Marilyn Monroe - The Personal Brand Built of Others
Marilyn Monroe died because she was loved too damn much.
Conditionally, however. That type of love that has requirements to fulfill – an eternally revised prenup that requires a new signature the moment the morning rooster howls.
Which Maslow//Rogers//Sullivan and all the client-centered-counselors would abhor. Screams of the gentle psychologists fill the air. If only everyone had loved her without question, without pressure, then she would have grown into a diamond of her own accord.
Yet, to be loved conditionally is to be loved for your presence. To be seen, to be heard, but never to be considered.
She was never considered. She still isn’t. She never has been. She never will be.
You see… she was never mad, but the one thing you can diagnose her through our oh-so-enlightened modern eyes is with the disease of metonymy. Nothin’ but a BLONDE. Nothing but her darkness.
Change could only flow sideways for Monroe — same for Cyrus — same for the spawn of every Disney TV show known to man.
Horizontal. That was the movement given to her.
Oh — fret not, because her image now hangs in non-drooping wax, built to withstand heat, within the wax museum of Madame Tussaud’s. Her sculpture, her candle-less sculpture, is all we wanted her for.
Good riddance, we say, to a variable Monroe. One who makes men swoon and lust in one foul, foul swoop. The blonde Elvis. A nickname that would reduce her further.
Her brand is made of others.
Of Kennedys.
Of Warhols.
Of movie directors with erections for fictionalized reality.
Of the Broadway wonder, Marilyn Miller, glued to her mother’s name of Gladys Pearl Monroe.
For husbands hunting down her vintage nude spread.
She isn’t a martyr. She’s a victim of star-struck branding.
Dark though it is to learn from the unhappiness of others, Monroe’s personal brand teaches us several things and warns us of the corruption of creativity:
Cocooned – Personal branding can lead to psychosis, in which you become the image, and you are unable to escape it
The Wheel Cannot Always Be Reinvented – Rebranding is easier said than done. Legacy haunts many. Mark Schafer, king of personal branding, knows this well.
Property – On video and on film: your face becomes public property. Taylor Swift was - albeit briefly - considered an Aryan Pop Queen. Her face was plastered next to quotes from Adolf Hitler, and a new personal brand was born.
Voicelessness – Beware of those who offer you success for a cut, for a say.
Pen > Swords – Public relations and the press are the word of god. Newspapers live on in libraries and living rooms, passed from hand to mind to trash, forever following.
The hope within it all?
Monroe still moved within the space she was allotted by the hands of boys-cum-men. Only allowed to exist horizontally, she took the tiniest step possible to keep moving vertically.
For each pair of heels she wore, she sliced an almost-unnoticeable amount off of one of her heels. This gave her a swinging, swooning, sweeping bob that flowed like elevator jazz with each step. Smooth.
Placed within those toe-curling heels* by the brand swarming her, she found the room the wiggle – ever-so-slightly – within their borders.
I hope beyond hope that she felt in control. Even for those pinprick moments as her sliced heels tapped the ground. Perhaps the magic of musical movies came to her mind. Before it waxed and waned.
Tap, Tap, Tap.
