In the Pics section, film critic Floortje Smit casts her eye on contemporary visual culture.
Good news this week from Ripley’s Believe it or Not! Marilyn Monroe’s dress was not damaged during the Met Ball. Those dangling beads and a stretched seam that showed on a photo that circulated on social media after Kim Kardashian wore the dress? That was already the case before, according to the ‘museum’ in a statement on its own site, under the heading ‘weird news’.
For those who missed it, in early May, Kardashian stole the show on the gala carpet in the iconic see-through dress Monroe wore when she met in 1962. happy Birthday sang for President John F. Kennedy. The theme of the ball was In America: An Anthology of Fashion and Kardashian couldn’t imagine a more American fashion moment. She said proudly in vogue that she appeared thicker in places where Marilyn was thinner, and vice versa, and that she had starved herself in this original specimen. Fashion conservators reacted with shock, calling it unethical and vandalism to wear such a fragile object to a party because you are influential and you just feel like it.
The issue exposes an interesting point: what exactly is Hollywood history? Serious history or historical entertainment? What status do the associated objects have? And who determines that?
In practice it is quite mixed up: a pair of red shoes that were used in The Wizard of Ozo stands in a beautifully lit glass display case at the National Museum of American History in Washington; this Monroe dress, presented as ‘the most expensive in the world!’, in a museum full of curiosities, such as stuffed animals with two heads. Objects are traded for a lot of money among collectors, or hang on the wall in restaurant chain Planet Hollywood. Last year, the serious Academy Museum finally opened its doors; before that, if you were a lover of set pieces and costumes in Los Angeles, you could only visit the Hollywood Museum, a silly, kitschy place in a former make-up studio where you can, for example, walk through the real prison corridor. The Silence of the Lambs can walk and the boxing gloves of rocky can admire – laid out loosely, with amateurish printed explanation cards next to it.
According to Ripley’s statement on the site, “a new generation” has been introduced to Monroe’s legacy through Kardashian’s action. ‘The historical importance of the dress’ is also emphasized. But lending an iconic, fragile piece of clothing that’s already broken for a publicity stunt shows how little seriously you take popular history and its relics.