The Goddess is a 1958 film directed by John Cromwell and written by Paddy Chayefsky. Released during the zenith of Marilyn Monroe’s tabloid troubles, the film paints an unflattering portrait of an ignorant Southern girl who goes blonde and strikes it big in Hollywood. Marketed as “the disrobing of a generation,” the film is an ugly and mean-spirited attack on not only Monroe, but of women like her. Chayefsky relies on Freudian logic to diagnose disgraced heroine “Emily” (played by Kim Stanley) as unhappy due to her lack of fulfillment as a mother, and ultimately dooms her as too mentally fragile to fulfill her biological duty by film’s end.
This sort of narrative played into both left-wing and right-wing social politics of the time. However, it must be noted that establishment liberal thought leaders took deep stock in Freud and the teachings of his nephew, Edward Bernays. Further, Freud’s daughter Anna rose to status in the ‘40s and ‘50s as the leading voice of a growing psychotherapy movement across America. Psychotherapy not only gave Americans the tools to unlock their desires, but it also enabled political establishments and corporate entities to condition post-war minds through sublimation.
For more on this, I’d highly recommend the Adam Curtis documentary Century of the Self. It provides a radical re-contextualization to our hegemonic narrative of American history.
As this pertained to The Goddess, then, a contemporary audience would be clued into the plot-based morality that guides the film. In an era where eggs were added to Betty Crocker recipes because it created a psychological link between brownie mix and baby batter, it cast a grim portent on Monroe, Mansfield, and any other “loose” woman. Chayefsky’s picture had a simple answer, emboldened by the very real and very dangerous psychological movement that had grasped America’s consciousness by that point. An irony is that noted Zionist Chayefsky himself was reportedly an absent, neglectful, and angry husband — we could consider this a sort of Freudian projection in and of itself.
In the four years that followed The Goddess, Marilyn Monroe became a close follower of Anna Freud, whose advice she already held in high esteem from published writings and newsletters. Monroe sought the help of Ralph Greenson, a devout follower of Freud’s, and began what should have been restorative psychotherapy. Monroe and Greenson lived next to each other in houses that were almost identical in style and architecture, as Greenson invited the actress into his own family and treated her as if she belonged. This was meant to cure the actress’ deep-seated dissatisfaction about her lack of a stable, comfortable home life and — ultimately — stabilize the troubled actress.
It had the opposite effect. Monroe felt increasingly isolated as Greenson and others tried to diagnose and “cure” her to no avail. Greenson noted to Anna Freud in a letter that Monroe seemed beyond help because something was — ostensibly — too vacant and too empty on a core level.
On August 5th, 1962, Greenson broke into her home after housekeeper Eunice Murray noticed a light on in the dead of night. Marilyn Monroe was naked, face down on the bed. Her hand was clutching the telephone receiver in a vice, and her body enmeshed in the sheets — as if she’d writhed, struggled, and ultimately failed to call for help. Empty barbibituate bottles were scattered around the room.
At 3:50 AM, Marilyn Monroe was legally declared dead by overdose at 36.
It is difficult to not think of Marilyn Monroe when watching Ti West’s X series. The neon-slicked, sun-soaked third entry, MaXXXine, has finally hit American theaters and brought Mia Goth’s psychosexual journey to an end — for now. With the film’s release, however, has come something of a mixed and muted response, especially compared to the hyperbolic level of praise heaped on the initial two entries. Perhaps this is due, in part, to the fact that I am completely disconnected from any social media that is not BlueSky or Letterboxd. But even with those considerations, the level of viral marketing and physical promotion for MaXXXine simply has not hit the fever pitch of the first two.
MaXXXine invokes the spirit of Monroe in the ambition of its titular lead. Maxine is a homespun entrepreneur, a creator of her own narrative and mistress of her own destiny. In two films, sets of men and women attempt to pigeonhole and define her; in both, the appraisals fail as Maxine is the only one left standing. As the world insists that it has her figured out, Maxine struggles to figure herself out amid mounting pressure to go legit in the acting world.
Of course, Richard Ramirez and a quasi-satanic cult stalking the hot Los Angeles nights don’t help matters. Maxine fights to hold onto a role in auteur Elizabeth Bender’s gory horror sequel The Puritan 2, as she works peep show booths and watches as her friends get systematically targeted and slaughtered. Police officers hound her, protestors antagonize her profession, but Maxine simply keeps her head down and working on her dream. Unfortunately, dreams often emerge from our hazy pasts, and soon Maxine’s own threatens to destroy the glistening future she envisions. Only the nastiness and tenacity learned from her survival may be enough to hang on.
Goth serves up an unexpected performance here. The actress — known for her exuberant, eclectic, and frequently absurd turns — gives audience her most subtle and subdued role yet. Pain and grief has caught up with the character, as Goth mumbles and glares through scenes — emotionalism saved for the camera or herself. There are shades of complexity to Maxine here that I wasn’t aware existed in the first film, and perhaps they didn’t. Goth’s performance invites an examination of not just capital-t “trauma,” but how the specific ill of wanting to succeed in America slowly erodes at and eventually breaks one’s psyche.
Functionally, MaXXXine is a straightforward thriller with occasional traipses into broad satire and flirtations with surrealism. The kinetic momentum of the picture is defined by loud, explosive punches of sonic and aesthetic intensity. Maximalist filmmaking of the 1980s is king here, with filmcraft that evokes Mann’s larger-than-life coolness or Ferrera’s sun-flicked neo-noir endemic of their period work. It is a prettier, more produced picture than even higher-budgeted examples of horror and exploitation from the era. In that sense, West and his crew evoke a collective memory of the ‘80s in order to probe the seedier bits.
While this approach works, it does at times come across as pandering and obvious. The score is functional, and serves the basic purpose of hitting the high notes of pretty sleaze without feeling cheesy or phoned-in. But the licensed music on tap is embarrass, a grab bag of needle drops from I Love The ‘80s or Now! That’s What I Call ‘80s playlists. I understand the utility of taking actively bad pop music and using it to illustrate how dire the Top 40 really was in 1985. Some drops — like “Welcome to the Pleasuredome” and “Shellshock” — are interesting, and I’ll never complain about a Mary Jane Girls pick. But “Bette Davis Eyes, “Gimme All Your Lovin,” fucking “Man In Motion” — these are tired choices that only elicited empathy and eye rolls from me.
Other bits of period storytelling also trip on their own understanding and depiction of the era. Elizabeth Bender is an audacious nod to cult horror figure Suzanna Love — actress Elizabeth Debicki dons Love’s glasses from Olivia (1983) and her hair from The Devonsville Terror (1983.) As if tacit confirmation, the first Puritan installment is said to have been released two years prior. Both films are clear influences here, as is the transgressive and radical contributions of Suzanna Love. To her credit, Debicki turns in one of the best performances, grounding it through steely command and domination versus leaning into the broader approaches adopted by Goth, Kevin Bacon, and Giancarlo Esposito. Even as the script betrays her, the actress ensures that the director stands out in an over-the-top film — not an easy task.
In the narrative of MaXXXine, Bender is used for a red herring much in the way a giallo misleads its audience with obvious “clues.” She occupies a flirtatious space with Maxine, akin to Susan Scott’s role in Le Foto Proibite Di Una Signora Per Bene (1970) spliced with the controlling director of Argento’s Opera (1987.) The latter is an important film to bring up, as much of the loopy and paranoid cinematography there is evoked here — as is the contemporary litigation of violent media.
But Debicki’s character is a somewhat reductive caricature of ambitious women of the era. There is a duality of admiration and contempt held for Bender, one that shades any scene she shares with Maxine. Her serious efforts at “A ideas” and her tight control over horror sets is almost framed as needless and pretentious. The level of control she seeks should be juxtaposed with Wayne Gilroy in X, a character who is treated with markedly more seriousness and sympathy. Gilroy’s reductive, essentialist worldview is ultimately framed as transgressive and proto-feminist within the context of the series; meanwhile, Bender is pigeonholed as an over-serious and pretentious killjoy who might also be a lesbian serial killer.
In our post-post-modern age of irony-poisoned reads of contemporary cinema, it’s easy to embrace a character like this as a cool “bad girl” type. But what it’s actually doing is an unconscious, careless resurrection of tropes that actually serve to keep current social orders in check. A leering, threatening femme of ambiguous gender presentation is framed as frivolous and perhaps overly ambitious, yet the film relishes giving her control for cheap “girl boss” points that couldn’t be at the era. The fact that Suzanne Love’s success was primarily under Uli Lommell, and credit not fully given until later, is not reckoned with by this pantomime.
Worse, it could be said that this type of historical revisionism astroturfs an era of the horror industry to make it seem less sexist and less exploitative than it could actually be. Slumber Party Massacre — one of the few slashers of the era directed and written by women — had much of its feminist satire pared down and Roger Corman’s mandatory nudity requirement fulfilled. While this is not a puritanical takedown of the lurid elements of horror — the genre wouldn’t exist without them — it is a caution to not falsify history and make an industry look better for women than it historically has been.
Fortunately, other elements of the film hold up better and tease out more sumptuous themes. MaXXXine’s most effective pieces involve the heroine’s hateful relationship with her evangelical father. The script invites parallels between his zealotry and the uncanny drive Maxine possesses, which itself juxtaposes American religious fanaticism with the destructive allure of Hollywood. Viewers are invited to consider fame not as a goal, but as a place one arrives at after enough sacrifice and loss. The most emotive, raw, authentic performances can often come from the most broken people, and the system itself benefits from breaking those people down further. Shelley Duvall and Linda Blair alike were deliberately terrorized by their directors, because — to the director — the best way to ensure the film was scary is convincing the audience that the woman or girl is actually scared. Both were then othered and ostracized by a system that relished their destruction and panic, then immortalized as “scream queens” — women who looked good scared.
Shelly Duvall lived in seclusion after being wrongfully put under a national spotlight by Dr. Phil. Thankfully, dedicated fans and friends helped make her remaining years much more pleasant. Meanwhile, Linda Blair has spent years helping animals and mostly avoids talking about The Exorcist. Both have had highly publicized bouts with tabloids desperate to pin them as crazy or broken. Neither are true, but the perception remains. And it traces back to the inclination to terrorize women, film it, and show that fear to the masses in order to capitalize on it and influence social order.