In an excellent article for The Atlantic, Sarah Churchwell (author of The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe) deconstructs the pernicious trope that Marilyn was a false identity brutally imposed upon the ‘real’ Norma Jeane – as propagated by biographers and in popular culture, and most recently in the wildly misleading Netflix ‘biopic’, Blonde.
“We talk endlessly about the myth of Marilyn Monroe, but the myth of Norma Jeane is its foundation, encouraging people to express open contempt for the ‘fake’ Monroe by pretending to love the ‘real’ Norma Jeane instead. In fact, Marilyn Monroe was a real person in every way recognised by our culture—except in our stories about her.
The idea that Norma Jeane is both the real Monroe and a different person from Monroe is the myth of Marilyn Monroe. It is a fundamentally misogynistic idea, blaming Monroe for the contempt with which she is treated … Regardless of how unconscious it may be, reducing the staggeringly successful Monroe to ‘little Norma Jeane’ has the undeniable effect of denying her power, keeping her infantilised, pathologised, and always less than a whole self.
The great struggle of Monroe’s life wasn’t her struggle against addiction, depression, and loneliness—it was her struggle for respect, which our culture still denies her … In truth, Marilyn Monroe offers one of the purest instances of the old American promise of reinvention. And, on the evidence of stories such as Blonde, we continue to evolve considerably less than she did.”
The Marilyn Report 