Article
Museum as Muse: Blue Marilyn
BLUE MARILYN
Wish you wouldn't stare at me! Once you are dead they can make you so ugly. This was not how I ever looked in life, it is a joke I guess. There were many jokes of "Marilyn Monroe" you could laugh at and this one is nasty based on pictures of me when I was twenty-six in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, so long ago and I was made ashamed when I died, there was only $5,000 in my savings account and not enough for a funeral and so my "remains" were taken to the Los Angeles County morgue like a homeless person but at the morgue a kind man felt sorry for me and hid me in a storage room naked beneath just a sheet to protect me from people gawking and taking pictures but anyway they did, this is one of them I guess. I try not to think about it. That is the wisest philosophy I believe. What you like in Marilyn was, she would not make you think sad thoughts. Why you loved Marilyn was...Marilyn was "pretty"? "Sexy"? "Blond bombshell" it was said. Movies of Marilyn made so much money and are still making money like pictures of Marilyn like this one that is so ugly, millions of dollars for other people, mostly men of course but I try not to be bitter, or to let it show. If you show your bitterness like your sadness and hurt they will not love you of course, who can blame them. I don't give up hope even now. I tell myself my Daddy will come to claim me finally. I am changed some, but I am still Norma Jeane. Of all people Daddy would know this. When I was in the Los Angeles County Orphanage I cried a lot but I was the only girl who could say, "I am not an orphan really. I have a mother except she's sick right now and can't take care of me, and I have a father-somewhere." And this was true. It is still true. I am the girl who can say, "Someday if I am pretty enough, and good enough, my Daddy will come and get me from this place, and take me home with him."
--Joyce Carol Oates
Wish you wouldn't stare at me! Once you are dead they can make you so ugly. This was not how I ever looked in life, it is a joke I guess. There were many jokes of "Marilyn Monroe" you could laugh at and this one is nasty based on pictures of me when I was twenty-six in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, so long ago and I was made ashamed when I died, there was only $5,000 in my savings account and not enough for a funeral and so my "remains" were taken to the Los Angeles County morgue like a homeless person but at the morgue a kind man felt sorry for me and hid me in a storage room naked beneath just a sheet to protect me from people gawking and taking pictures but anyway they did, this is one of them I guess. I try not to think about it. That is the wisest philosophy I believe. What you like in Marilyn was, she would not make you think sad thoughts. Why you loved Marilyn was...Marilyn was "pretty"? "Sexy"? "Blond bombshell" it was said. Movies of Marilyn made so much money and are still making money like pictures of Marilyn like this one that is so ugly, millions of dollars for other people, mostly men of course but I try not to be bitter, or to let it show. If you show your bitterness like your sadness and hurt they will not love you of course, who can blame them. I don't give up hope even now. I tell myself my Daddy will come to claim me finally. I am changed some, but I am still Norma Jeane. Of all people Daddy would know this. When I was in the Los Angeles County Orphanage I cried a lot but I was the only girl who could say, "I am not an orphan really. I have a mother except she's sick right now and can't take care of me, and I have a father-somewhere." And this was true. It is still true. I am the girl who can say, "Someday if I am pretty enough, and good enough, my Daddy will come and get me from this place, and take me home with him."
--Joyce Carol Oates
