Movies

‘Blonde’ director reacts to backlash over Marilyn Monroe film

December 4, 2022

Andrew Dominick, director of controversial Marilyn Monroe biopic Blond, spoke about the backlash of the film. (Photo: Sylvain Lefèvre/WireImage)

Andrew Dominik, director of controversial Marilyn Monroe biopic Blondspeaks out on the backlash against the Netflix movie.

During an appearance at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia, Dominik proclaimed that American audiences “hated the film”, which starred Ana de Armas as the iconic movie star. The Australian director claimed it was because audiences strictly wanted to see Monroe. appear “allowed” on the screen.

“Now we live in a time where it’s important to portray women as empowered, and they want to reimagine Marilyn Monroe as an empowered woman. That’s what they want to see,” Dominik said of the star. beloved cinema, according to at the Hollywood Reporter. “And if you don’t show them that, it upsets them.”

Dominik went on to say that those who criticized the film, based on Joyce Carol Oates’ 2000 novel of the same name, must have thought it was tapping into their memories of the actress, who died of a drug overdose at 36. years in 1962.

“Which is a bit strange, because she is dead. The movie doesn’t make a difference one way or another,” Dominik said. “What they really mean is that the movie tapped into their memory of her, their image of her, which is fair enough. But that’s the whole idea of the movie. It’s trying to take the iconography of his life and put it to use in something else is to try to take things that are familiar to you, and turn their meaning inside out. But that’s what they don’t want. see.

Despite the negative comments, Dominik clarified that he was actually “really pleased” that the film “outraged so many people”, as he considers it the artist’s responsibility to evoke passionate reactions from his work. He noted this until adulthood in the 1980s, when “offending your audience was a solemn duty, to wring them out of a complacency about things”.

Dominik, who claimed “tens of millions of people” watched the film on Netflix, concluded by saying he thought American cinema was becoming “more conservative”. He compared the current state of cinema to bedtime stories, explaining that people want a story with a predictable ending.

“I don’t want to make bedtime fuss,” he concluded.

Blond sparked significant controversy over its NC-17 rating and its handling of rape, abortion and miscarriage. In October, model and author Emily Ratajkowski called out the film in a TikTok post, saying it was responsible for “fetishizing female pain,” Yahoo Entertainment previously reported.

“So I’ve heard a lot about this Marilyn Monroe movie, Blond, which I haven’t seen yet, but I’m not surprised to hear that it’s yet another film fetishizing female pain, even in death,” Ratajkowski explained to the camera. “We like to fetishize the female pain. Look at Amy Winehouse. Look at Britney Spears. Look how obsessed we are [Princess] Diana’s death. Look at how obsessed we are with dead girls and serial killers. Watch any ITUC episode, and it’s this crazy fetishization of female pain and death.”