Blond certainly has no fans at the Hot Topics table. The controversial Ana de Armas biopic about Marilyn Monroe debuted back in September, but the discourse continues thanks to director Andrew Dominik, who said critics of his film were wrong to want an “empowered” version of Monroe. In today’s episode of The viewthe co-hosts reacted to Dominik’s words, with Alyssa Farah Griffin shooting at both him and his film.
Sara Haines started the convo and claimed so Blond is so “awful” that she “couldn’t even get through it”. she Blond Bashing led Griffin to describe the film as “uniquely bad” before pointing out the lack of “trigger warnings”.
“Honestly, it’s one of the worst movies,” Griffin said. “I turned it off. There are rape scenes that it goes into without warning you that this is going to happen. She had a tragic life but also an incredibly fulfilling life and it felt like they were only on the negative side linger.”
As Joy Behar pointed out that there are other, more flattering films about Monroe — including 2011’s My week with Marilyn — Griffin agreed but insisted Blond “felt like a male director exploiting a woman.”
Dominik (who we’re pretty sure doesn’t care what the audience thinks, and probably never will) has heard and referenced all the criticism before Blond backlash while speaking at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia recently.
Dominik admitted that US viewers “hated” his film and said people were “excited” by his portrayal of Monroe, before adding, “Which is kind of weird because she’s dead. The film doesn’t make a difference one way or the other,” per The Hollywood Reporter.
“What they really mean is that the film exploited her memory of her, her image of her, which is fair enough. But that’s the whole idea of the film,” Dominik continued. “It’s an attempt to take the iconography of her life and use it for something else, it’s trying to take things you’re familiar with and turn the meaning inside out. But they don’t want to see that.”
In a September interview with Decider, Dominik seemed to anticipate the varying audience reactions to his film, noting that the people who watch a film influence their own experiences of what they see.
“The basic idea of the film is that we don’t see reality. We see reality through the lens of their own personal fears, desires, prejudices and trauma,” he said at the time. “People are watching Blond through her own lens.”
The view airs weekdays at 11/10c on ABC. Blond now streaming on Netflix.