Planned Parenthood complained that Netflix’s new Marilyn Monroe film “Blonde” is “anti-abortion propaganda” for featuring a CGI-talking fetus that appears to be a “fully formed baby.”
The film, which stars Ana de Armas, portrays Monroe being tormented by her unborn child in a scene where the child begs her not to hurt it after she terminated her prior pregnancy. She ultimately doesn’t but has a miscarriage in her garden.
In a prior sequence, Monroe was forced to have an abortion against her will, while she screeches at a doctor that she changed her mind, but he goes through with the procedure in a shockingly graphic cinematic display.
After the movie premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 8, liberal critics were outraged by the photo realistic talking baby.
“Lest we want to champion the tortured actress for invoking her right to choose, ‘Blonde’ forces us to see a harsh metal device scrunch its way inward and toward a fetus, terminating it,” wrote a critic from The Daily Beast. “The movie clearly—and, obviously, controversially—wants us to believe that the fetus is very much alive.”
Planned Parenthood expressed their outrage over the way “Blonde” used a “medically inaccurate” fetus to contribute to the stigma surrounding abortion.
“As film and TV shapes many people’s understanding of sexual and reproductive health, it’s critical these depictions accurately portray women’s real decisions and experiences,” Planned Parenthood Federation’s art and entertainment director Caren Spruch told the Hollywood Reporter.
“While abortion is safe, essential health care, anti-abortion zealots have long contributed to abortion stigma by using medically inaccurate descriptions of fetuses and pregnancy,” she continued. “Andrew Dominik’s new film, Blonde, bolsters their message with a CGI-talking fetus, depicted to look like a fully formed baby.”
She claimed that while the organization “respects artistic license,” the “false images” in the film strengthen “misinformation and perpetuate stigma” surrounding reproductive health care.
Every pregnancy outcome — especially abortion — should be portrayed sensitively, authentically and accurately in the media,” Spruch said. “We still have much work to do to ensure that everyone who has an abortion can see themselves onscreen. It is a shame that the creators of Blonde chose to contribute to anti-abortion propaganda and stigmatize people’s health care decisions instead.”
The film’s director, Andrew Dominik, refuted that his movie is anti-abortion in a lengthy interview with The Wrap.
“I don’t think the movie is anti-pro choice. I don’t think it is at all,” he detailed. “And I’m not convinced that she actually wants to have a baby. I think she has feelings about not having a baby, but I’m not convinced that what she’s doing – I mean, she doesn’t end up having one.”
“I think sort of this desire to look at ‘Blonde’ through this Roe v. Wade lens is everybody else doing the same thing,” Dominik continued. “They’ve got a certain agenda where they feel like the freedoms of women are being compromised, and they look at ‘Blonde’ and they see a demon, but it’s not really about that.”
The director posited that the critical outrage has more to do with the divisive times, than it does with a few gory abortion scenes.
“People are obviously concerned with losses of freedoms, obviously they are,” he concluded. “But, I mean, no one would have given a s–t about that if I’d made the movie in 2008, and probably no one’s going to care about it in four years’ time. And the movie won’t have changed. It’s just what sort of going on.”