of her is no longer enough for us to own it would appear.

It’s disgusting to see the ephemera of someone’s life photographed, catalogued and sold off piecemeal like this – the invasion of privacy and sheer cynical greed is palpable. The listing for one letter to Arthur Miller in this year’s auction is subtitled ‘Charting The Turbulence Of Their Marriage’.

I refuse to read through the pages of her inner life this way, but one diary entry I saw illustrating a promotion for the auction caught my attention. Taken from her time in the Actor’s Studio, it’s simple insight struck me and it felt like we were at least seeing something connected to the pursuit of her craft. “Don’t let the actress worry, let the character worry.”

I wanted to use this as my springboard, but didn’t want to appropriate the page wholesale as another xeroxed pop-art curio. I decided instead to make my own reinterpretation of it, in my own handwriting.

And maybe what I’m doing here is no better, adding to the never ending abyss of Marilyn-adjacent junk. But I’m choosing to see it as an homage to one small instance, not intended to encapsulate or signify anything more than that. Just briefly channeling a moment of Marilyn.

And it’s a pretty good piece of polemic for all kinds of creatives too.

This is a crossover piece with my printmaking practice, which you can see more of here.

_{All words by Susan Sloan.}