Transforming….Marilyn and Other Goddesses
Last week I finally got to see “My Week With Marilyn.” I’ve been transfixed with Marilyn Monroe, only for a few years now, since I read “The Art of Seduction,” in which Robert Greene describes her transformation from Norma Jean. And as I actually used the book in transforming myself to some degree for my own acting career, it fascinated me, the difference between reality and stage heroes. Joseph Campbell, in “Power of Myth” talks about actors being like gods and goddesses: we congregate ritually into theaters to sit and listen/watch to these larger than life, almost impossible, beings guide, instruct, fall, err, love…and we leave, perhaps not consciously changed, but definitely affected. So I’d built Marilyn up in my head as a goddess, and to think anyone could play her bugged the hell out of me almost as much as someone making “Atlas Shrugged” into a movie and trying to personify Dagny Taggart bugged me to the point of movie boycott. So when I heard Michelle Williams was playing Marilyn Monroe, I almost refused to see it. But I didn’t.
This isn’t a post about the movie. Or about Michelle Williams (she was great, it was intriguing). It’s a post questioning the ability for screen actors to create the kind of enigma and persona Marilyn did in her time. The limited communication modes and limited availability to media allowed for an unknown actress to transform herself in public, despite her despair and suffering in her real life. I can’t imagine, well a) a producer investing so much in an unknown these days and b) that the “real” persona wouldn’t somehow come out on social media, or through papparazzi, or their own revealing tweets.
I suppose it’s not impossible: Lady Gaga, Angelina Jolie, Oprah, retain some sort of mystery that allow us to project our dreams and desires and fantasy onto, and yet we really only ever know what they show us. Yes, those women are like goddesses.
But I can’t imagine it’s worth all the emotional strife to have another Marilyn Monroe. Someone who seduced the masses, but was so unsure of herself and whether or not she was loved to the point of destruction. As an actress, I wouldn’t want to be “Marylin Monroe” at the expense of a sane life…that lasts past my 30s…I see these girls at auditions trying to be “Marilyns”: sexy make-up, clothes, walks. What she had was natural – a combination of her real vulnerability and insecurity and delusion mixed with the design her management crafted, and an unnatural way of moving that naturally provoked sexual desire. Do these girls realize that there won’t be another Marilyn?
Yet, the desire to seduce masses is still such a part of our work. So I begin to wonder how to create a transformation for the purpose of personifying larger than life characters as a story-teller. This question always brings me back to Theater (If only it would step up to it’s greatness once again, or that we lifted it up as importance). This summer I saw a Chilean Company perform “Neva.” It was a captivating 3 person play/piece of art/performance about Russia and Anton Chekhov’s widow just after his death. The story, the characters, the visuals were so beautiful, and moving, and disturbing that when I saw the actors that played the parts in the lobby, I couldn’t believe they were real. They were like gods to me, unreal beings that I had just seen from afar…show me a world, a magical world, and now here they were having a drink with me. I will forever be in awe of those 3 Chilean performers, and for all I know, they could be alcoholics, or bad-tippers, or cheaters in relationships. It doesn’t matter. The theater still allows for that anonymity, that magic, that the entertainment industry has sucked from film (film/tv itself hasn’t done it) with it’s overexposure and obsession with reality. Some still are able to maintain the mystery and make millions, but few are able to carry that into their work as story-tellers- the new gods in the new mythologies we are creating through film, theater, and television.
