Lincoln rebranded

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Ford Motor Company has recently launched an advertising campaign for its Lincoln Mercury line of luxury cars. The Lincoln is being re-branded to appeal to a younger clientele for whom Lincoln might just be equivalent to the image projected on-screen by actor Daniel Day-Lewis, in Steven Spielberg's film, Lincoln.

I didn't see much that is Daniel Day-Lewisish about the ad's Lincoln. The way in which he emerges from a mist reminds me of the Twilight Saga rather. And why not? After all the Saga's wolf-vampire clan from the Pacific Northeast constitutes a defining moment in contemporary youth culture of America.

The best ad campaigns are those that capitalize on the past and the present as well as on complicated versions of both.

Marilyn Monroe

A new biography of Marilyn Monroe is on the block: Lois Banner's The Passion and the Paradox.

A review of the book has three striking observations about Monroe:

1. There are multiple rumors of who Marilyn really was. I like this one best--she was both a dumb blonde and a bookworm who read Dostoyevsky.

2. Monroe justified promiscuity with the conviction that sex was "an act that brought friends closer together."

3. Marilyn had recurring visions of striding over a supine row of church congregants who peered up her skirt.

Marilyn Monroe

"Talent is developed in privacy." The best thoughts emanate from the least expected of sources and the element of surprise triumphs the value of the thought itself.

Goethe said this originally, in another form. American actress and famous sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe made this thought into her own and re-expressed it in the above form.

Marilyn Monroe, revamping Goethe's thoughts! That is a bombshell of a surprise, as Jacqueline Rose, suggests in her wonderful uncovering of the "real" Monroe.

But Rose's piece does not aim at surprising readers. On the other hand, she wants to re-acquaint the world with the woman behind the image, a woman who was thoughtful and educated herself constantly, in private, had affinities with the most un-Marilynesque of things.

She adored Abraham Lincoln during McCarthyism, when Lincoln had become an anathema (believe it or not, he was perceived as a "Communist" being an "equal rights"-for-all guy); she was in favor of granting civil rights to blacks and was one of the few white actresses who was liked by blacks of the time. She read copiously, even though she didn't have the opportunity for formal education. 

Monroe was a thoughtful woman and gravitated to men who didn't pay attention to her body, but to her mind. Thus she married Arthur Miller...

All in all Marilyn was a thoughtful woman according to Rose who wishes that she were known more through the books she read and the politics she believed in, rather than through the undergarments and the costume jewelry she wore.