Marilyn Monroe at 100

Graham McCann at the Dublin Review of Books:

In ‘An Arundel Tomb’ Philip Larkin reflected on the shallowness that settles like a mist over the deepest graves of the modern age, and how real engagement erodes more swiftly than the stone that now stands in for the spirit. That same sense of quiet regret has more recently been evoked by cultural commentators who, like idle chatterers descending upon a cemetery for a casual sandwich break, improvise elegies to the memory of Marilyn Monroe on her centenary.

She knew what was coming. She knew what would be commemorated. It had never been, and was never going to be, about her; it was always going to be about a plethora of social and cultural prejudices. ‘Please don’t make me a joke,’ she pleaded in her last recorded interview, although, by then, the portents were dark. Where once she had still felt a modicum of autonomy, turning ‘Marilyn’ on or off with a shift of her head scarf and a slight change in her gait, now she sensed her helplessness to fame.

more here.

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