Lindsay Lohan

Nearly 50 years after the former Norma Jeane Baker’s death, the Marilyn homage has become the most clichéd thing possible for a starlet and a photographer. Which Marilyn do you want? Britney’s youthful, boop-a-doop Marilyn, shilling for Pepsi? Jennifer Lopez’s whacked out, poured into her dress, “Happy Birthday” Marilyn, serenading George Lopez? Steely blond Rihanna for Vogue? Scarlett Johansson’s tousled, Joe DiMaggio-era Dolce and Gabbana Marilyn? Kate Upton’s zombie twist on “Seven Year Itch” Marilyn? Nicole Kidman’s fragile “Some Like It Hot” incarnation? Kim Kardashian’s “tooling around with Arthur Miller” period Monroe? Last month, even Lady Gaga put her own spin on the star, wearing a flesh-colored outfit as she performed for Mis-ter Pres-i-dent Bill Clinton. At least Michelle Williams’ reincarnation of Marilyn comes with a full new movie attached, possibly even written by a human who didn’t just stop the concept at the words “Marilyn” and “Monroe.”

Then there are the Marilyn Hall of Famers. Let’s give a special shout-out, then, to Gwen Stefani, Christina Aguilera, Paris Hilton, every Guess jeans ad campaign, and all-time-champion Madonna, who have again and again throughout their careers proven a fierce determination to ride Marilyn Monroe’s image all the way to their own graves. Well done, folks. Even Monroe herself got tired of playing Marilyn Monroe after just 36 years. Would that she’d had your collective stamina in this onslaught of Monroe-verload.

But the one woman currently most hell-bent on filling the icon’s Chanel No. 5 has to be Lindsay Lohan. In 2008, she re-created Bert Stern’s legendary nude “last sitting” with Monroe for New York magazine, in a spread shot by Stern himself. “It was very similar, déjà vu you might say,” Stern said of the experience. “Like revisiting an old street.” And what’s more interesting than walking down an old street? Oh, that’s right — everything.

Now, both Playboy and Lohan are going down another old street, this time with Tom Kelley’s notorious 1949 pinup images of the very young and very naked starlet. It’s nothing if not proof that Playboy and Lohan combined have not enough spark or creativity to do something that isn’t itself derivative of an idea even Anna Nicole Smith already covered before she shuffled off this mortal coil.

In a statement, a rep for the dentally challenged actress said Monday that “The pictorial is absolutely fantastic and very tasteful.” Hefner himself has assured readers hungry to feast upon the spectacle of a troubled star posing as a troubled and dead star that “Oh yes,” Lohan goes full monty for the pictures. But he adds that the whole thing is “classy. Very classy.” At this point, the Playboy/Lohan definition of “very classy” seems to be “anything shy of a vagina cam.”

Would the Monroe myth be so indelible if she’d settled down and had a family? If she’d grown old and died like a mere mortal woman? Or is the fascination because she stayed forever youthful, forever vulnerable, forever a big hot mess? Disaster has its allure, for sure. But the constant dredging up of Marilyn stopped being sexy and interesting a long time ago. And though fulfilling morbid curiosity while providing sad spank fodder may be the only career option left for Lohan — assuming she’s not really into that gig down at the morgue — it’s time she and her platinum-tressed, baby-voiced ilk took a goddamn hike. Because at this point, the Marilyn thing isn’t like some some cute musical number from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” Instead it’s like an episode of “American Horror Story” — a freaky alternative reality, one in which a long deceased beauty just keeps clawing her way back into willing new bodies, again and again and again – and boring her victims to death.

Lohan’s apparently pathological inability to get her act together has made for reliable tabloid fodder for the better part of the last decade. What’s amazing – and by amazing, I mean horrible – is that the interest in her exploits refuses to die down. It’s been ages since she’s been in an even vaguely acclaimed movie (even “Bobby” was five years ago); her music career is nonexistent; she doesn’t even have a train-wreck reality show. Unlike the late Amy Winehouse, she doesn’t possess a tragic genius, a talent that burns so brightly it makes her struggles with demons frustratingly poignant. It’s hard to imagine a television studio full of fans dressed up like Lindsay Lohan because her work was so meaningful. Instead, the sideshow of a once promising, effervescent and undeniably beautiful woman deteriorating in public holds a different kind of allure – the morbid “How bad can it get?” kind.

Lately, things have been bad indeed for Lohan. Last week, she showed up on the red carpet for the release of a new video game – you could stop right there and have a tragedy. But what was truly alarming were her stained, snaggly teeth and dirty, scraped-up hands. A puffy and strangely bronzed Lohan was then handcuffed and briefly jailed for “blowing off” her court-ordered community service she’s been ordered to do for her “numerous” parole violations. Judge Stephanie Sautner noted that Lohan had already been kicked out of a program at a women’s shelter, after doing only 21 of her 360 assigned hours.

And so, after posting her $100,000 bail, what did Lohan do next? She sauntered in late for her community service the very next day. After missing her start time and orientation, the morgue turned her away, but offered her the opportunity to try again Friday. Her start time was set for 7 a.m., so good luck, Lins! Lohan, for her part, says the screw-up was caused by trying to get through the paparazzi and being confused over where to report. She tweeted, “With all of the stress and pressure from yesterday and today, I’ve never been so happy to go to therapy!!!! Also, I’m sorry for the confusion that I may of [sic] caused to those at the Coroner’s office. Won’t happen again, now I know where to go! Thank you for your help.”

Now, if I’d been led away in handcuffs the day before, I’d set the alarm and give myself a nice long lead time to get it together to show up promptly for my gig at the dead people’s office. But Lohan doesn’t live in that kind of world. Somehow, no matter how many times she stands before a judge, her sense of accountability remains firmly untouched.

Yet despite her failures, despite her slew of second chances, it can’t be great being Lindsay Lohan right now. Her mom is currently shopping around a tell-all memoir about her famous daughter’s “life-style of partying excessively.” Her dad, never one to miss an opportunity to mouth off, has declared her appearance to be clearly the result of  “meth or crack.” With those two for parents, you can see why a lady might want to hit the snooze button.

Lohan is a grown woman who has made her mistakes, and seems unable, despite numerous stints at rehab and admonishments from the legal system, to distance herself from them. With each new shambling red-carpet appearance, each grim court date, each pathetic tweet of vague remorse, her body of work becomes less about her performances and more just a collection of troubling photographs and sad headlines. She’s a pantheon to unfulfilled promise, a Hollywood story of having too much, too soon. She’s become the woman toddling on a high wire, a source of little more than, at this point, sick fascination. That’s what makes headlines and gets rubbernecking followers on Twitter. The fact that somewhere in there is still a vulnerable, obviously troubled person who seems to have none of the coping tools to make it to her next probation date gets lost in a story that an eager tabloid culture seems to have all but written. It’s the story of a former child actress who partied a lot and bounced unsuccessfully in and out of rehab and jail. And one way or another, it ends with her at a Los Angeles morgue.