We all know Marylin Monroe, movie icon, singer and model, one of the most famous and desirable women of the 1950s. Not all of us, however, know Norma Jean, or rather Norma Jeane Mortenson Baker. Marylin Monroe in fact is her pseudonym; the woman behind the movie star is actually Norma. What is hiding behind her beautiful blond hair?
“Blonde”, Andrew Dominik’s new Netflix film, tells about her story, interpreted by Ana De Armar. Here we see alternating private and public, black and white, destruction and success, Norma Jean and Marylin Monroe. The fictionalised biopic has sparked much controversy, not so much for what it tells but for how it tells it.
A troubled life, full of suffering and abuse. Norma is just a child when she is abandoned by her completely absent father and her mentally ill mother, which is why she grows up in an orphanage. At the age of 20, she decides to throw herself into the world of movies, not knowing what will be in store for her… A resounding success but also multiple molestations by film personalities.
Her love affairs are also catastrophic, the abusive marriage to Joe Di Maggio and the disappointment of the second marriage to Arthur Miller to her affair with John F. Kennedy. Through it all, Norma longed with all her heart to be a mother and create a family, the one she never had. But she is deprived of even this, forced into abortion by third parties. Until her death, when she was only 36 years old, still a real unknown.
The actress is portrayed as the classic ‘dumb blonde woman’. A beautiful body but no brain. Norma, on the other hand, is much more than that; she is a traumatised woman with a hellish past who tried to build the life she dreamed of with all her might.
Perhaps what we should ask ourselves is: would Norma Jean like to be portrayed in this way?
