| Chapter Introduction: | Introduction |
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Introduction
Sex and the Goddess
—Marilyn Monroe
With the remaining mystery surrounding her untimely death, as well as the continued popularity of her films such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and Some Like it Hot (1959), Marilyn Monroe endures in the popular imagination. Through mass (re)production of her image, as in Andy Warhol's famous painting, and frequent celebrity imitation, Monroe's sex-goddess image continues to influence popular culture. That Monroe may be in fact considered the quintessential American sex goddess is relevant to this discussion. The womanly figure of the sex goddess in American film and popular culture continues to exert a powerful influ-ence on both men and women, and, perhaps just as importantly for the particular focus of this book, on feminist film theory itself. The sex