Marilyn Monroe: All I Need Is This Doll

I shouldn't stay up late at night. It's the best time to write and research uninterrupted, but I also watch TV now and then. And the other night I watched Bio's Dead Famous episode on Marilyn Monroe.

It's not that I was creeped out by the idea of ghosts, and in fact, nothing very spectacular was shown to indicate ghostly activity by Marilyn. However, at the 'communication circle' (aka seance), the spirit of Marilyn supposedly said that she wanted to move on, but that all the fans, all the love and adoration, tied her here.

I have to admit, that bit stuck.

As a collector, I often feel that the objects I own (as well as those I covet) are imbued with forces. Call them life forces, energies, or what have you, but these things are not merely things.

And even if it is in my own mind, this idea that these things carry more than their weight or mass which can be measured on standard scales -- even if it is my own romanticism that makes me hope for life to continue and for the possibility that souls or ghosts can inhabit our concrete world of rational thought and meat -- ideas are real if not tangible. Ideas are the bulk of human existence. They are our own realities, at least until proven otherwise &/or new ideas take their place.

So, what if the cultural love of Marilyn Monroe actually holds some power?

More books have been written about Monroe than any other entertainer, some guessing over 600 books ~ with new releases each year.

So writes DeeDee at Sex-Kitten in her review of Sarah Churchwell's The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe. And the books on Marilyn keep coming.

I'll admit I own more than a few books on Monroe -- what girl who collects pinups and other iconography of sex doesn't have a few Marilyn items in her collection? But in the past few years (perhaps 8 or so years) I've shied away from books on Marilyn. Not only does it seem glutinous, but no book has brought out anything new, despite the claims to the contrary. In the end you just feel like you're a part of the giant machine which feeds off of her -- dead or alive.

And what if that feeding includes some sort of psychic one which ties her here? What if she'd like to leave but our our ownership of her image, her objects, binds her to us?

More from DeeDee's review of Churchwell's book:

This is the ultimate cohesive look at most (if not all) that has been written about Marilyn, right down to reviewer comments at Amazon for these books, and what is shown is not only the legend of Marilyn and how she's been used, but our response and ability to perpetuate the myths as well.

...What's most impressive about this work is the transformation which occurs. As you read, you move Monroe from some 'thing' for our cultural and personal needs, to if not fully human at least considering the possibility that she was a complicated living human being which cannot not easily be understood from the fragments of her life which remain. Once we begin to see that she's not so easily characterized for our 'needs', to be made to symbolize our cultural or personal issues, we then need to look at why we -- readers and society at large -- do this.

We are not completely dehumanized (as we've done to Marilyn) but we certainly have to take a look at ourselves as a swarming mass of millions -- and as individuals. What is this compulsion to make Marilyn something? Why do we not see how dehumanizing our process is? Why is our quest &/or belief system more important than the person we profess to love?

We must now see ourselves moving from lover to stalker; our jealous perceptions of what others may know or say wounds us as if she had cheated on us in real life. She is our goddess, and we own her.

If the biographers have motives so do we the readers and fans who purchase nearly anything with her image on it. There's no denying that we have dehumanized Marilyn Monroe (yes, even little Norma Jeane too) even as we've placed her among our pop culture dieties and cultural icons.

If there is such a thing as ghosts or spirits, wouldn't, couldn't our collective obsession with her royally muck things up?

And if we knew it to be true, and the seance message was true, would we let her go?

Or would we continue our necrophilic lust because our need to own the icon was more important to us?


Maybe it's because it's late, and I'm up alone... But I'm tempted to burn all my Monroe items just on the chance...

Except for that one doll...

And those photos...