Marilyn Covers ‘l’Humanité’ in France

‘Do you know the real Marilyn?’ is the question posed – alongside one of the last photos taken by George Barris at Santa Monica Beach in July 1962 – on the front page of l’Humanité magazine, a weekly supplement included in today’s edition of the French daily newspaper. Inside is a 10-page article, ‘Marilyn in Battle‘ by Caroline Constant, focusing on the feminist documentary, Marilyn: Woman of Today.

“Marilyn has been dead for sixty years. We think everything has been said about her. And yet, the focus is totally biased in our way of seeing her simply as a victim … Her own personality has been engulfed by this side – victim of patriarchy, studios, men. So we focused on her attempts to gain control over her life. And we’ve retrieved a colossal amount of information … She never stopped fleeing and creating traps for herself while fleeing. She fled her Dickensian childhood, creating this flamboyant character. In this persona she was triumphant, but she was labelled as ‘the dumb blonde’. Afterwards, she kept running away from this character. But to leave this luscious character behind and become an intellectual, that went a little too far. She tried, but we didn’t give her the opportunity …”