Marilyn Monroe Icon
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The image of Marilyn Monroe (1926-62) is one of the most widely recognized in the western world and in many contexts it is even possible to refer to her simply by her (not uncommon) first name or her initials. The image of "Marilyn" appears everywhere: in music videos, on postage stamps, in films, in advertising, on book jackets, in transvestite 'drag' performances, on the walls of museums, and on "posters, calendars, salt shakers, lamps, ceramic masks and figurines" (Stuller 47). It is employed repeatedly by those who are interested in the actor and her film work and even more frequently by those who exploit the general tendency to locate some significance in her image. Yet there are nearly as many interpretations of what Marilyn means as there are producers/users of her image. And there are, of course, a variety of particular images that seem to evoke particular meanings and are, in effect, inflections on the general meaning of Marilyn: Monroe in her white dress in The Seven Year Itch; Monroe in the famous early nude shots for Playboy; Monroe in a pink gown, backed by a tuxedoed chorus in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; Monroe at the podium singing "Happy Birthday" to President Kennedy; or Monroe on the beach with tousled hair and a baggy sweater. The question arises, therefore, whether there is some common denominator among all these possible permutations of meaning. The mode of analyzing the question that seems most appropriate is Barthes' notion of myth. In his semioti
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fier (116). But Barthes adopts new names for the terms of the semiological system in myth, in part because the repetition of the terms of the first-order system causes confusion but also because there are substantive differences since the signifier in the second-order system is already formed by the signs of the language system. Thus he calls the signifier "form" because "it is constituted by a meaning which is already outlined [and] can appear only through a given substance"--an important distinction from the linguistic system where the signifier remains mental (122). In contrast to the concrete relationship of the form to time and place the concept, as Barthes calls the second term of the system of myth, "appears in a global fashion, it is a kind of nebula, the condensation of a certain knowledge [whose] elements are linked by associative relations" (122). For the third term of the myth system "sign" is replaced by "signification," a term that is particularly appropriate since myth has a double function: "it points out and it notifies, it makes us understand something and it imposes it on us" (117).
The manner in which the "Marilyn" image functions as myth can be best understood by selecting a particular form and analyzing
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 4202
Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page)
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