The Marilyn Effect

Marilyn Monroe became an icon in the cultural wilderness of America when she died at the birth of the sex revolution. She became Hugh Hefner’s first Centerfold, and while there had been screen sirens and sex goddesses before her, there was this evolution in mass media where sexual images looped endlessly in the collective unconscious like the Darryl Zapruder film.

MM became a star in that filmic reel with her pop art photos and blonde bombshell bosoms. Had she not died tragically at 36 in her Brentwood home, Marilyn may have joined the ranks of aging actresses like Liz Taylor or Rita Hayworth or Bridget Bardot. Instead, she was linked in a sex scandal with the Kennedys, with numerous lovers and husbands, including such notables as baseball slugger Joe DiMaggio, and playwright Arthur Miller. While her death may have been an accidental suicide by continuous and prolonged use of barbiturates and alcohol, MM had been fired from her studio job and was severely depressed, her emotional instability, the stuff of legend.

Back in the day, normal people sedated and self medicated themselves with booze. Drinking was only a problem for those who did not drink. While there had been Prohibition and all that ‘Demon Rum ‘rhetoric, there really was no cure for anxiety, though the pharmaceutical companies were working on it fast and furiously. Lobotomies were becoming politically incorrect and mental health and psychiatry gained a few more demons with movies like Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and the deteriorating conditions in hospitals.

Psychoanalysis began its meteoric rise in the mid 2oth century, and MM was a big fan, having retained her own psychiatrist. Her childhood became the stuff of endless biographical lore since she was born to a single mother who was committed to a mental hospital, and then shuffled off to foster care, where her burgeoning beauty became a threat to most, and she was then, married off at 16 to a soldier, deployed in the military. She was discovered working in the aerospace factories in Los Angeles and began her career as a pinup and model. Stardom struck her straight through the heart as it does many young Americans, and she never looked back.

All this Britney Spears brouhaha brings to mind stars like MM, Janis Joplin, or Jim Morrison. The fact that Britney Spears is a ‘pop tart’ and is labeled as such probably impeded some much needed personal development. She obviously didn’t attend high school like the rest of us. She was on tour at a very young age, idolized by millions, and grew obscenely rich in the process. Had she been a little older, there may have been a different result, but the formative teen years are a time when a young woman experiences her sexuality, her sensitivities, her intellect, and all the usual ‘angst and acne.’

It is at best a turbulent time for most, but for a pop tart, it might be well – delayed. Depending on messages and programming teenagers receive from parents, friends, and the culture, most sort themselves out by their twenties, but for some, it takes much longer. Britney, apparently emotionally unstable after two children and a divorce, was, ‘rescued, by her parents. She’s lucky she has them. Marilyn Monroe did not. Hopefully, Brit's descent into madness has been arrested or medicated before she crashed and burned on Red Bull, Starbucks, and bad driving.

As a foster child, Monroe, married off to the first available man, had few perks along the way. Like so many intelligent and sensitive young people who don’t receive an adequate education or enough ‘love’ from their families, Marilyn’s life started to spin as she gained more fame, more attention, and more money. She was ‘used’ by the people around her, and she developed a habit for drugs and alcohol that eventually lead to her death. Love is a learned behavior, but not too many people master the lessons, especially the one about self love.

The celebrity life attracts many, and some are ‘to the manner born,’ meaning they fall into it because they are so notorious and so white hot, there is no other place for them to exist in the culture. For others, they try to gain entry to this surreal world by virtue of their talent, wits, and connections. Britney started out as a mouseketeer, reveled in the spotlight, and manufactured a pop tart act that was devilishly Lolita wrapped in southern belle blonde whose parents supported her ‘career.’

Many young teens would love to be pop tarts but their parents don’t care to sacrifice their time or money for an illusory music career, and most don’t have the connections or business savvy to entrust their kids to show biz snakes that may gain them a record deal. Britney’s gamble paid off despite minor vocal talent and lots of sex appeal, but she lost a lot of her ‘innocence’ along the way. Innocence is one of those loaded words that mean different things, but ‘protection’ may be a better word.

Marilyn Monroe was a perfect example of this. She was pretty but ‘discarded’ by society, raised in foster care, if indeed, that was what it was. Adrift in the wake of social changes brought on by World War Two, Marilyn was an ‘innocent,’ with no one to protect her. She became an icon, almost overnight, in a post war economy that began to trade sex and women never, before witnessed on the world stage.

During the war, women went to work for the first time. As many will tell you, once the war broke out, there were very few men around. Not only did the war claim many lives, but they were drafted and sent to both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. This is how Marilyn ended up in the defense industry factories in southern California where she was spotted as a ‘white hot’ beauty and so honored as to be the first centerfold of the debut edition of Playboy Magazine.

There had always been prostitution and illicit acts that were reigned in by ‘morality’ laws, but now a sexual revolution was brewing. Hugh Hefner saw it coming. Not only was it kicked into high gear by the invention of birth control, but television, advertising, and all media started trading in it full speed ahead.

The population of the US, doubling since the 1950s also diminished the values of the culture and sex workers became almost mainstream. Strippers were single mothers, students, recent immigrants, and stripping or ‘exotic dancing’ became a highly lucrative field routinely paying thousands of dollars a week. No longer were talented singers allowed to just rock their lyrics, but now they had to dance lasciviously to attract the MTV audience. You didn’t see Linda Ronstadt dancing wildly onstage at her concerts in the 70s. By the 80s, she was relegated to ‘classic rock.’ Many singers like Sarah Vaughn, did not make the MTV ‘cut,’ and a new era of video voyeurism was born.

So, when Marilyn Monroe decided to become a ‘serious’ actress and study with the Strasbergs, and educate herself, she also became part of the dichotomy of the role women should play. She not only had to be a super sexy beauty but also the Madonna, the good wife and mother, and a talented and trained actress who knew her lines. She failed at all those roles. She was emotionally unstable, and could not manage to discipline herself to show up on time for work, nor find stability in her relationships with men. She suffered at the hands of everyone for all of it. She was fired from her last job at Twentieth Century Fox, divorced again, and at age 36, addicted to sleeping pills and alcohol.

Nobody came to her rescue and it is very difficult to rescue someone from themselves anyway. There wouldn’t be the rehab industry if friends and family had any luck at all, and even the rehabbers fail miserably. Pharmaceuticals still play a role, but can become a toxic soup and easily abused.

Bad parenting is blamed for many things these days, but bad parents are really better than no parents at all if they love their children. Children sometimes remain children well into middle age, and the consequences are obvious. Marilyn was that woman child, looking for her boundaries, her protection, and the unconditional love of a parent. She found it in public adoration and it really didn’t have the same effect. Fame is a new phenomenon because of the speed of media, but the effect is always the same: if someone is not protected, either from within or without, they will suffer for it.

The education most receive is inadequate and no one really learns that states of consciousness composed of animality, hunger, learning, rapture, realization, enlightenment, and when the devil or the darkness overcomes us, we turn to drugs and alcohol since we know no other relief save for the religious preaching that alienates most. God has his own narcotic effects on some, and psychoanalysis gave way to Prozac and anti psychotic meds.

So what is protection, really? How do people gain this protection or self preservation? This is offered in many religions as amazing grace, divine protection, guardian angels, and even the new agers offer sealing one’s aura, and psychic protection spells. Only, there is one true route to ‘protection,’ and that just might be the understanding that love is a learned behavior, not just a divine essence that conks one on the head magically. You learn it from parents and family, and even the best of families forget to teach it. Love is now an overloaded word that means almost nothing really. It is not sex. It is not stalking or blind adoration or slavery or subservience. Most importantly, it is not a cure all, but self love can be the difference between an accidental suicide, a train wreck, and a narcissistic society that only worships you when are young and beautiful and overtly sexual.

To read more about MM, read her own autobiography:
My Story: Illustrated Edition (Hardcover)by Marilyn Monroe (Author)



My Story: Illustrated Edition by Marilyn Monroe (Hardcover - Nov 25, 2006)
Buy new: $24.95 $16.47