The Real Reason Netflix’s Marilyn Monroe Biopic ‘Blonde’ Is Rated NC17

It’s an open secret that Netflix isn’t having a great year. They are dealing with everything from a mass exodus of subscribers to countless headlines about their price increases. But would you believe the weirdest Netflix controversy is one surrounding Marilyn Monroe?

Ana de Armas stars in Blonde, an upcoming Netflix-exclusive biopic focusing on Marilyn Monroe’s life. The film is directed by Andrew Dominik, and the MPAA recently rated this movie as NC-17.

There has been a lot of fan speculation and theory about what led to this rating. But what’s the real cause, and how does it tie into the original source material for the movie? Keep reading to find out!

What is ‘Blonde’ based on?

There have been plenty of movies focusing on the life of Marilyn Monroe. What, then, makes this movie different? The fact that it is a film adaptation of one of the most ambitious literary works of recent decades.

Back in 2000, writing legend Joyce Carol Oates released the book Blonde. The book focused on Marilyn Monroe and clocked in at about 700 pages, so it was already a very ambitious text. But Oates had a new angle: she was going to write about the life of Monroe in the context of a work of fiction.

What does this mean? For one thing, many Monroe biographers disagree on many aspects of her life. By writing as a work of fiction, Oates freed herself from having to reconcile many differing accounts of Monroe’s life.

For another thing, the book gives Oates the full creative freedom she needed to explore someone larger than life. As the New Yorker describes the novel, it “is a work of fiction and imagination, and Oates plays with, rearranges, and invents the details of Monroe’s life in order to achieve a deeper poetic and spiritual truth.”

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