This week’s class was focused on the notion of ‘Stars and Starlets’ in popular cinema and Hollywood. We utilized the iconic film ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ as the vehicle to aid our class discussion on this concept.

We began the discussion by referring to the reading by Thomas Harris (‘The Building of Popular Images’) and began to compare the presence and attributes that both Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly offered to Popular Cinema and the scandalous nature of Hollywood.

We spoke about how both Kelly and Monroe were prominent figures both on screen and off screen for very different reasons. Kelly was idolized for her poise and proper nature, she was constantly in the spotlight for being the epitome of a ‘proper’ woman – this is partly due to the fact that her family was so well recognized for this already. On the other hand, Monroe was an icon for sexual liberation and female sensuality – the reading discusses her contrast against Kelly through the fact that Monroe’s family was never in the spotlight, it was solely herself.

We discussed and watched short fragments of ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ to analyze the character Monroe played and compared that to how she was portrayed in the Hollywood star scene. Her character was portrayed to be quite vapid, materialistic and dependent on the affection of men – this was contrasted against her prominence in the Hollywood scene by being recognized as an independent female star, who was very intelligent and intuitive.