‘Blonde’ Writer Joyce Carol Oates on Netflix Movie: ‘Not for Everybody’

“Blonde” creator Joyce Carol Oates, who penned the biographical fiction novel that the Netflix movie is predicated on, has weighed in on the discourse surrounding Andrew Dominik’s controversial portrait of Marilyn Monroe. On Friday, Oates answered some burning questions from followers through Twitter, together with about backlash the movie has acquired that it exploits Monroe’s trauma.

Dubbed a fictionalized retelling of the film star’s life and premature demise, “Blonde” loosely recreates a number of tragedies in the course of the lifetime of Monroe (Ana de Armas), together with the abuse she endured from her mom and the sexual assaults she skilled in Hollywood. Along with fan outrage on social media, the film has additionally been panned by a number of movie critics, together with The New York Instances’ Manohla Dargis, who wrote in her assessment: “Given all of the indignities and horrors that Marilyn Monroe endured throughout her 36 years, it’s a aid that she didn’t need to endure via the vulgarities of ‘Blonde,’ the newest necrophiliac leisure to take advantage of her.”

When requested for her assessment of the movie, Oates — who was not concerned within the film’s manufacturing past it being based mostly on her ebook — tweeted: “I feel it was/ is a superb work of cinematic artwork clearly not for everybody. Stunning that in a submit#MeToo period the stark publicity of sexual predation in Hollywood has been interpreted as ‘exploitation.’ Certainly Andrew Dominik meant to inform Norma Jeane’s story sincerely.”

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Oates continued in one other tweet, saying that the movie is “not for the faint of coronary heart.”

“The director is unflinching, intransigent,” she added. “The final 20 minutes or so are nearly too highly effective to be seen. Over all, good cinematography & efficiency by Ana de Armas.”

With reference to Monroe’s sexual exploitation, Oates wrote that together with her expertise within the ebook and movie is a strategy to expose people who harmed her, because it was not potential for Monroe to talk out in her lifetime.

“For the younger starlet Norma Jeane Baker, there was no risk of her ‘telling’/ ‘reporting’ a rape. Nobody would have believed a starlet, or cared; & she would have been dropped from the studio & blacklisted. So, the film ‘Blonde’ exposes the rape, 50 or 60 years later,” Oates wrote. “The merciless exploitation of Marilyn Monroe by, amongst others, John F. Kennedy is well-known to biographers of each MM & Kennedy; however the remedy on display is troublesome for some viewers to see, so recommend simply don’t see it.”

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Oates additionally in contrast the movie to a Rorschach check, by which completely different folks see completely different photographs seem in ink blots. “Some see the publicity of sexual mistreatment of Marilyn Monroe as ‘exploitation’ & others see it as a revelation of how a gifted younger girl was handled in Hollywood & elsewhere, pre#MeToo,” she wrote.

“Blonde” is now streaming on Netflix.