This week I watched “Blonde” the new film about Marilyn Monroe which is now available on Netflix. The film was written and director by Australian filmmaker Andrew Dominik based on a novel by Joyce Carol Oates. The impression I had going into it, based on headlines and reviews, was that it was a terrible, mean-spirited film. I actually wasn’t aware there was any political controversy, I just thought people hated it because it was so mean to Marilyn.

In the end, I probably decided to watch it to see if that was true and maybe a bit because I really loved a previous film about Marilyn Monroe which came out in 2011. Lots of spoilers follow so be warned.

The new film is very long and very adult and very depressing. There is no happy ending. Young Norma Jean gets abused from the first moments to the last in ways that are hard to watch. Early on we learn her father has abandoned her and her mother has serious mental problems. At one point she tries to drown her own child in a bathtub. Did this actually happen? I don’t know but there apparently is some evidence that she claimed her mother tried to kill her more than once.

Norma Jean escapes drowning but when her mother winds up in an asylum she eventually gets dropped off at an orphanage. None of this is played to show what a tough child she was. On the contrary, she is clearly fragile and bright and bewildered by what is happening to her. It’s not a fun first half hour.

The film sort of skips over Norma Jean’s pre-Hollywood career. She becomes a pin-up model but we don’t really see how. But when she finally is called in to meet with a man running one of the Hollywood studios (he’s meant to be Darryl Zanuck of 20th Century Fox) she gets raped. It happens right in his office while his female secretary is outside. Norma Jean is humiliated and then shocked to learn that she has been given a part in a movie. Again, did this happen? The details are unknown but something like this probably did happen because it appears Darrly F. Zanuck was an abusive creep.

As Marilyn’s star rises, she gets involved in a throuple with the sons of a couple of Hollywood stars. This is portrayed as a somewhat happy time until she gets pregnant and is under pressure to have an abortion so she can star in her next film.

And this is where the film sort of inadvertently becomes pro-life. Because Norma Jean/Marilyn’s desire to have a child becomes a major theme of the rest of the film. And when she becomes pregnant we see the image of a child in her womb which she talks to. Eventually she has an abortion but the abortion itself is presented as a nightmare. She agrees to go then changes her mind but the doctors go through with it anyway. It’s presented as a kind of 2nd rape.

Then there’s a physically abusive marriage to Joe DiMaggio who beats her for showing her underwear. And then she seems to finally have some hope of a happy life when she marries writer Arthur Miller. She becomes pregnant again and again she has conversations with the unborn child. “You won’t hurt me this time, will you?” the baby asks. Norma Jean promises not to do to the new baby what she did to her previous child, i.e. abort it. But tragically she trips and falls and loses the baby and we see an image of the unborn child as various arteries inside her womb explode from the fall, dooming it to death.

Did any of this happen? Well, not the details obviously. The film isn’t claiming to present medically accurate depictions of a developing baby. The idea is that she’s imagining these conversations based on her own traumatic experiences as a child and desperate desire to be a mother. In real life, Norma Jean apparently became pregnant three times while married to Arthur Miller and lost all three babies.

There’s a lot more misery in the film including more abuse by President Kennedy, but you get the idea. It’s not a happy story as perhaps the story of a woman who overdosed at age 36 probably was not very happy in real life.

But what has really upset people on the left is the depiction of those talking unborn babies and the suggestion that abortion might be tantamount to killing them. It upset Planned Parenthood enough that they issued a harsh statement calling it “anti-abortion propaganda.”

“As film and TV shapes many people’s understanding of sexual and reproductive health, it’s critical these depictions accurately portray women’s real decisions and experiences. While abortion is safe, essential health care, anti-abortion zealots have long contributed to abortion stigma by using medically inaccurate descriptions of fetuses and pregnancy,” [Planned Parenthood’s Caren] Spruch said in a statement shared with Variety. “Andrew Dominik’s new film, ‘Blonde,’ bolsters their message with a CGI-talking fetus, depicted to look like a fully-formed baby.”

“Planned Parenthood respects artistic license and freedom, however, false images only serve to reinforce misinformation and perpetuate stigma around sexual and reproductive health care. Every pregnancy outcome — especially abortion — should be portrayed sensitively, authentically, and accurately in the media,” Spruch added. “We still have much work to do ensure that everyone who has an abortion can see themselves onscreen. It is a shame that the creators of ‘Blonde’ chose to contribute to anti-abortion propaganda and stigmatize people’s health care decisions instead.”

Planned Parenthood definitely does not want Hollywood treating unborn babies as, well, as babies. The backlash became big enough that Director Andrew Dominik responded to it, denying that he had any intent of politicizing abortion in the film.

“What the movie is saying is she’s not seeing reality. She’s seeing her own fears and desires projected onto the world around her,” Dominik began. “You see it constantly time and again that she’s reacting to a story that she’s carrying inside her. And I think sort of this desire to look at ‘Blonde’ through this Roe v. Wade lens is everybody else doing the same thing. They’ve got a certain agenda where they feel like the freedoms of women are being compromised, and they look at ‘Blonde’ and they see a demon, but it’s not really about that. I think it’s very difficult for people to step outside of the stories they carry inside themselves and see things of their own volition. And I think that’s really what the movie is about. The dangers of that. But you know, it’s difficult for people to be able to hold two things in their mind at once. It’s either black or white.”

Dominik continued, adding that he doesn’t think the film would be called anti-abortion had it been released five years ago.

“I think the movie is pretty nuanced actually, and I think it’s very complex, but that doesn’t fit — people are obviously concerned with losses of freedoms, obviously they are,” the filmmaker said. “But, I mean, no one would have given a s–t about that if I’d made the movie in 2008, and probably no one’s going to care about it in four years’ time. And the movie won’t have changed. It’s just what sort of going on.”

Dominik said something else in the same review. He said he felt that everyone who writes about Marilyn Monroe writes as if they are trying to save her. They all sort of imagine if they’d been there they could have helped her. And he thinks the same thing is happening now vis a vis his film. Reviewers want to save Marilyn from him. He may be on to something. Certainly people want to save abortion from him.

In any case, there is a real anger over the film’s portrayal of abortion and pregnancy that continues to play out online and in the media. Vice just published a story today titled, “The New Marilyn Monroe Movie Gets Basically Everything Wrong About Abortion.” Buzzfeed ran a similar story yesterday titled “Here’s Why Netflix’s “Blonde” Is Being Called Out For Its Portrayal Of Abortion.” It’s being “called out” you see. Here’s one of the complaints.

I had the extreme misfortune of watching Blonde on Netflix last night and let me tell you that movie is so anti-abortion, so sexist, so exploitative. CanNOT recommend it LESS. Do not watch. The abortion scenes in particular are terrible, but so is the whole entire movie.

— Steph Herold (@StephHerold) September 29, 2022

“Blonde” is well made and has great performances by both of the actresses who play Norma Jean/Marilyn. It’s also relentlessly depressing and hard to watch. It’s like watching a beautiful, helpless bird get slowly torn apart by cats. After three hours it’s a relief when it’s finally over. I’m sure that was the director’s intent but as a viewer it’s just not a pleasant experience.