There is a long tradition of women emulating Marilyn Monroe’s famed performance of “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. In fact, it is very much a women’s song and visual (even if directed by Howard Hawks) that speaks on things being more satisfying (and enduring) than men. A sardonic sendup of the material girl trope—which is how many men still view women, seventy-one-ish years later (the film was released in July of 1953). This being, of course, why Madonna chose to tongue-in-cheekly reuse it in her 1985 video for “Material Girl.”
In fact, after that, Madonna not only secured her position as the Queen of Postmodernism (sorry Ariana Grande), but, in many ways, prompted a new generation to forget that Marilyn Monroe was the original pink gown-wearer traipsing about on a pink staircase as tuxedoed men fawned over and followed her around with rebuffed gifts. Granted, Carol Channing (a gay icon with a decided contempt for gays) was the first to bring Lorelei Lee to life on Broadway in 1949, but Monroe eclipsed that performance with her celluloid prowess.
Thus, the eternal Hollywood love of paying homage to that segment of the film that helped launch Monroe into “instant icon” status. After “Material Girl,” the next most memorable homage would become Nicole Kidman’s. Specifically, as Satine in 2001’s Moulin Rouge! (during which she incorporates the verse from “Material Girl,” “‘Cause we are living in a material world/And I am a material girl”). Many other musicians, including Kylie Minogue, Beyoncé and Christina Aguilera, have referenced/performed the song and visual as well, but not until 2020’s Birds of Prey (which would also feature a riff on “Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend” by Megan Thee Stallion and Normani called “Diamonds” for the soundtrack) was the re-creation of the performance so blatant again. Uncannily enough, Barbie’s star (one hates to break it to Ryan Gosling), Margot Robbie—as Harley Quinn—would be the one to engage in her own macabre sendup of the original. For added Hollywood incestuousness (or “six degrees of separation,” if you prefer), Ewan McGregor (who plays Christian in Moulin Rouge!) appears in the scene with her in his own modern take on the 1950s-era tuxedo (this one without tails).
Indeed, he was the one who, as Roman Sionis/Black Mask, caused her to hallucinate such a fantasy in the first place after slapping her with enough force. This after taunting her about losing the Joker’s favor in the wake of their breakup, “For all your noise and bluster, you’re just a silly little girl with no one around to protect her.” The accusation of being a silly little girl (when not instead substituted by the venomous “epithets” of “bitch” and/or “slut”) remains one of the most effortless ways for a man to demean a woman. And demeanment is, unfortunately, on the rise rather than on the decline—a reality that Ken brings to life onscreen with his inferiority complex that ends up causing him to destroy the matriarchal utopia of Barbie Land.
The reason? He wants attention, of course (not to mention praise and acknowledgement for doing nothing). For when “silly little boys” posing as men have their ego threatened, most of the rest of the world suffers (see: Donald Trump, who outshines Ken’s tan with orangeness). And when they see that the spotlight isn’t enough on them, they’re liable to mimic the person (particularly if that person is a woman) getting the most attention in a manner so obnoxious that it cannot be ignored. That, to this viewer, is how Gosling’s performance of “I’m Just Ken” came across at the 96th Annual Academy Awards (complete with the additional sausage party “cachet” of Guns n’ Roses’ Slash on guitar). For not only was Monroe something of the original Barbie (minus the rail-thin body type), but she was somebody that men were always trying to co-opt for themselves. Trying to turn into their little doll and take credit for “inventing” her out of the raw clay that was Norma Jeane Baker. But Marilyn was her own creation. It was just often hard for her to remember that with all the men around (including Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller) filling her head with mantras that she was somehow “wrong” or “unequipped.”
Thus, for Gosling to graft the “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” number for himself doesn’t feel “feminist,” so much as an unwanted and unnecessary impingement on Marilyn Land, ergo Women’s Land (known to some as Barbie Land). Marilyn, who died before she could suffer the inevitable Hollywood criticisms about looking old. Barbie, at least, has the benefit of being perennially plastic so as to uphold her Aryan-centric good looks.
Incidentally, during his Oscar monologue, host Jimmy Kimmel made a crack about Gosling and Robbie winning the genetic lottery. But even those (read: women) with good looks and regular plastic surgery upkeep end up falling prey to what Marilyn forewarns of in her illustrious number: “Men grow cold as girls grow old/And we all lose our charms in the end.” Unless, of course, you’re the kind of privileged white male that Ken embodies. Greta Gerwig, by creating “empathy” for such a character, perhaps didn’t fully understand what she hath wrought in doing so. Nor has Gosling fully understood the homoerotic coding (posing as a “butch” interpretation) he’s entered into the canon of “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” performances (already gay kryptonite to begin with, especially at drag shows).
Maybe Kimmel foreshadowed as much by making the Brokeback Mountain-related joke (also during his monologue) to Gosling, “You are so hot. Let’s go camping together and not tell our wives.” Because women, as has been emphasized repeatedly in life and in pop culture, are secondary to “men’s things” (which takes on a new level and meaning in terms of gay men imitating straight women). Even when they were originally “women’s things” (à la “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”) to begin with. Nonetheless, Ken’s “big dick Kenergy” still proved no match for fellow Barbie Soundtrack-er Billie Eilish in the Best Original Song category. But a “What Was I Made For?” win is, in effect, an “I’m Just Ken” win. Because what belongs to women also belongs to men (#dowry). That is, in “liberal” Hollywood, what Gretchen Wieners would call “just, like, the laws of feminism.”
