“Biographical truth is not to be had, and even if one had it, one could not use it.”
Sigmund Freud to Arnold Zweig
Starting this article with Freud is fitting if you consider the clear Freudian undertones (or should I say ‘overt tones’) in Andrew Dominik’s Blonde. Let’s just say that Marilyn Monroe’s ‘daddy issues’ take up most of the viewing time. Yet, the more compelling reason for including Freud’s claim about biography is that at first glance, it seems that his assertion should resonate with a 21st-century, post-truth society – yet it doesn’t. “Biographical truth is not to be had”, even if the relentless biopics churned out by Hollywood fool us into thinking that it is. ‘Biopics’ have gained significant popularity in the 21st century. Despite the decline of the biopic in the last thirty years of the 20th century, of all best actor winners from 2000-2022, 12 out of 21 have won from biopic films. It’s clear that the biopic has established itself as a genre worth taking seriously. Neither Andrew Dominik’s Blonde nor Frances O’Connor’s Emily strictly fit into the biopic genre since they integrate elements of both the fictional and biographical to depict their protagonists. However, in both films, the directors decide to toy with fiction and reality, revealing something deeper about film as a medium, the biopic as a genre, and the suffering of their female protagonists.
If you haven’t watched Dominik’s Blonde, you’ve probably heard about it (and subconsciously formed opinions on it) based on newspaper headlines and a general distaste amongst viewers and Marilyn Monroe fanatics alike. However, if you’re willing to watch a film that saturates you with intense depictions of suffering and screaming louder than the public outcry surrounding it, I recommend you watch Blonde before reading on! Nonetheless, the nearly three-hour-long film follows the traumatic life of Marilyn Monroe, played beautifully by Ana de Armas. The film tracks the trajectory of her life from a childhood filled with maternal abuse and paternal absence, all the way to a stardom plagued by failed marriages, abortions, ‘daddy issues,’ and the drug abuse that ultimately facilitated her suicide (we won’t get into conspiracy theories here). Dominik’s Blonde is placed in the ‘Films Based on Books’ and ‘Dramas’ categories on Netflix. The film is based on Joyce Carol Oates’ historical fiction novel that shares the same name. The title Blonde should be indicative of the fact that Dominik’s film isn’t specifically telling the real Marilyn Monroe’s story but rather the story of, as Dominik himself puts it, “the great icon of the 20th century” that we see externally.
On the contrary, O’Connor’s Emily is eponymous as the film is named after Emily Bronte.Despite adhering to the biopic convention which makes its subject a titular protagonist, the film, for the most part, conveys a fictionalised account of Emily Bronte’s life in Yorkshire with her three sisters, her brother, and her regimented widowed father. The film beautifully weaves together threads from Emily Bronte’s only novel ‘Wuthering Heights’ with elements of facticity that paint a picture of what Emily’s life would have looked like, had she fallen in love and experimented with opium. O’Connor’s film bends the truth, arguably to a much greater extent than Dominik’s Blonde by introducing a romantic storyline between Emily, played by Emma Mackey, and assistant curate William Weightman. In reality, records indicate that Weightman may have been the romantic interest of Anne Bronte instead. Yet, Blonde has been vehemently attacked by both critics and viewers for the bending of the truth of a much more notorious and controversial celebrity than Emily Bronte. Furthermore, the moments in the film that motivate these attacks are simply moments. For instance, the scene in which Marilyn performs fellatio on US president, John. F. Kennedy and a shot of Marilyn’s mother, Gladys, attempting to drown her daughter in a bathtub, have been accused of being unfaithful to the truth. These moments are insufficient to constitute any kind of plot as opposed to the fictional love story between Emily and Weighman, which drives a hefty portion of Emily.
So, why do audiences hate Blonde and not Emily? I believe it’s because we’re scared of Blonde and its explicit portrayal of the realities of female suffering. The spectator’s proximities to suffering differ in both films. In Blonde, we experience an effect that Jean-Luc Marion labels ‘saturated phenomena’ where viewers are presented with an abundance of visibility of pain and suffering, that Jayne Svenungsson argues “overwhelms the viewer”. In Blonde, viewers are overloaded with images of degradation, abuse, trauma, and sex; thus, we are essentially overborne by Marilyn’s suffering. It is also helpful to talk of the icon and the idol. Dominik’s presentation of Marilyn correlates to that of the idol, where the viewer is faced with an abundance of visibility that immediately fixes their gaze and doesn’t put the subject in relation to anything outside of itself, explaining the severe isolation that Marilyn suffers throughout.
In contrast, the icon is experienced when the invisible appears through the visible. In other words, viewers experience a more muted presentation of suffering. Thus, in O’Connor’s Emily, it is through Emily’s more subtle reactions to her restrictive and oppressive environment in 19th century, middle-class England that constitute the representation of her suffering. For example, even the billboard for Blonde gets as close as you can to Marilyn’s face, contrasting the billboard for Emily which places the protagonist at a safe distance from the onlooker. Perhaps the fear that viewers experience when directly faced with trauma, particularly female trauma, in the form of the idol, explains their distaste towards Blonde.
Although Blonde is far from a traditional biopic, through its presentation of saturated suffering, spectators are equally disturbed and enlightened by its morbid depictions of trauma. Audiences glean a closer look at what it’s like to be an icon, to embody a confused state of private and public personae, to be a sex symbol and an idol of consumption. Marilyn is still a commodity today. Marilyn’s dress was worn by Kim Kardashian at the Met Gala, her beauty mark has been transformed into a popular piercing and the proximity to her burial place was purchased by no other than Hugh Hefner for $75,000. Even after her death, people are trying to get as close to Marilyn Monroe as possible. It’s likely that the post-mortem profitability of Marilyn informed Dominik’s depiction of her. A portrayal which demonstrates how the commodification of oneself necessarily leads to the sacrifice of subjectivity and personhood.
As Dennis Bingham states, the biopic should allow for “both artist and spectator to discover what it would be like to be this person…or to be that person’s audience.”, the latter is particularly important when watching Blonde. Emily is a beautiful depiction of female suffering, but it remains just that, beautiful. Emily doesn’t scare its audiences like Blonde does because it maintains a safe distance and level of subtlety that separates the viewer from Emily’s suffering. Perhaps it is the fear of female suffering in its immediate form that scares audiences the most. Even when we gain access to the biographical truth of suffering, as Freud claims, we simply don’t know how to use it.