Prudes in the art world: The 'Forever Marilyn' statue absurdity

As a regular visitor to Palm Springs, I was dismayed to learn that a cadre of self-righteous individuals continue to try and remove the “Forever Marilyn” statue.

The museum’s director, Louis Grachos said at a city council meeting in 2020, when he opposed the installation, “You come out of the museum and the first thing you're going to see is a 26-foot-tall Marilyn Monroe with her entire backside and underwear exposed…We serve over 100,000 school-age children that come to our museum every single year. What message does that send to our young people, our visitors and community to present a statue that objectifies women, is sexually charged and disrespectful?"

In a November 2020 Desert Sun Valley Voice, others objected to placing “a blatantly sexist statue in front of our most significant cultural institution,” and to “a 26-foot statement about women and sexual appeal” being placed outside the museum.

Wow! So, various illuminati are against “sexual appeal” in public places, while expressing horror at the apparently corrupting influence on school-age children of seeing Marilyn’s “entire backside and underwear.”

But wait a minute. What’s the Marilyn statue actually all about? It’s simply a reproduction of the iconic image from the innocent 1955 Billy Wilder movie, “The Seven-Year Itch.”  It’s one of many iconic mid-century images. And of course, when we think mid-century we think Palm Springs.

Not all art has to be great or serious and to be sure, the Marilyn statue is neither. It’s kitschy. But it’s fun and whimsical and joyous. It’s Hollywood and it’s mid-century, to both of which Palm Springs is historically deeply connected, and upon which it continues to trade for its own image and sex appeal. It’s fun and harmless and good for business.

And on a point of correction: Marilyn’s backside is a good 100 yards from the front of the museum. From the front, Marilyn is framed symmetrically by palm trees, all beautifully lit at night, her white dress backdropped by the museum, the mountains and the sky. Very artsy, very glam, very Palm Springs!

But the earnest objectors ignore all this, in favor of condemning anything vaguely “sexual.” They appear not to live in the same Western world reality I do - where sexual imagery and sexiness are abundant in public places - in ads, on billboards. Actual people skimpily or sexily-dressed are walking the streets!

Being barely-dressed on the beach is de rigeur. There are children in all these locations, heaven forbid! “Sex symbols” abound — female and male — that appeal to people of many sexual persuasions. Do the objectors want to shut down Times Square with its ads featuring chiseled men in underwear?

The human form is beautiful, and sex and sexiness are at the core of the human condition. Do the killjoys want to remove all color and fun from our lives?

I wonder if they have visited Florence or Paris or Rome where statues of naked women and men abound in public places, not just in art galleries. All those Europeans, their minds profoundly corrupted by walking past! And inside and outside art galleries in Europe, school-age children with their teachers can be seen sketching the art they see, including sculptures of naked women and men. Why? Because the human form is beautiful and since the Ancient Greeks, we’ve idolized it in artistic form.

Now, some earnest folks in the usually liberal and tolerant Palm Springs want moral propriety and every public space a “safe space” in case some other puritans might take offense.

Just this week, at a Christian charter school in Florida, parents objected to their children being shown images of Michelangelo’s David, calling it “pornographic”: The same censorious sentiment as that of the woke prudes of Palm Springs.

These sentiments condemning Marilyn reflect a particular American prudery that’s at the intersection of evangelism (it’s corrupting!) and "Woke, Inc." (it’s a statue of a woman, it’s obviously sexist!)

If these moral guardians prefer a place where women’s bodies are covered up in public and there’s no sexiness or joy permitted in public places, they could always move to Iran.

Meanwhile, for the rest of us: Keep Marilyn, keep her where she is, lots of us love her!

Eric Hassall is a retired pediatric gastroenterologist and professor living in San Francisco. He’s been a decadeslong regular visitor to Palm Springs. His email is ehassall@telus.net

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Palm Springs 'Forever Marilyn' controversy: it's cultural prudishness