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The Death of Marilyn Monroe - Conspiracy Theory Edit


Everyone loves a good conspiracy; a bit of mystery, ambiguity, intrigue.

 

There are thousands of conspiracy theories in the world, ranging from the smallest matters to the biggest cover ups in history: 911, Roswell, the Moon Landing, JFK, the Illuminati and the New World Order, the death of Paul McCartney - to name a few.

What is a conspiracy?
  1. An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.
  2. A joining or acting together, as if by sinister design.
A conspiracy theory therefore, is the belief that some covert but influential organisation is responsible for an unexplained event.


For one of the assignments at University, the class was given the opportunity to create a 3-5 minute video about a conspiracy theory, with an aim to convince the viewer that it is telling the truth. There were however several theories that were banned such as Roswell and JFK, because those have been 'done to death'. The idea was to create a unique, believable and persuasive video using only archive footage and videos from You Tube.

 Some of the students teamed up with others, whilst some chose to work individually. I decided to work in a pair, and after much web-searching and research we decided to investigate the death of Marilyn Monroe.

 The task was much more difficult than we had anticipated, as all of the research and structure had to be finalised before searching for footage and editing it together. However, once the information had been gathered together we were able to follow some sort of plan.

The video starts with a classic countdown, and then an introduction to Marilyn Monroe - who she was, what she did etc... This is then followed by the relationships she had in her life:
  1. James Dougherty (1942-46) 
  2. Joe DiMaggio (1954-54)
  3. Arthur Miller (1956-61)
 And of course her infamous relationship with John Kennedy and his brother Robert. This all builds up to her death on August 5th 1962, which is displayed through a building pace of flickering images, and then paused by a TV glitch, before going on to her death scene. 

 But the real question is: did she commit suicide, or was she murdered?

The video reveals the truths and facts as well as the theories and conspiracies behind Marilyn Monroe's death. The footage was mostly taken from you tube videos (which are all referenced in the credits) of news archives and interviews.

The end of the video finishes with the statement that: 'she was murdered' which is then followed by a montage of newspaper headlines revolving around Marilyn's death, and asking whether it was suicide or if she was the victim of a homicide. This quickly builds up to a frenzy and fades out to the sound of Marilyn screaming:

'Murderer! You liar!'

Here is the video: https://vimeo.com/81376811

The clips were edited in such as way as to persuade the viewer that she was indeed murdered, and hopefully the video is as convincing and persuasive as we think it to be.

Here are some of the other conspiracy videos my classmates made:

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