4 - The Theology of Marilyn Monroe

Summary

Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.

(Marilyn Monroe)

It’s not often that personal items come to my academic address, but there it was in my pigeonhole that afternoon. The flickering of my monitor that had been merely annoying was becoming painful to my eyes – text coming and going; flashes of black space. I needed to get the chapter done by the end of the month so I couldn’t just abandon the business and go home to watch reruns of Miss Marple on the ‘Elderly Female Detectives’ channel. ‘“How Depict the Invisible?”: Eusebios of Caesarea, St John Damascene and the Skiagraphic Question’ – what was I thinking? The only reason I was doing it was that someone like me (no personal chair, few citations, heavy teaching load) can never afford to turn down a commission, and everyone who’s anyone in the discipline seemed to be contributing to Hackwell’s Critical Friend to the Theology Student, ed. Bertha Virgenius (Basingmills: Hackwell, 2009). Sometime in the remote past I started out as a lecturer in political theology and pastoral ethics; how did I get round to Byzantine iconography? When the light bulb started doing the same as the monitor – intermittent fluttering – and my eyeballs were throbbing, I felt that I simply had to get out of my office for a bit. So I wandered off to the post room.

The university would have been the only address Sophia had for me, of course. We hadn’t exchanged any personal details. A flirtation at a conference, nothing more. Inside the square envelope – an image of Marilyn. Sophia had remembered that much about me, anyway. This was a dressed-down Marilyn wearing an orange sweater, leaning against a fence or a trellis, hair not quite under control, heavy eye make-up; a little weary I’d say. The photograph’s colour was slightly washed out – as is often the case with images this old – something pale blue, even about the orange. This wasn’t exactly one of her most famous images; really quite an unlikely one for a greetings card. I turned it over and winced at the card company’s logo: half of an image of Christ’s head, a jagged line running from brow to chin, and the name ‘Clast’ in chunky gold vertical lettering.