Core Post #3 - Megan Henckel

   In Dyer’s Heavenly Bodies, he explains the intricacies of Marilyn Monroe’s persona and all the ways in which “Monroe=sexuality” (18). There are so many different facets to Monroe’s image, particularly with regards to sexuality, and each reveals a different detail about how the American movie going audience viewed Monroe. I was fascinated by the Playboy image and philosophy  section and how the ideologies of a drugstore (some would call it porn) magazine so deeply rooted in mid-century America, functioned as one of the many driving forces behind Monroe’s inextricable connection to sexuality and femininity. The chapter describes the Playboy philosophy as an ideology the views sex as a natural biological desire that should be embraced as a component of happiness and fulfillment rather than a desire to be repressed and viewed as sinful. As Dyer notes, “a society may offer negative, suppressive concepts of sex, relating sex to sin, sickness and guilt; or it may offer a positive permissive view where sex is related to happiness, beauty, and feelings of pleasure” (29). With this philosophy, it is argued that Playboy attempted to blend its progressive view on sexuality with the everyday suburban, white-collar existence that was the norm for a majority of Americans during this time.
   Here, there is a direct connection to Thomas Harris’ chapter on Monroe in which he asserts that part of a star’s publicity was based on a method of stereotyping in order to create one identity that an audience would accept and recognize in a film. In Monroe’s case, she was stereotyped as the ideal “playmate” and that image was “nourished by the acceptance of her pictures, which skyrocketed her to an almost allegoric position as the symbol of illicit male sexual desire” (42). Essentially, Monroe’s publicity, as Harris notes, centered upon her playmate images which in my opinion directly intersects with Playboy magazine’s own integration of its philosophy into normal American life. Therefore it seems as though the Playboy image and philosophy and Monroe’s persona, and her image as a sexual icon, are intertwined with such complexity that the two feed off of each other as Playboy magazine needed the image of Monroe to perpetuate its ideology as well as Monroe needing the sexual freedom reinforced by the magazine and the publication of her picture in the magazine itself to cement her status as America's favorite star and sex symbol. Overall, I’m still fascinated by the inextricable link between Monroe and sexuality but, more importantly, her essential connection to Playboy and its philosophy.