Dominik told audiences at the film festival that modern viewers only want to see women who are "empowered," according to The Hollywood Reporter's Alex Ritman.
"Now we're living in a time where it's important to present women as empowered, and they want to reinvent Marilyn Monroe as an empowered woman," Dominik said. "That's what they want to see. And if you're not showing them that, it upsets them."
Those criticisms, Dominik said, were "kind of strange, because she's dead. The movie doesn't make any difference in one way or another."
"What they really mean is that the film exploited their memory of her, their image of her, which is fair enough. But that's the whole idea of the movie," he continued. "It's trying to take the iconography of her life and put it into service of something else, it's trying to take things that you're familiar with, and turning the meaning inside out."
According to THR, Dominik said he was "really pleased" that "Blonde" caused such feelings of outrage in viewers. The director also said American films were becoming "more conservative," thus leading to tired tropes like those found in "bedtime stories."
"I don't want to make bedtime stories," Dominik said.
"Blonde" is currently available to stream on Netflix.
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