It was a scene that could have been lifted from a parody of modern Britain: a gathering of peroxide-coiffed women in white dresses, standing over a subway grate, recreating a moment of celluloid history. The occasion was the centenary of Marilyn Monroe’s birth, and the location was Leicester Square, where the UK Film Archives had chosen to honour a woman who was, let us be honest, as much a product of studio manipulation as she was a genuine talent. The spectacle was both earnest and eerie, a reminder that our cultural memory is now a hall of mirrors, reflecting images of images until the original is lost.
One cannot help but draw parallels to the decline of the Roman Empire, when the aristocracy would commission busts of themselves in the style of Greek gods, and the populace would cheer for gladiators whose fame was as fleeting as a summer’s day. Today, we do the same with our celebrities, and Monroe is the quintessential example: a woman whose life was a tragedy of exploitation and addiction, now sanitised into a brand. The lookalikes, with their painted lips and practised pouts, are not merely paying homage; they are participants in a ritual of historical erasure. They are the vestal virgins of a secular religion, tending the flame of a goddess who was never quite real.
But let us not be too cynical. There is something touching in this absurdity. The British are, after all, world champions at preserving the posthumous reputation of foreigners. We have adopted Monroe as our own, just as we adopted the hamburger and the Christmas tree. It is a form of cultural appropriation, but a benign one, a gesture of affection rather than conquest. The archives, by screening her films and displaying her costumes, are doing more than marking a birthday; they are confessing a national obsession with borrowed glamour. We are a grey island of drizzle and reserve, and so we need our Monroes to inject a splash of Technicolor into our drab existences.
And yet, the question haunts me: what would Marilyn think? She who once said, ‘I don't mind living in a man's world as long as I can be a woman in it,’ would she laugh at the parade of replicas, or weep at the vulgarity of it all? I suspect she would be amused, then troubled, then resigned. For she knew better than anyone that the image is a cage, and that the public’s love is a form of cannibalism. They devour the symbol and leave the person to starve.
We stand at a peculiar juncture in history. The twentieth century recedes into the past, and we cling to its icons like driftwood in a flood. Monroe, Elvis, Princess Diana: we embalm them in an eternal adolescence, refusing to let them age or die properly. It is a form of decadence, a symptom of a society afraid of the future. The Roman Empire fell, in part, because it could not stop looking backward to a golden age that never was. We may be following the same path, distracted by our own mythologies.
So let the lookalikes have their day. Let the archives do their work. But as you gaze upon the blonde wigs and the red lips, remember that you are witnessing a funerary rite. We are not celebrating a life; we are embalming a ghost. And the ghost, like all ghosts, has a warning for the living: be careful what you worship, for it may consume you.
Happy birthday, Norma Jeane. Or rather, happy haunting.
