The above rumination on Marilyn Monroe comes from Molly Haskell’s landmark From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, first published just a dozen years after Monroe’s death. Haskell draws upon her encyclopedic knowledge of Hollywood cinema to describe how female character types have evolved on-screen over the decades. Monroe is the epitome of what Haskell has labeled “the mammary idols of the forties and fifties” (95), yet there is much more than derision in her insights to the characters Monroe plays. Haskell recognizes the conjoining of stardom and abuse when it comes to Monroe, just as Andy Warhol keenly understood—and reveled—in his famous depictions of her, created just weeks after her death. The fascination with Monroe’s perceived luminosity and irresistibility is inseparable from the fascination with her perceived victimhood and trauma. It is a challenge to recognize the former and the latter as constructs within...
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