The new Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde starring Ana de Armas is trending this week on Netflix. The biopic was inspired by Joyce Carol Oates’ biographical fiction work.
Joyce Carol Oates boldly reimagines the emotional, lyrical, and spiritual life of Norma Jeane Baker – the child, woman, fated fame, and idolised blonde the world came to know as Marilyn Monroe. Blonde is a sweeping epic that pays respect to the mysterious magic and misery behind the birth of the great twentieth-century American star. It is a striking portrayal of Hollywood’s myth and a remarkable woman’s devastating reality.
Blonde is one of Oates’ longest works of fiction, clocking in at over 700 pages. “I planned it to be a novella, maybe about 175 pages, and the last words would have been ‘Marilyn Monroe,'” she revealed in an interview. But I became so engrossed in her world that I couldn’t stop there. This book was the end outcome.”
The novel was also turned into a CBS mini-series of the same name in 2001, which closely mirrored the novel. The mini-series deviated from the novel by excluding the possibility (which Joyce Oates examines extensively in the book) that Monroe was killed.
