Sixty-two years after her mysterious overdose, Marilyn Monroe is more alive than ever. This weekend, as legions of peroxide-blonde lookalikes paraded through the streets of London to mark her centenary, we witnessed not a celebration of a screen goddess but a grotesque pantomime of cultural surrender. The image of Monroe, that quintessential American product of sex and vulnerability, has become the universal shorthand for female desirability, and our adoption of her as a native icon signals the final, pitiful capitulation of British identity to the ravenous maw of Hollywood.
Let us be clear: Marilyn Monroe was a manufactured phenomenon, a studio-created fantasy whose tragic life was a cautionary tale about the emptiness of fame. Yet today, she is venerated with the sort of reverence normally reserved for a saint. The irony is deliciously bitter. We have turned a woman who was exploited, commodified, and ultimately destroyed by the very system that created her into a symbol of empowerment. This is the cognitive dissonance of the modern age: we celebrate the victim while perpetuating the system that victimised her.
The spectacle of British women — and men, for God's sake — dressing up as Monroe is not merely harmless fun. It is a symptom of a deeper malady: the erosion of a distinct national culture. Once, we had our own icons: Diana Dors, perhaps, or the stiff-upper-lip heroines of Ealing comedies. Now, we import our fantasies wholesale from Los Angeles. The Monroe lookalike is the human equivalent of a McDonald's in Trafalgar Square: a piece of kitsch that marks the triumph of globalised banality over local tradition.
This is not to denigrate Monroe herself. She was a talented comedienne and a poignant presence in films like Some Like It Hot. But her elevation to near-mythic status says more about us than it does about her. In an age of intellectual decadence, where we have abandoned high culture for the soporific comfort of celebrity gossip, Monroe becomes a safe, unthreatening figure: a dead woman who can be moulded into any shape we desire. She is the perfect idol for a society that has lost its nerve, that prefers the simulacrum of passion to the real thing.
Consider the historical parallels. The Romans, in their decline, worshipped imported deities from Egypt and Persia, losing faith in their own gods. The Victorians, by contrast, created a cult of domestic virtue around Queen Victoria herself — a powerful, living symbol of empire and stability. What does our worship of a dead American film star say about our own epoch? It suggests a people without confidence in their own future, one that looks backwards to a golden age of cinema that never really existed.
There is a deeper layer, too. Monroe's image is relentlessly sexualised, yet sanitised. Her dresses are white, her smile is innocent, her death is tragic. She is the perfect object of desire without consequence. In an era confused about gender, identity, and desire, Monroe offers a simple, nostalgic picture of femininity: vulnerable, pneumatic, and ultimately disposable. We can consume her without guilt, because she is already dead.
The centenary celebrations are a carnival of bad taste, a monument to our own cultural desperation. As the lookalikes pout for selfies and tourists queue for overpriced memorabilia, ask yourself: what would Marilyn think? She spent her life trying to escape the trap of her own image. Now we have locked her in it forever.
We have become a nation of waxworks, imitating imitations. The next time you see a blonde in a white dress, remember: she is not Marilyn Monroe. She is a ghost, and we are the ones who have summoned her.
