Blonde

The most interesting part of the new Netflix Marilyn Monroe pic Blonde, for me, is the representation of a very specific kind of Hollywood rot. We do not at first appreciate very much about the two men with whom a young Marilyn Monroe, played by Ana de Armas, begins a romantic affair. We know they are two faces in a Hollywood acting class. We know they are bookends of a sort — blandly handsome, interchangeable, good casting on the part of writer/director Andrew Dominik, who in other ways delivers a project that, in the words of a friend, “looks like a very expensive student film.

When Kim Kardashian wore Marilyn Monroe’s dress to the Met Ball back in May, the world was aghast. Many claimed the dress was damaged (something the owners deny), and the dress’s original designer, Bob Mackie, told the world it was a “big mistake," saying, “Nobody else should be seen in that dress.” Some of the concerns came from the fact that Kim Kardashian had had to lose a significant amount of weight to fit the blonde bombshell’s proportions — the dress was so tight on Monroe that she'd had to be sewn into it — and that it set a dangerous precedent for the preservation of historical costumes.