Unreal Woman

Basinger places Monroe, along with Greta Garbo and Hedy Lamar, in the category of Unreal woman, a category that represented what men wanted.  The Real woman category, on the other hand, represented what society wanted and was played by actresses such as Ginger Rogers, Myrna Loy, and Jean Arthur.  Most of our other women (Hepburn, Davis, Stanwyck) fit in Basinger's Exaggerated Woman category, which is a mixture of the real and unreal--women who, in Basinger's view, were women who women need.  

  In hearing Monroe's story, we realize the dangers of being an Unreal woman, that Monroe wanted to exceed the roles she's most remembered for, but had difficulty convincing producers and the public that she should.  In a sense her life fit into the pattern we've seen with the pattern of our earlier characters who finally learn to choose their proper role.  In Some Like It Hot, it's Joe (Tony Curtis) who finally learns to be human as he watches Sugar (Marilyn Monroe) sing she's "through with love."

Marilyn Monroe's birthday was June 1.  We've celebrated many more of her birthdays since her death (Fifty now) than she ever had in the thirty-six she celebrated.  Doris Day, who we watched in Pillow Talk, was born two years before Marilyn, but still continues to celebrate her own birthdays (April 3).  In the popular imagination they fit in opposite places, yet in the films we watched both Monroe and Day played women who must coax apparently "reluctant" men into sex (though we never actually see such happen of course).  We could conclude both were "safely" sexual, Marilyn only barely so and Doris very so.  Both are icons, yet both suffered in different ways for being so.  As we know, but rarely admit, it's much better to worship icons than to be one.