Netflix’s new Marilyn Monroe movie is taking criticism, this time from abortion profiteers Planned Parenthood, for “stigmatizing people’s health care decisions” with its portrayal of an unborn child upset by the prospect of being killed in the womb.
Andrew Dominik’s Monroe biopic, Blonde, that debuted on the streaming service at the end of September. depicts the Hollywood star’s anguish over two illegal abortions which were reportedly forced upon her against her will. In the film, Monroe (Ana de Armas) is depicted as having conversations with her dead fetuses.
In one scene, for instance, the fetus asks the tortured star, “You won’t hurt me this time, will you?”
Planned Parenthood was not entertained by abortion being portrayed as something that would torture a woman. Caren Spruch, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s national director of arts and entertainment engagement, blasted the film.
“As film and TV shapes many people’s understanding of sexual and reproductive health, it’s critical these depictions accurately portray women’s real decisions and experiences, Spruch said, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
“While abortion is safe, essential health care, anti-abortion zealots have long contributed to abortion stigma by using medically inaccurate descriptions of fetuses and pregnancy. Andrew Dominik’s new film, Blonde, bolsters their message with a CGI-talking fetus, depicted to look like a fully formed baby.”
“Planned Parenthood respects artistic license and freedom,” Spruch added. “However, false images only serve to reinforce misinformation and perpetuate stigma around sexual and reproductive health care. Every pregnancy outcome — especially abortion — should be portrayed sensitively, authentically and accurately in the media. We still have much work to do to ensure that everyone who has an abortion can see themselves onscreen. It is a shame that the creators of Blonde chose to contribute to anti-abortion propaganda and stigmatize people’s health care decisions instead.”
The director pushed back against the claim that his film is anti-abortion. He said that the criticism is really only about timing.
“People are obviously concerned with losses of freedoms,” he said referencing the recent Supreme Court decision vacating Roe v. Wade. “But, I mean, no one would have given a shit about that if I’d made the movie in 2008, and probably no one’s going to care about it in four years’ time. And the movie won’t have changed. It’s just what’s sort of going on.”
The attack on the film by Planned Parenthood is only the latest complaint about Blonde. Spurch’s comments only echo those made by other feminists who were angered over the way Monroe’s abortions was portrayed.
“Blonde is a horrific, tone-deaf reminder of why a female perspective should be included, or at least asked for, when writing about abortion,” wrote Samantha Bergeson, as Breitbart recently noted. Bergeson also suggested that there should be a “trigger warning” for “a trio of CGI fetuses asking why Monroe murdered them.”
The movie takes many historical liberties with Monroe’s real life, and despite the sensationalism, it has little to offer, according to Breitbart’s John Nolte.
Nolte praised the portrayal of abortion as the murder of a baby, but he also found the movie uninspired.
“None of Marilyn’s charisma, that inner-light, that indefinable quality that made Marilyn Marilyn — even without having starred in one knockout feature — is present,” Nolte wrote. “The same is true of Armas, who’s lovely but so repressed playing this wounded and despairing bird who’s only ever wounded and despairing, whatever charisma she has that makes it illegal not to gush over her is extinguished.”
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