Richard Dyer’s Heavenly Bodies is a book first published in 1986, and has since become one of the foundational works in the area of star studies. In the book, Dyer examines three celebrities – Marilyn Monroe, Paul Robeson, and Judy Garland – in their unique cultural contexts. Each star is associated with a particular focus, and in the case of Monroe, the emphasis is her relationship to sexuality. Dyer states his argument exceptionally clearly:
“The argument in this chapter is that, in the fifties, there were specific ideas of what sexuality meant and it was held to matter a very great deal; and because Marilyn Monroe acted out those specific ideas, and because they were felt to matter so much, she was charismatic, a centre [sic] of attraction
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who seemed to embody what was taken to be a central feature of human existence at the time” (19). Dyer focuses on Monroe’s cultural context to show why she was simultaneously so famous and so relatable in her time. In this piece, Dyer explains to other academics (or parties with a particular interest in star studies) about Monroe’s embodiment, her sexual nature, and the reality of her control (or lack thereof) over her image. His work helps to explain the social space that Monroe carved out and filled, a space which was neither always public nor always beautiful, but also why and how she managed to occupy that space. Dyer starts with a general overview of what Monroe meant in the fifties.
Certainly she was touted as a representation of sexuality itself, and that made her identity inextricable from her body. She embodied desire in a visceral and almost monopolistic way that defies modern comparisons, and her ubiquity made her a cultural icon. After establishing this, Dyer moves on to his first main discourse – Playboy. Since her Golden Dreams spread’s inclusion in the inaugural issue, Monroe and Playboy have been inextricably linked together (28). Playboy capitalized on Monroe’s unique brand of sexuality. Despite the mindset of the fifties, Dyer argues, Monroe’s sexuality was absolutely natural and innocent. She seemed shameless about her sexuality not in that she flaunted in, but in that it genuinely did not trouble her. He analyzes her pinup and posed photos, but even goes to far as to compare her simple, direct gaze to the mechanical posturing of her fellow actresses in a studio shot from 1950 (34). This naturalness, he continues, allows her to feel accessible, as in her acting roles where she plays the girl-next-door type. These roles highlighted her sexuality but also heightened her appeal, allowing men to imagine being with her in real life. And this point, to Dyer, is at the crux of Monroe’s connection to Playboy and overt sexuality. Monroe’s body is not her own, not a reflection of her own desire, but a vehicle for men’s pleasure, and her naturalness and appeal only contributed …show more content…
to this phenomenon. Dyer then moves on to Monroe’s desirability, a trait she embodied in her time. Dyer takes great care to emphasize that Monroe owes much of her fame and fortune to race – while a darker woman may have become famous, Monroe’s whiteness (and especially her blondeness, the penultimate form of whiteness) meant she could comfortably define the fifties standard for desirability. He breaks down traditional color associations, black with darkness, sin, masculinity, and sexuality, and white with light, virtue, femininity, and chastity, and contends that these color associations extend to race as well, lending Monroe a serious advantage of association when portraying attractiveness. However, these associations were not all helpful to Monroe’s career – by portraying the “perfect” form of desirable, Monroe was also expected to be easy to love, unlike other difficult more complicated women. Instead, she must be either entirely harmless, or too unintelligent or unskilled to pull off her schemes, as in How to Marry a Millionaire (46). That perceived affability – or competency – also led her to roles riddled with constant humiliation, which she was expected to take. Even her personal life was used to portray her vulnerability, through extensive analysis (and often exaggeration) of her past experiences and mental health. In the end, her desirability largely boiled down to her image’s conformation to her viewers’ desires. Dyer then moves into a section of psychoanalysis, predicated on the idea of female sexuality being a threatening force. Female sexuality is often portrayed as dependent on male sexuality, and in a Laura-Mulvey-esque turn, Dyer contends that much of female sexuality was theorized as pleasure in being desired. A woman who is sexually interested in a man must, therefore, be a narcissist who is attracted to herself, an angle on feminine sexually played up, in Dyer’s view, by Monroe’s characters’ habit of caressing themselves (53). However, if female interest is inherently self-interested, the reality of feminine sexuality with a man becomes very indefinite, and Dyer focuses on Monroe’s form as indefinite in film as an analogue to the “fuzzy” nature of her sexuality, going so far as to draw comparisons between the sites of orgasms, largely to discuss the necessity of men in a woman’s pleasure. Dyer wraps up his analysis with a look at the politics of Monroe’s sexuality, with a special emphasis on her own view of her image.
He explores ideas of Monroe in terms of feminist thinking – examining the debate on whether she was an exploited woman, or a rebel who took control of her own sexuality. Monroe had a clearly complex relationship with her status as a sex symbol. She didn’t want to receive that label from the outside, acted and dressed in a manner that arguably objectified herself, but admitting that if she had to be a symbol, sex wasn’t a bad one to be. He also examined, in detail, the degree of control that Monroe had over her own image and how she was portrayed, and the influence of her sex symbol status over the roles she played, and how it is constructed, breaking down Bus Stop shot-by-shot, teasing her sexuality only to reveal that, unsurprisingly to anyone who’s put one on, getting into a leotard isn’t exactly sexy business
(64-65). The case study approach that Dyer uses is an effective way of understanding the social forces at work in the construction of a star’s image. By delving into the details of an individual figure’s place in her own cultural context, Dyer manages to tease a rich, deep analysis out of the sometimes-superficial facades that celebrities employ. And while the tools and coverage may be different, the spirit of this practice lives on from the fifties to today. Stars like Taylor Swift still have complicated relationships with sexuality and desire. As much as we’d like to believe we like in a postracial society, Swift certainly benefits from her whiteness, especially when competing against women of color in her industry. In the same vein, the constant media exploitation of her unstable love life took joy in humiliating her, much as it did Monroe sixty years prior. And new tools, like social media, allow celebrities like Swift to carry on the tradition of image control in ways that her predecessors never could, opening up new avenues for the construction of image that, at the time of his writing, Dyer would have needed to be psychic to predict. Ultimately, Heavenly Bodies lays a solid foundation for a lineage of star studies work that, I imagine, will exist as long as there are celebrities.
They did not challenge gender norms or ideals. Nor did they aim to usurp the position of the man. Rather, they supported the overarching mentality that women were to be submissive, strive to fulfill the needs and wants of men, and aim to please their male counterparts. (Kallen) Importantly, none of these women or representations of women exhibited any physical attributes that the dominant culture would view as masculine. Instead, they all displayed quintessential feminine characteristics and traits. Moreover, they were not valued for their brains or accomplishments; they were judged solely based on the degree to which they conformed to the male-dictated status quo. Marilyn Monroe and other sex icons of the 1950s were portrayed as dim-witted, naïve, childlike, and vulnerable, which was the polar opposite of society’s picture of the strong, smart, witty, and brave male. There was nothing about these women that challenged male superiority or threatened the overarching worldview that it was a ‘man’s world’ and women’s purpose was to make this world more enjoyable for the men who ruled it. (Meyerowitz
In Deborah E. McDowell’s essay Black Female Sexuality in Passing, she writes about the sexual repression of women seen in Nella Larsen‘s writings during the Harlem Renaissance, where black women had difficulty expressing their sexuality. In her essay, she writes about topics affecting the sexuality of women such as, religion, marriage, and male dominated societies. In Toni Morrison’s short story, “Recitatif” there are examples of women who struggle to express their sexuality. The people in society judge women based off their appearance, and society holds back women from expressing themselves due to society wanting them to dress/act a certain way. Religion is one point McDowell brings forth in her essay, during the Jazz era she stated that singers such as Bessie Smith, Gertrude Rainey, and Victoria Spivey sung about sexual feelings in their songs.
While “The Yellow Wallpaper” mainly touches on the treatment of women in Gilman's time and only majorly addresses how negative the reception was for them while the men of her world were well-respected individuals, “A Streetcar Named Desire” makes a commentary on the gender roles of masculinity and femininity as a whole, including the two different portrayals of masculinity and how femininity was still generally looked down upon by American society in the late 1940s, unfortunately noting that not much had changed in the time between the stories passed.
In ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ Tennessee Williams depicts many of the convictions concerning to American society 's mind-set towards men and women 's gender roles in the mid-twentieth century. He deals with both male and female typecasts as well as society 's reaction to those who question these assumptions. In order to shape understanding of gender labels Williams uses a variety of techniques, such as dictions, stage directions, character foils, symbolism, sarcasm, and character. By signifying these truths Williams poses a question to society, as to whether or not these depictions are
As women's studies programs have proliferated throughout American universities, feminist "re-readings" of certain classic authors have provided us with the most nonsensical interpretations of these authors' texts. A case in point is that of Kathleen Margaret Lant's interpretation of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire in her essay entitled "A Streetcar Named Misogyny." Throughout the essay, she continually misreads Williams' intention, which of course causes her to misunderstand the play itself. Claiming that the play "has proved vexing to audiences, directors, actors, readers, and critics" (Lant 227), she fails to see that it is she herself who finds the play vexing, because it does not fit nicely into the warped feminist structure she would try to impose upon it.
To do so, Levy turns to the experiences of several young women whom she interviews. From her interpretations of these experiences, Levy reaches the conclusion that these women’s sexual nature revolves around their need to feel wanted and to gain attention rather than to satisfy their own sexual needs (Levy, 194). But by drawing her experiences from only a small subset of the population, her analysis is ultimately restricted to that of a simulacral woman: specifically, one constructed from the characters that actively participate in raunch culture.
What art succeeds in doing is transmute the sexual expression into an acceptable form - by turning it into a thing of beauty and approximating it into a haze of sublimity. In the post- modern climate of media, eros as sexuality reels dangerously on the brink of pornography. Yet what is also important is to realize that it is an important lens to view our social, political and cultural identities. At the beginning of the twentieth century, sexuality rode on the tide of social progressivism and became a vehicle for artistic expression in the novel. Also, when eros as sexuality serves as a principal theme in serious or popular literature, it is often used as a means of remarking upon the dynamics in a society. This is the point that is scrutinised and analysed in this paper where the sexuality of women is seen as an important definition and perspective in Toni Morrison’s Sula (1973).The novel explores the lives and friendship of Sula Peace and Nel Wright in the black neighbourhood dubiously named ‘The Bottom’ in the city of Medallion . The novel also investigates lives of its various female characters in this community who add to our understanding of the life of African American women. Morrison is one of the most remarkable African-American authors of the twentieth century and her novels remind readers that the position of African-Americans in the white-dominant society of the United States of
When someone speaks of Marilyn Monroe most people think she was nothing other than a woman who slept her way to the top. Of course she had her faults, but there are a variety of traits to describe her rather than just her sexual appeal. Marilyn was an iconic model, singer and actress who passed away too soon from unknown causes. She became a popular, enthusiastic actress and her films produced over 200 million dollars. Although, many people seen her as scandalous, she was more than that, she faced many troubling situations before her rise to the top only to be defeated by a sudden death.
Maslow’s Psychoanalytical perspective can be used to give an understanding of this part of Marilyn Monroe’s life. Maslow’s theory was developed and based on hierarchy of needs. Maslow wanted to know and understand what motivated people. His belief was that individuals are motivated to achieve certain needs (Feist & Feist, 2009). According to Maslow, Marilyn Monroe had some loving, belongingness needs and safety needs. Maslow believed that when people had their needs for love and belongingness in early years, they do not panic or feel devastated when they are rejected or denied of love. Whereas people who experienced love and belongingness in small doses, have stronger needs for affection and acceptance (Feist & Feist, 2009). This can be app...
Marilyn Monroe was liked by many, society liked her for the sheer fact that she never portrayed herself as famous, but as a human. She was the epiphany of Hollywoods misguided. She created this noble character that people admired, they also admired her f...
Think about the obstacles of a woman to become successful in the 1950s. I want to find an answer whether it was the media, which created Monroe’s sexy image or Monroe, whom herself used her sexy image to become famous. I am going to study the background of the time period, and learn if the current events such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War, had any impact on Monroe's life, or whether Monroe herself had any influences politics in mid-20th century. I will also explore on how Monroe’s image influenced and redefined the feminism in the 21st century. I believe Marilyn Monroe was a clever, confident, and independent woman who was very brave and smart. Her spirit is what the girls in the new century needed. I also would like to study why Marilyn Monroe is still relevant and even famous in the 21st century to show the power of female charisma.
Through travel and sexual adventures of the protagonist Kathy, the novel portrays sexual politics with the presence of a dominant male figure and the power they gain through such dominance. In this essay, I examine the presences of sexual politics in Kathy’s travels and sexual adventures. When Kathy
Specific Stages of Erik Erickson’s Stage Theory greatly exemplify the deeply confused individual of Marilyn Monroe. The most predominant features of Marilyn Monroe’s personality can be explained by Erikson’s psychosocial stages of “Identity versus Role Confusion”, “Intimacy versus Isolation”, and “Generativity versus Stagnation” (Howard & Shustack, 2009, p. 134-139). During Marilyn Monroe’s most critical period of her life, childhood, she was neither exposed to a stable mother and father figure, nor a balanced environment. Those who did love her did not remain for long enough periods to have a substantial effect on Marilyn’s life. The closest mother-type present in her life, Grace McKee, did not possess the resources needed to raise a child and thus had to withdraw as permanent stature in Marilyn’s life (Learning, 1998, p. 64-76). Aside from Grace, Marilyn also never experienced the protection and love of a father figure, or arbitrary male in her life.
Marilyn Monroe was a deeply troubled woman and I believe that in applying a Psychoanalytic Perspective to her life, the first theorist that comes to mind is Erik Erickson and his stage theory of personality. In applying his theory we see that we can assess Marilyn’s personality through Erickson’s psychosocial stages of “Identity vs. Role Confusion” and “Intimacy vs. Isolation” (Friedman & Schustack 133-134). Marilyn’s childhood, the most critical time in any child’s life when any and all relationships are crucial to their healthy development proved to be the catalyst for her later problems in life as evident by the lack of any solid and
Sex has always been a controversial matter in American society. Before the 1980’s, those that openly articulated their views about sex were thought of as promiscuous and perverse, unless they were male. Perhaps, that is why the aura of Madonna stirred raving controversy across America. Fiske notes that her image was not a “model meaning for young girls in patriarchy, but a site of semiotic struggle between the forces of patriarchal control and feminine resistance, of capitalism and the subordinate, of the adult and the young (Fiske 282).” Never before had a woman presented herself so provocatively yet so comfortably.