Weeks one and two introduced the class to the foundation for which a star is born. An emphasis was placed on the ways that the star image is manufactured and sold to an audience. The readings and movie we watched for these two weeks were focused around Marylin Monroe and the way that her star image was shaped by the entertainment industry. Marylin got her start as a pin-up model which associated her with sex appeal. The manufacturing of her image was based around the stereotypes of what society sees as a “sexy” woman. In our reading “The Building of Popular Images” by Thomas Harris, the author speaks to the way that stereotypes are used to build the star image. Harris states that “the star system is based on the premise that a star is accepted by the public in terms of a certain set of personality traits which permeate all of his or her film roles,” (pg 40). After watching the movie for weeks one and two, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, it was clear that the star vehicles she performed in were used to exploit Monroe’s playmate star image. Her character, Lorelei Lee, was portrayed as a woman in love with a powerful man and used as an object of the male gaze. This goes to show that her playmate image that was constructed for Marylin Monroe was exemplified in her films.
The other reading for weeks one and two, “Monroe and Sexuality,” written by Joseph Rheingold and Jayne Mansfield, discussed the ways in which sexuality was tied to Marylin Monroe’s star image. The author first investigates this portrayal of sexuality by thinking about Marilyn’s feature in Playboy’s first issue with her as their first centerfold. Playboy used a nude photo of Monroe in their first issue because they felt that her ideals surrounding sex matched up with the ideals they wished to express surrounding the topic. Marylin Monroe wanted sex and its portrayal to be seen as natural and innocent – a product of nature which every human being is associated with. By expressing herself in this way, sex, and it’s liberation, became a major facet in the image of Marylin Monroe. In the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, we are able to recognize this innocence and naturalness portrayed by Marylin in terms of her sexuality because she doesn’t understand that she is an object of sex and the male gaze. Her naivety in this case, makes her sexuality seem more natural because she doesn’t try to come off as sexy, boosting her image as a playmate whose very nature is tied to sexuality.
In this reading, the author also investigates Marylin and her association with desirability. The standard for women in the fifties was to acquire a level of desirability that would please a man. Monroe’s conformity to this notion is what led to society’s overall impression about what is “desirable” (a white, blonde female). Whiteness and blondness are used to reinforce each other; blonde representing the ultimate sign of whiteness and only whiteness allowing for the woman to be blonde. These principles reinforce the ideas that there is a racial hierarchy and white people are thought to be more desirable. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes reinforced this ideal because the object of desire – Marylin Monroe – was a white, blonde woman.
