Blonde's sacrifice to Valhalla
Blonde (2022) converts the 'Marilyn prose' of the novel by Joyce Carol Oates (2000) into imagery in a relentless travesty devoid of integrity and ridden with clichés. Oates calls it a "penetration" of the fictitious self of Marilyn Monroe and was used by Andrew Dominik as a "bible" for his film. Many Netflix spectators describe that they reached a saturation point after 20 minutes. Oates' first chapter is mirrored in these opening scenes: the leitmotif of closeups of Monroe in her white briefs forced into unsolicited sex in casting auditions or twirling on the set of The Seven Year Itch; g rowing up as an infant in a bureau drawer with a mentally unstable mother Gladys (Julianne Nicholson); receiving a birthday present, a photograph of her absent father placed over her bed by her mother; the fire set that results in the child being placed in an orphanage. The language of Blonde is torpid and dramatic: "I will punish myself, despite...