Psst, hey, Marilyn Monroe’s image as a freewheeling sexpot was a carefully constructed lie. The real Marilyn Monroe was a roiling tragedy and her life was an indictment of our society as a whole. She was orphaned after her mother had a schizophrenic breakdown, bounced around between foster homes where she was sexually abused, and married a 21-year-old at 16 to get out of being sent to an orphanage. Hugh Hefner published nude photos of her without her consent that were taken when she was 23 and desperate. She suffered severe anxiety and depression, which she coped with by drinking and using barbiturates, and was already a full-blown addict when she became famous in the mid-50s. Her career was one of exploitation, condescension and alienation, and she killed herself at 36. That Hugh Hefner, a man who was at best an unpleasant footnote in her life, felt entitled to be buried next to her is one more humiliation in a pop cultural landscape we should all be ashamed of.
“Please don’t make me a joke… I don’t mind making jokes, but I don’t want to look like one… I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity..”
– Marilyn Monroe, last taped interview, days before her death
She deserved better than this
Can I just also say, in addition to all this, that I’m still pissed off about the fact that Joe DiMaggio swooped in and gave Marilyn a Christian funeral before her Rabbi could return from a trip overseas? ‘Cause that shit is fucked up.
So many men who claimed to be in love with her, and not one could fucking respect her wishes, even in death.
I’m not trying to start a fight(so please don’t), I would just like some clarification on how a Christian funeral went against her wishes. I’m merely curious, that’s all.
She was obviously Jewish. For him to give her a Christian burial was cruel, disrespectful, and antisemitic as fuck.
Like, it would be seriously insulting to any Jewish person, but especially given that she converted, it completely took away her agency and right to define her own identity. It implies that her desire to be Jewish was invalid and that she wasn’t really who she herself chose to be, and that her abusive ex-husband knew her better than she knew herself.
People acted like she only converted for Arthur Miller and that she didn’t want to be Jewish after they split, but that was totally false and she remained actively committed to Judaism up to the time of her death, as her rabbi said in his letters.
DiMaggio erased her identity and denied her right to agency by giving her a Christian funeral. As the above poster said, it was disrespectful as anti-Semitic as fuck. Even in death, she was denied the right to be her own person.
Also, just as a lil note up there, it’s likely that Marilyn had not just depression but bipolar disorder.
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