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 semiotic approach the image of Marilyn is a signifier, or form, that has "a sensory reality" and contains a meaning that "is already complete [and] postulates a kind of knowledge, a past, a memory, a comparative order of facts, ideas, decisions" and yet when associated with its complementary signified, or concept, becomes the sign, or signification, which is "consumed," and becomes, indeed, "the myth itself" (Barthes 117, 121).
The notion that there is some central Ma...