This year’s release of Andrew Dominik’s Blonde has created an overwhelmingly divided discussion scene. Upon its showing at the Venice Film Festival, Blonde–a Marilyn Monroe biopic– received a fourteen-minute standing ovation, yet its critic review score on Rotton Tomatoes sits at a low 42%, with an even lower audience rating of 32%. This is made even odder by the movie’s jump to the number-one spot on Netflix the day after its release. 

2022’s Blonde is based on the over-700-page book of the same name written by Joyce Carol Oates. It’s important to note that Oates’ novel is just that– a novel. With heavily fictionalized elements, the book strays very far from the truth of Monroe’s life. 

The movie keeps its book counterpart’s length at nearly three hours of screen time. Yet, despite the extreme length of the film, it stays one-note throughout. 

Within fifteen minutes of the film’s start, the audience sees Monroe’s childhood abuse at the hands of her mother before an abrupt fast-forward to an adult Monroe and a graphic depiction of her abuse at the hands of a producer. 

Marilyn Monroe historians have found quite a few historical inaccuracies in just these first few scenes. The former of which is heavily fictionalized and the latter of which never happened. 

The movie continues with this pattern–more exaggerated and fabricated accounts of Monroe’s life. After the shock value of the first few scenes, the rest of the movie is a misery fest, culminating in a conclusion where Monroe ends her own life. 

Fictionalization isn’t new for biopics, but the outrage directed at Blonde is thanks to how brazenly and often fabricated events in Monroe’s life. 

Upon its release, similar criticism was levied at Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci (2021). However, where House of Gucci differs from Blonde is where this criticism came from. While not critically acclaimed, House of Gucci’s Rotten Tomatoes score sits at 62%, a far cry from Blonde’s 42%. Yet there was still controversy around the liberties that Scott took in regard to the film’s accuracy. 

Upon the film’s release, the Gucci family publicly denounced the movie claiming it “stole the identity of a family to make a profit.”

Unlike Marilyn Monroe who has no public-facing living relatives, the titular Gucci family is still alive and is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. They have the funds to protect themselves through the press and through legal action. 

This difference is a key factor that also can’t be omitted in discussions of Ryan Murphy’s 2022 series Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Telling the story of the real-life serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer, this Netflix series depicts the violence Dahmer committed in his lifetime and how it affected his victims’ families. 

Unfortunately, this series didn’t treat these families with respect since Murphy reportedly didn’t make the families of victims aware of Dahmer’s production, and they had to learn of it along with the rest of the public. After its release, the families of the victims launched criticism of the series that was similar to the criticism the Gucci family launched towards House of Gucci.

The misrepresentation of the Gucci family, while unfortunate, is less distressing than the misrepresentation of Blonde and the sensationalization of Dahmer because of one factor–power. 

To create a film that sensationalizes the abuse of a woman–who is no longer around to correct the inaccuracies of her portrayal in the film–is unethical. As is creating a TV series that depicts the abuse of many young men who are also no longer around to make their voices heard. But because Netflix and the production companies behind Blonde and Dahmer have more power than the people their stories are about, these unethical stories were allowed to air. 

Andrew Dominik, Ryan Murphy, and every other creator have obligations to survivors, the family of victims, and the public as a whole to not grossly misrepresent or dishonor the legacy of those who cannot speak out for themselves. And unfortunately, in both these cases, they failed.