I was first ‘introduced’ to Marina Diamandis (stage name, as Wikipedia so lovingly phrases it, Marina & The Diamonds) because the TV got left on, and I incidentally heard her performing on Jimmy Kimmel. She was wearing a giant prom dress and singing in an operatic voice about being entitled.
I dropped everything I was doing and looked her music up immediately.
As I came to know, Marina spent the promotion period for her second album portraying the character “Electra Heart.” This is a fascinating caricature, coming from a place of honesty but stretched to an absurd and hilarious degree. Imagine if Britney Spears and Cindy Sherman (both of which, by the way, Marina references) had a baby. Its name would be Electra Heart.
Part of the Electra get-up is a tiny black heart Marina paints on her left cheek. And part of the promotional material for the album Electra Heart included a series of photos Marina posted to social media, divided up into four categories, dubbed “Archetypes.” (The intentional parallels to Cindy Sherman slays me. SLAYS.) They’re cryptically introduced in the video transcribed at the conclusion of this post.
As I was just starting to piece together all of this for myself, I kept seeing Monster High dolls popping up in every store imaginable. That grocery store on the corner that only sells off-brands? They had Monster High dolls dressed for the roller derby.
When I put together that one of the core dolls was a pink-toned vampire with pouty lips, fangs, and a pink heart painted on her left cheek, the uncanny similarity and the potential for more weird-staged-real-beautiful-ugly-girl photos was to much for me to take. I bought one. Then another, the same day. My collection of Monster High dolls exploded, as did the ways I could put their accessories and other props together to try to capture that same honest, fake, absurd and ultimately true summary of human experience that Electra Heart showcased.
It wasn’t until another year had passed that I actually had enough dolls, props, and insight to decide to stage and shoot each of Marina’s archetypes. But the result is this series.
Housewife
Beauty Queen
Homewrecker
Idle Teen
The ugly years of being a fool–ain’t youth meant to be beautiful?
Queen of no identity
I always feel like someone else
A living myth
I grew up in a lie
I can be anyone
A study in identity and illusion
An ode to Cindy
A living film
A real fake
And you’ll never know, and you’ll never know
Love
Electra Heart, are you faux…real?
Through others, we become ourselves
The archetypes
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