The assassination of Marilyn Monroe by the coward Andrew Dominik: An existentialist phenomenology of cinematic imagination

The release of Andrew Dominik’s Blonde in 2022 on Netflix caused a furor of out-rage, and the film was seen variously as misogynistic, exploitative, and badly made. Here I wish to explore the ways in which we can think about the hyper-mediated image of Marilyn Monroe through Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenological consid-eration of imagination and Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialist analysis of ethics and ambiguity. I will argue that Sartre’s idea of irreality (unreality) guarantees the freedom of each individual and that the irreal Marilyn Monroe, as played by Ana de Armas and others, reflects a freedom that, while ambiguous, is nevertheless necessary.