>>15967587I was always fascinated with Marilyn Munroe. She was/is an icon but as I got older I began, as I hope we all do, began to wonder about the real person behind the woven illusion of who that person was. First of all what I believe led to her developing the kind of allure and charisma which fueled her career in showbusiness had to have been the insecurity her upbringing was infected with. She was fostered around different families and sought always to be agreeable and charming. This would've meant perfecting inauthentic ingratiating and blinding smiles, acting childlike and non-threatening and seeking at every turn to please. Apparently she had a good sense of humour which would be another tool one could be expected to hone to a pretty sharp condition under the circumstances I've already mentioned.
I prefer these images now because they illustrate her before she was transformed into a product. I wonder if this transformation caused her to think about her Identity. She married Joe DiMaggio and the playwright Arthur Miller which seem Polar opposites but could illustrate her desire to test the reflections they brought out in her character to see which felt most comfortable to her. In the end though her desperation to please led her into a psychosis that her true Self was never good enough and eventually that assurance was what contributed to her suicide. Every interview I've seen with her peers(Jane Russell & Robert Mitchum) all seem to express an idea she was lost which suggests to me an absence of a coherent sense of Self Identity. She commited suicide when at about the same time in an interview she expressed despair at being pressured into be 'sexy' when she was approaching forty.
Something struck me about this and made me think she was a decent person and, at that time in Hollywood, perhaps decency could still be found.
