The “Norma Jean Paradigm”: Hollywood Naming as Hollywood Story-Telling

For a long time, naming the stars has supported and enlarged the capitalist principle of production and consumption. It has stemmed from a convergence between the consumers’ curiosity about the protagonists of films and the producers’ will to sell their products. In this negotiation, the actresses’ and actors’ names functioned as the sites of symbolic meaning, facilitating power transactions and economic exchanges. Marilyn Monroe’s name participated in many of the social, cultural and economic complexities of this machinery. It also marked a turning point in the power relationship between the actress and the studios at the end of Hollywood’s golden age. Finally, its implied meanings have propagated in multiple directions of contemporary entertainment: film, music, body culture, fashion and luxury branding.