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[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
Barbie dolls are meant for little girls from 3 to 12, while the Barbie movie is rated PG-13. The material in the movie isn’t appropriate for children, but neither is it appropriate for adults.
Parents are expected to take young girls to the movie which is one part pink glitz, as it is being marketed through every corporate media outlet, and one part extended feminist rant denouncing men and our society. Tacky and vulgar, Barbie the movie is the work of children in adult bodies who have been given adult powers, but confuse leftist virtue signaling with adult responsibilities.
Barbie is the latest invasion of childhood spaces by adults who have never grown up. Peter Pan long ago stopped being a fantasy and became an extended societal nightmare. The majority of attendees at Disney theme parks are no longer families, but childless millennials, and the same is true of subscribers to the Disney+ streaming service. Barbie follows up on Disney’s legacy of replacing family and children’s programming with deconstructionist millennial nostalgia binges.
The theme of so many classic children’s fantasies from Peter Pan to Narnia was there was a dividing line between childhood and adulthood. A time had to come when the toys were put away and the business suits were put on. But a generation came of age that put on the business suits and kept the toys out, that held off buying a car and a home, getting married and having children, to go on playing games. This is the generation that Barbie was made for.
Past writers nurtured childhood fantasies, yet knowing that they could never truly be a part of them, while their contemporary counterparts angrily stomp all over those fantasies with a mixture of adult themes and childish bitterness. Unable to truly immerse themselves into the escapist play of their childhood, they poison the well so that children won’t be able to do it either.
If they can’t play with their old toys, no one, especially children should be allowed to play.
This is the psychodrama that drives so much of the obsessive deconstructionism of classic characters and stories. Bitter aging millennials ‘update’ children’s stories so that they are no longer for children and fill them leftist virtue signaling and political rants. The classic “if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention” bumper stickers come to Barbie and everything else.
Writer-director Greta Gerwig brings an even dumber version of the same feminism that she used to dumb down her distorted adaptation of Little Women over to Barbie. The pink glitz and plastic sets of Barbie replace the lush period costumes of Little Women, but underneath are the same complaints about how unfair life is to women in a “patriarchal society”. Gerwig’s problem isn’t actually the ‘patriarchy’: it’s that she’s about to turn 40 and is still an unserious child.
The ‘patriarchy’ didn’t make Gerwig decide to date her much older current husband and Barbie co-writer Noah Baumbach after he broke up with his older wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh (and then skewered her in a movie, ‘Marriage Story’, in which she’s replaced by Scarlett Johansson.) Like previous cinematic feminist heroine Lena Dunham, Gerwig confuses her bad judgment with the patriarchy and uses a movie about a toy to blame society because she can’t make adult decisions.
Barbie captures the perpetual immaturity of media feminism better than ever Disney could. It’s a $300 million production that amounts to a session of aging women acting out a childish feminist narrative with Barbie and Ken dolls come to life. Underneath the pop tunes and fashions, its message is that being a woman and a doll are unhappy things. Call it a ‘late stage’ feminism in which there is little for women to aspire to beyond the spite that the movie spits at men.
What does feminism even mean in a world in which women dominate college admissions, but they also officially no longer exist? As marriages and families stretch further into the distance, what’s left except, as Gerwig’s counterpart in the movie played by America Ferrera does, than to find some toys to play with while mourning the rites of passage of adulthood and aging…
The realities of human existence were once confronted through faith and meaning, but Gerwig was raised a Unitarian Universalist, who went to Catholic School and loves the “ritual of religion”, having gone to “mosque and to synagogues”, while Noah Baumbach, despite making movies depicting Jewish characters, is the son of a Jewish father and a Protestant mother.
Faith and meaning are not on the table when all you have is pop culture and your old toys.
Toys writ large dominate Hollywood. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has swallowed up most of the industry and serious actors line up for their opportunity to appear in it. Mattel’s new CEO decided to take the Disney approach and view the toy company as a bunch of IPs that could be turned around into deconstructionist movies for depressed adults who hate being grown up.
Next up is a ‘surrealistic’ Barbie movie that will dig into ‘millennial angst’ and “focus on some of the trials and tribulations of being thirtysomething, growing up with Barney—just the level of disenchantment within the generation.” And the possibilities are endless.
With properties like American Girl, Hot Wheels, and Masters of the Universe, Mattel could have its own miserable cinematic universe for dysfunctional overgrown children who cry and denounce society while playing with their old toys. Just imagine how a Hot Wheels movie can lecture us about the environment or what He-Man could tell us about toxic masculinity.
It’s funny, but it’s also tragic. A generation of adult children have ruined childhood, not just by wrecking the privileged fantasy worlds that children naturally create, but by trying to make children into miniature adults. The sexualization of children in schools and pop culture is the natural outgrowth of adults who, like child molesters, think of themselves as still being children.
Adults protect and nurture children. A society in which bitter adults exploit children, deny them the safe harbor of their dreams and force them to act out personal and political psychodramas for their benefit is a deeply sick society. Like the Islamic terrorists who train children to kill, the child soldiers of the pop culture revolution are told from an early age that the world is on the brink of destruction and that their family members and friends are evil people. And that their mission is to dedicate their lives and personal happiness to changing the world.
Children who are denied safety and security, politicized at an early age, sexually groomed, become broken adults who are never able to move past their childhood traumas. And that is the ideal audience for feminist Barbie, depressed Barney and a whole world of broken toys.
Hollywood, like the rest of the leftist cultural empire, has collapsed the distinctions between adults and children. Appropriating and colonizing the culture of childhood is a generational imperialism that reflects the immaturity of adults and the abuse of children. Adults who refuse to let go of their toys, are also refusing to let children be children.
Instead, they force children to grow up while they never do.
“Peter Pan long ago stopped being a fantasy and became an extended socuetal nightmare.:” Everyone reading this column knows what that means. Everyone knows who Peter Pan is. Does anyone agree with me that J.M. Barrie should have won the Nobel Prize for Literature?
Along with George Orwell.
You took the words rigt off my keyboard. Peter Pan and 1984 have something else in common. I think Orwell and Barrie both had nasty little left fields in their imaginations. Why is Big Brother’s torturer named O’BRIEN? Why is Captain Hook an AMPUTEE?
Yeah. George Orwell would love FPM. Ha!
He probably would.
As if you’ve ever read anything Orwell wrote.
You probably stroke your Ken doll every night and try to spank your limp monkey.
look him up on instagram if you want to see ugly
https://www.instagram.com/mythicwinter3/?hl=en
look him up on instagram (giving a link put me in moderation)
Is that really him? Holy F but he’s ugly and he looks insane. What’s all that demon stuff? Pentagrams and devil eyes? I knew he was a weirdo but damn. Weirdness is supposed to have limits, just like stupidity. That guy is WAY out there.
Balding guys should never grow long hair, and if they can’t grow a real beard, don’t bother. It’s like strutting around in public without a shirt when you’re a fat and flabby slob. Just spare yourself the embarrassment and spare the rest of us the disgust.
The sexes are not equal.
No, the women are prettier. 😛
I believe women should have rights. They should not have more rights than men. Do they advocate for that?
1)The feminists’ movement, #MeToo, where they advocate that every woman has the right to be believed, in effect gives women more rights than men. Emily Lindin, who wrote for Teen Vogue magazine, said, “If some innocent men’s reputations have to take a hit in the process of undoing the patriarchy, that is a price I am absolutely willing to pay.”
2)To say a women should have the right to choose (regarding abortion) means they choose not only whether or not a fetus lives, but whether a man is able to be a father or not as well. And while men not only don’t have any rights to the pre-born child they helped create, pro-life men are told they don’t even have a say! I thought we lived in a country with an amendment to free speech!
3)According to Richard Vedder, “Men are vastly outnumbered in America’s universities—in the fall of 2016, there were 2,667,000 more women studying than men… Colleges spend millions on Women’s Studies programs, but never a dime on Men’s Studies. Special efforts are made to get women to study in the STEM disciplines, where men are numerically dominant, but no such effort is made to increase the number of men in other fields where women significantly outnumber men. Over 80 % of obstetricians doing their residency are female: are there any efforts to lure men into obstetrics?”
Feminists are often anti-male. It seems to me feminism becomes a religion for certain feminists, to the point they refuse the Bible because they can’t get past God the Father and it being written by men, etc. If you believe as I, that means there are women who are being pulled away from Salvation because of feminism. I see it as hurting families and women themselves, because it’s telling women don’t follow God’s way and put yourself and your career first. God knows what’s best for women, and what works best for society.
I never read “Peter Pan” when I was a kid, so I wouldn’t know. I was reading comic books, Robert Heinlein, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard and stuff like that. I was a boy but I wanted to be a man..
Edgar Rice Burroughs , Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, Bram Stoker and Howard Pyle should all have bèen CONSIDERED for the Nobel Prize fot Literature.
I read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker and Howard Pyle as a kid, too. In fact, I read every short story and novel written about Sherlock Holmes, and more science fiction stories by more writers than I can remember.
I read books while in bed before I slept. During the rest of my spare time I was playing sports and getting into trouble. Us kids were pretty normal back then. No “Barbie” for us, except when my brother and I would light my sister’s dolls on fire and melt their faces.
We would watch “Charlie’s Angels” just to see Farah Fawcett toss her hair and prance around, and “Star Trek” just to see Nichelle Nichols’s legs and butt. Well, many of the “Star Trek” stories were good but I don’t remember any of the “Charlie’s Angels ones and didn’t care.
Sherlock Holmes was good. I may have read them all. We had some kind of a collection of his stories.
FWIW, I gave up on the Nobel committee when Obama won his.
I gave up when Yasser Arafag won. But Bareback Osama was even worse. He won simply for getting elected.
They would have given Nobel Prizes to Hitler and Neville Chamberlain except the timing- war broke out less than one year after appeasement and carving up Czechoslovakia at Munich.
“Time Magazine” made Hitler “man of the year” and put him on the cover.
Lefties always go left of normal people.
How about when Dorothy Day didn’t win, may she rest in peace? Dorothy Day didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize because a lot of the men her soup kitchen fed, during the Depression, woul have been pretty Archie Bunkerish if they’d had homes amd jobs and the Nobel Peace Prize committee HATES white, working class American (and English) men.
Archie Bunker. He was always supposed to be a bigot that viewers were meant to hate but that character was the only reason people watched the show. We all liked him. He was funny. He even had his favorite lounge chair that nobody else was allowed to sit in. I liked that show when I was a little kid.
And Rob Reiner went on to become a real Meathead. Too bad. His dad is super cool.
When I was a kid, during the year leading up to the 1967 war, I remember seeing Arafat for the first time, all I remember was he looked creepy, greasy creepy, greasy child molester creepy. We had actual child molesters in my hometown in northern Illinois. So going to the nearby park to catch frogs was an exercise in terror and vigilance. Occasionally these guys would get caught. In addition to their deviant predilections their Mugs in the newspaper could be interchangeable with those of Gacy or Arafag.
Yikes!
I had a perv try to get me when I was in kindergarten. The Biden freak was bold, too, he did it right across the street from my school! He told me he was a friend of my dad and was there to give me a ride home. I told him “my mom told me never to get into a car with a stranger” but I was afraid I might get into trouble when I got home because he might really have been a friend of my dad.
Ironically, my mother didn’t believe me when I told her of my encounter. Go figure.
Those creepy creeps are out there.
For being Black (half Black) and having a crease in his pants,
I thought Big Mike had the crease in “her” pants.
Back in the 60s I told everyone equality between the sexes was a lie and that it would end in disaster. But, I had no idea it would get this bad. I explained that the sexes were not the same, not identical and therefore there could not be treated equally. I was right and everybody else was wrong and now it is crystal clear. Been waiting 60 years to say that and here we are.
Yes, and it’s time for the 60s to END!! Finally and for good.
Perhaps not, as he was not an outstanding writer. But he had some great ideas in his series featuring Peter Pan and Wendy.
Interestingly, Wendy is forced into adulthood early on in the books when Peter, abducting her, asks her to be the mother of his motley family. So it’s not just about a boy who won’t grow up, it’s about a girl who, seeing the need in front of her, willingly grows up and assumes a full maternal role even though she ought to still be in the nursery playing with her dolls.
err, that happens in real life too. Women, at least traditionally, had to care for little human beings and so had to get grown up and responsible fast to do so. I always felt sorry for Wendy. No more adventure for her!
Men could can take more time before being responsible or avoid it altogether.
Of course, the traditional male role had lots of burdens for men, mostly the pressure as breadwinner.
How quaint it all was. How sane. How we are missing it.
Yes, Kipling wrote it well when he expressed how children have to give up child like things and grow into adults. Most of us had to do it.
I’ll tell you, it’s hard to stay a kid when your rent bill comes due. And all the other damned bills.
Yeah, she slept in the same nursery room with her brothers, right? In the Disney cartoon anyway.
I never thought of that.
Brilliant and incisive as usual Daniel G,
“ A society in which bitter adults exploit children, deny them the safe harbor of their dreams and force them to act out personal and political psychodramas for their benefit”
Sadly it’s not only about Hollywood portrayal and the leftist elites complaining about Sound of Freedom is all the proof we need.
Totally agree and the results are horrifying. I have been watching US videos on YouTube about people getting stopped for DUI and other incidents. Mainly young women, late teens, 20s, completely off their heads and drunk. They turn into blubbering 3 year olds, have tantrums, cry pitiously, blatantly lie they never drank any thing, threaten the police because dad is a bigwig, swear at them relentlessly. Even a woman and her partner in their. 50s who took psychelic mushrooms while their teenaged children were in the house and had to be arrested.
No thoughts for how their actions impacted others, they had crashed into other vehicles, one young woman had killed two people with her car while intoxicated and displayed not a care in the world. Plus, they all seem to dress like hookers. Very worrying as they will be the ones becoming lawyers and other officials(…) in the future.
Why shouldn’t they act that way since they’ve been raised to be “special” princesses. They no doubt didn’t see their “I’m a girl- what’s your special power?” t-shirts as ironic.
Actually the height of drunk driving in America was during the 1980s and 1990s. Although numbers are up from their lowest point during the early 2010s (wait, who was President then?), they’re still far below the heights of the Reagan/Bush years.
https://zutobi.com/us/driver-guides/the-us-dui-report
Just wait until all the new illegal immigrants get enough money together to buy cars. Most of them come from cultures with a different attitude toward drunk driving than the US has.
Oh…and which president is importing this problem???
You took the words right out of my mouth! Take a wetter from a country with no probity about drinking and put him in a car even though he’s never driven one before and DUIs are what you get.
I doubt presidents have much bearing on drunk driving statistics.
Well……..Pedo Joe and Crack Hunter might be the exceptions….:)
Bullshit.
And the majority of DUI arrests are of wet backs. Not “Mexican Americans” but full on wetters.
Make sure to thank Borderless Biden.
Scumbag.
The only statistic that surprises me is the recent years increase.
In 1973, in my hometown, if I got caught drunk driving, my car would be locked, the cop would take my keys, then give me a ride home.
In 2003, if I got caught drunk driving in the same town, I’d be cuffed, taken down to headquarters, probably spend the night there, and hit with a six month driver’s license suspension.
It’s only gotten worse. In 2023, in addition to the six month revocation, I’d have to spend six months attending AA meetings, or do six months community service. Not to mention the fine, and the lawyer, which will probably cost me $10K when the dust settles. If it were a second offense, I’d be hit with a felony.
As for the dopey girls, I suspect it’s an attitude thing. They mug for the camera with their smartass attitude. I doubt these are the ones who’ll be lawyers. More likely crack head porn whores. I’d like to see a video of them standing before the judge. I bet we would see the essence of humility.
I was hired as a cop in 1981. A few years later, agency DUI policies changed to “Shall Arrest.” Arrest descretion was gone.
After the changes if I drove you home, and a 1/2 hour later you returned to your car to drive it home, and you had a wreck, I could lose my job or worse.
That is one of the reasons DUI arrests went up.
And “Yes,” there are ethnic groups overrepresented in DUI arrests.
Oh. $10K in cost? That is just a start. Ignition Interlock. Insurance. My BIL lost his job. (He was stopped for expired plates by a training car. He was one tick above the DUI limit.)
No, dear. Those girls ARE the lawyers to be. No secretarial jobs for princesses.
Really? That’s scary. And the fact that they tend to dress like tarts just makes it worse.
pssshh. Hunter’s lawyer filmed in public view smoking a bong in Paciific Palisades – leftist loyalty. is immunity. Meanwhile, JohnEastman is disbarred for challenging the leftist status quo.
This is Hollywood at its worst
I was sincerely hoping for a crash at the box office here in the states, but was unpleasantly surprised by the weekend receipts. There has been as wide-eyed, concerted effort towards the complete rejection of all things WOKE, that have been designed for our consumption, here of late. So much so that big exec’s have swallowed their wokeness in favor of a favorable bottom line. It only takes a cursory look at Bud Light and Target’s stock prices to see the effectiveness of this rejection. Disney is also in the tank with their “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Bedpan” installment, which has already been compared to their biggest losing project of all time, ‘John Carter’, that cost the studio $200 Million and two studio execs.
Barbie is proof we’re not out of the woodshed just yet…and don’t think the savvy woke aren’t paying attention. Perhaps it takes something so iconic like Barbie to make mom’s look past the woke and take their daughters anyway. Sad, but I’m expecting more icons to fall because of this. Maybe “G.I. Joe and the DEI agent”.
The marketing was apolitical and made the movie sound whimsical
And while a lot of men have dropped woke franchise movies, young women are still a fairly reliable demo
Once Barbie became a cultural and fashion trend, they had to go or be left out of peer conversations.
That movie won’t last. The dumb bimbos turned out the first weekend but they won’t keep going.
Maybe. I haven’t seen the movie and don’t plan to see it. But all that pink may continue to pull in viewers, especially women and girls. And the special effects also add to the mix. Visually, the movie appears terrific. It’s sad the woke spoils the pretty stuff.
Lets hope it tanks in the weeks to come. So far, it has.
It reminds me of black movies. Those often have big openings too but 11% of the population can’t sustain a movie for long.
I love pink. . . but I will prefer to see Oppenheimer – Sounds of Freedom and Nefarious are the last 2 films I saw.
Crystal bedpan…wait, “I’m taking a walk.
The Left destroys everything it touches, now including childhood. Hope it’ll be happy to rule over the completely disfunctional dung-heap that it is creating.
They will be happy to let Big Pharma psychopharms take care of the dysfunctional dung-heap, just like they let it take care of them.
Hey, I take some medicine. The ulcer pills will actually cure my ulcer and the high cholesterol pills aren’t necessary anymore but I’ll take them until the bottle is empty, just to be on the safe side.
But I do see the senior citizens in the drug store drive throughs filling up on their drugs. I wonder what they did back before that stuff was available? Take walks, maybe?
“Everything that exists needs to be destroyed.”‘–Marx
Absolutely. Look at Jazz Jennings and what was done to his childhood. He is now a permanently anorgasmic, morbidly obese adult still dominated by his Munchhausen by proxy mother, whose childhood was entertainment for the masses on TLC along with toe deformities, half ton women, green card marriages, hoarders and prison romances.
I can cure anorgasmia in any chick.
I had to look that word up. It’s hard to believe some chicks are so dumb and incompetent. It isn’t hard to get off.
Perhaps, but Jazz Jennings is in fact a eunuch. Puberty Blockers and massive doses of estrogen left him with a micropenis and no way to perform a “conventional” (to the extent castration and mutilation are “conventional”) vaginoplasty. Jazz Jennings has no libido because of testosterone suppression (that’s why he’s not really attracted to either sex) and a neovagina fashioned out of stomach lining that has required three revisions. His surgeon Marci Bowers (who is “transgender”) admits he will be permanently anorgasmic. He is as close to being a totally sexless being as any human.
I say all of this not to ridicule Jazz, who is a hapless victim of a monstrous mother and Mengele-like doctors. It should also be noted that proponents of this latter day castration cult continue to lie and assert that Puberty Blockers (off label misuse of anti androgens used to treat advanced prostate cancer) and cross sex hormones produce no permanent changes.
Holy fucking shit! That’s horrific.
I guess my life isn’t so bad after all. Poor Jazz. I feel for him and will say a prayer.
Brilliant. Woke=Tantrum.
Leftist politics are those if overgrown children
Pinkalicious on steroids,
I perceive this obnoxious movie as a gauge to measure the immaturity factor that the leftist teachers have forged in our society.
Huge ticket sales = NEA/AFT have ruined the coming generation
Low ticket sales = there’s hope.
For God’s sake, this cheap, joke of a film is slated to be more shallow than Doom or Resident Evil.
(It’s no Sergeant York, It’s a Wonderful Life, or Gone with the Wind.)
This is a movie about plastic dolls, staring plastic actors. No wonder it requires the same endless promotion that Brokeback Mountain had gotten.
Flood the zone, make it into the thing everyone is taking about (even if they’ll forget about it two weeks later) and success is all but guaranteed
Hey, “Brokeback Mountain” is one of Obama’s favorites. He plays out some of the scenes with young hustlers.
There’s nothing to fear or complain about here, let us rejoice in faith! Jesus is preparing us for his childlike fantasy Kingdom!
“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” – Matthew 18:3
Who but children or adults with childish minds can believe in Santa Claus or an effortless, sorrow-free, pain-free, Eternal Life, in an After-Life Utopia.
Says the man who believes man’s mind is Reason itself. Believes that Reason produces Truth, and that the universe created itself:
“Existence exists by the grace of existence” – THX (or Ayn Rand)
Look at the purple prose above. Where did grace come from if it made existence?
By the way, your scripture quote has no context. The children were coming to Jesus for blessing and His apostles were keeping them away. Jesus’ reference refers to children’s guileless innocence and condemns His apostles for thinking Jesus was too important for the little ones.
Name one passage – just one in the bible – that says people must become gullible.
The problem with Holy Scripture is that it is open to exegesis and interpretation. A more rational Christian can interpret scripture in a more rational way. A more irrational Christian can interpret scripture in a more irrational way. Christians have persecuted and killed each other over interpretation.
John List, a Christian and a Lutheran, killed his family because of, “his perception that his family members were straying from their religious faith, as his motivations for the murders. He believed that killing them would assure their souls a place in Heaven, where he hoped to eventually join them.” Christians have committed unspeakable atrocities in the name of Christ such as the Massacre At Beziers in 1209, the murder and dismemberment of the pagan Hypatia.
The crucial issue when it comes to religion, any religion, is how RATIONAL is the interpretation of that religion in the mind of the individual believer? John List was NOT brain-damaged insane when he murdered his family. His interpretation of his religion led him to the conviction that murdering his family was virtue, was good, just like a Muslim Jihadist interprets his religion.
So once again, you mention John List as the supreme example of a Lutheran crank who murdered his family, in a lame attempt to link all Lutherans with this act.
One guy. I would bet if you talked to the average Lutheran he/she wouldn’t know or care who List is. But that is always your M.O. If we actually listened to you we might think that the world is filled Lutheran John Lists
The whole guilt by association screed works both ways, considering that atheism has the blood of 100,000,000 on it’s hands in the 20th C. alone. Hitler and his SS slaughtered millions of Jews, Slavs, Catholics and Lutherans. They would have sent you to the oven as well. The whole attempt to tie Lutheranism and Christianity in general to Nazism has been done so much by you is possibly the lamest of lame attempts to tie them all to Nazism, which is your safe space. Is it any wonder you couldn’t get a PhD?
Are you really saying I am responsible for something that happened in 1209?
The objectivist/atheist religion will eventually have to answer for the 100,000,000 deaths you keep trying sweep under the rug. You are a fraud. You build yourself up by tearing everyone else down.
No one is ever going to take you seriously as an intellectual, or as a person. Reading a slew of books all day and repeating your lies basically means nothing.
You didn’t bother to answer her question. You just go on with your usual hate filled rant and blather on about John List.
How do you know List was not brain damaged. He probably was.
I would say you are probably brain damaged because you seem to be stuck on the same Christian Hatred that pours out of you every day. You seem to have no appreciation of anything outside of your pathetic world of rational selfishness.
What an empty life you lead.
Again your comment has no connection to the article, are you autistic?
Well said, sir.
I call him our resident Narcissistic Personality Disorder freak. He seems to have no filters, just keeps repeating the same stuff every day and his goal appears to be the destruction of Judeo-Christian western civilization.
He is basically an insane religious bigot who is stuck on Ayn Rand’s Objectivism.
But he also may be autistic.
I can’t disagree with a single thing in this article. Greenfield is one of the best. But I contend that there’s another, less-talked-about factor that contributes to this never-ending self-centered childhood…..the way adults dress. Adults (well, people that would be considered as “adult” as far as age) today dress like children……spongy sneakers of any color (some with lights),with company logos; T-shirts; ball caps worn incorrectly and inside the house and restaurants; and the ubiquitous pair of shorts – worn all year long, even in cold climes. They go to work dressed like this. They go shopping dressed like this. They even go to their churches dressed like this. Another sign of degradation. The basic idea of dressing well was not to show off, but was to show respect for others.
The point of dressing well is to show respect for others? LOL!
Now that’s ALTRUISM taken to a level I haven’t heard before but it does make sense and it is true that altruism does demand conformity.
The Hippies were ultra-conformists. We are still living with Hippie conformity, the ubiquitous spread of tattoos and piercings is testament to that.
Unfortunately, too many people in any age or culture are altruist conformists. They’re sheep, they do whatever other sheep are doing. Not thinking and dressing for themselves, they like children, want to dress like the other children around them dress.
Don’t forget to wear your burka darling! The other sheep will think you’re not cool if you don’t wear your burka.
Don’t think for yourself, THX. Do and think whatever Ayn Rand and Peikoff tell you to think and do.
Like an automaton. Mr Roboto.
Unlike in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, there are no COMMANDMENTS to OBEY in Objectivism , only general and rational moral principles that you can freely choose to think about, apply, or not, to your individual, particular, specific, individual context.
What is the purpose of these moral principles? Not to please God, Jesus, Moses, Abraham, Mohammed, Allah, Ayn Rand, or Leonard Peikoff, but to try and achieve your own, personal, individual, HAPPINESS.
The purpose of Objectivist morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live. Not to obey others but to achieve your own rational happiness and rational values.
“If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man’s only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a “moral commandment” is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.” – John Galt
I love it when you quote imaginary people. That’s kind of the point of Objectivism, isn’t it? A “discipline without structure” and a way of life bereft of meaning.
Personally I know of no Christian or Jew in this country who is suffering. Maybe in Europe where the atheists are in charge or in Nigeria where the Muslims are murdering Christians.
I do know you are suffering each and every day of your life because no one cares what you think.
What happens when are happy and content without relying on Objectivism. What happens you will never achieve what you want because of Objectivism, which is what is happening to you.
“Now that’s ALTRUISM taken to a level I haven’t heard before but it does make sense and it is true that altruism does demand conformity.”
Conformity is when objectivism insists that all reason is good, and all bad is unreason. Slavish conformity is expressed when this foundational postulate cannot recognize that reason can increase the effectiveness of evil actions and intentions. Gas chambers, atomic bombs, cheating on test with minimal risk, etc, etc.
Altruism is self-sacrifice that another might receive good. Finding altruism in personal clothing choices only reveals the perversion and limitation of your thinking. Your world is very small and has very few choices, evidently.
Conformity in the sense that altruism demands is conformity to the opinions or commands of others in contradiction to the facts of reality.
A Muslima wearing a burka to the beach on a sweltering summer day is an altruist-conformist. She is obeying the commands of others for the sake of obedience disregarding the facts of reality.
A rational person doesn’t conform to the opinions or commands of others, unless, those opinions conform to the facts of reality. But then objectively speaking that would not constitute social conformity but “conforming” to reality.
You couldn’t find true altruism with two hands and a flashlight.
Basically your Objectivism For Dummies course consists of the following:
Altruism…bad.
Self-sacrifice…..bad
Jesus…..bad
Christianity…………bad
Judaism…….bad
Judeo-Christianity is Leftism……bad
Judaism and Christianity are oriental…..bad
Christianity prepared the ground for modern totalitarianism….bad
Medieval Christianity was a totalitarian system…..bad
God and magical thinking…….bad
Atheism….good
Greeks……good
Christian Dark Age….bad
Renaissance and enlightenment …..good
Greek philosophers……good
Christian philosophers…….bad
selfishness “properly defined”, rational selfishness….good
Objectivist reason and reality….good
Altruism…bad.
Repeat ad infinitum. The Big Lie in practice.
And there we have the simplistic world according to our rezidentura fraud…..THX
THX: “The point of dressing well is to show respect for others? LOL!”
I suppose you would wear shorts and flip flops to meet Danusha Goska or Ayn Rand?
Hey! Shorts are comfortable but flip flops are for dorks.
Real men wear leather sandals. 🙂
If we were going to the beach or a pool for a swim of course I would. Rationality is reason applied to the facts of reality.
“Rationality is reason applied to the facts of reality.”
So you would spend a couple of hours arguing with yourself over what to wear to the beach or a pool, wouldn’t you.
What if your “Rationality” told you to wear a suit to the beach. And it seemed reasonable to you.
Are you that dead on the inside?
You are the ultimate sheep….mindlessly quoting Peekaboo, Rand, Bernstein and the rest of the other Objectivist nobodies ad nauseum to the great unwashed.
Yeah you are a real rebel, an individualist, sitting there passing judgment on everyone from your rarified perch up on Mt. THX where the air is thick with the smell of your own f*rts.
Maybe you thought you were too good to dress well, to show respect for the job you never could get or the people you never worked with. Or maybe you didn’t dress well because you couldn’t because no one would hire you.
After all who needs a malignant narcissist telling everyone how wonderful he is, right?
That’s another element of adulthood..
Clothing was aspirational, dressing for the job you wanted, children trying to dress like adults. Now everyone dresses like children, the goal is to be always comfortable because the purpose of life, like childhood, has become perpetual play.
Damn. I hope flannel lumberjack shirts are appropriate for an old man like me or I’m going to have to do a lot of shopping to replace them. I have a lot of “Western” shirts, too. I hope that doesn’t make me Howdy Doody or Woody from “Toy Story.” Crap. I have a lot of shorts, too, although in my defense I live in balmy San Jose.
JRL. I some what disagree.
To church. I wear kahki’s, a button shirt, leather shoes. I NEVER wear shorts, t-shirt, sneakers or a cap.
That church attire is never appropriarte. I do not like seeing it. The Lord’s House demands respect.
But the rest of the time, I probably am in shorts. Cold weather or not. I just am comfortable in shorts.. And I do not become chilled quickly. I am from cold country (WI), but now live in Oklahoma. It is warmer here. When a sweatshirt will do for me; she is wearing something like a parka. I Love her.
FJB
“Gerwig confuses her bad judgment with the patriarchy and uses a movie about a toy to blame society because she can’t make adult decisions.”
Great Gerwig co-wrote and directed a film that made $300 million worldwide in its first weekend. What the f… have you done?
$300 million my ass. And it has no lasting power. How much did it make on Monday and Tuesday?
And Alzheimer Joe is supposedly the President.
Adults aren’t impressed.
Donald Trump is a billionaire and former president.
What have you done besides troll poorly?
See how that works?
And Trump has really good hair.
If you have read as many of Greenfield’s essays as I have, you will know “what the f… ” he has done. He’ll probably never get rich, but most writers — real writers, that is — would give a lot to have a small fraction of his rhetorical power.
Illiterate, dysfunctional athletes make a lot of money, but I’d be me.
What happened to “woke movies make no money because Americans don’t like them”?
Every Disney movie this year happened.
You weirdo scum in the fringe minority suck and nobody likes you.
Dickhorn.
Your extremist politics cost Disney shareholders half a billion dollars,. and the Barbie movie was frightened enough that it hid its politics behind lots of pink froth
Glad to know I cost Disney so much money. Your analysis of Barbie’s performance is way off, as the next few weeks will show. Not that you would admit to being wrong in a million years.
So what was the Barbie box office return on Monday and Tuesday, Hm?
Dick all, that’s what. The idiots might as well play videos of Alzheimer Joe falling down. At least people would enjoy those. His Dirtbagocrat decrepitude is always good for a laugh.
You suck donkey balls.
Thousands and more parents said, “No, we are not taking our chlldren to a see how a perverted society. lives. ‘ The woke are the minority, and they have lost millions of dollars because they shunned traditional values and morality. Many companies had to shut their doors because people refused to shop at places that were totally depraved and upheld bad life styles.
Marketing, the trailer hid all the goofy ideas.
This article is absolutely excellent. I shall now always notice the relationship between “spite” and “spit” also.
Another absolutely entertaining and devastatingly good article about the Barbie movie was written here:
https://peachykeenan.substack.com/p/enter-the-barbie-longhouse
“Spite and spit.” The former is what I feel for my psychotic ex-wife and the latter is what I do with my beer when I laugh.
Especially good read. An excellent analysis. Always a pleasure reading your work Daniel.
Thank you so much Yosef
I recently read a book from the 1940’s called “ The Mature Mind”. It remains relevant.
I am currently a book titled “Growing Up Absurd” that makes many of the same points.
It is worth noting that a clever—if patently emotionally dsyfunctional—man was saying that our society had made adult individuation difficult in 1960.
The word Murray Bowman is also highly relevant. He functionally, if not explicitly, equates gross immaturity—poor differentiation—with functional psychosis, which caused me to hypothesize that the hallucinations of Collectivists are functionally clinical schizophrenia, and adult children their logical supporters.
Have you read Diana West’s “The Death of the Grownup”? You might find it an interesting addition to your studies.
The culture of a society can mature or become collectively held back and then psychotic
When culture is sufficiently detached from reality it becomes a grand collective hallucination
We’ve been there for a while, the only difference is that the collective hallucination is breaking down leaving a schizoid society with competing delusions each fanatical and based on magical thinking
There are adults who collect Barbie dolls or stuffed animals. Perhaps the reason is the desire to go on living in a fantasy world of childhood.. I suppose the popularity of super hero films is related to this too. When I was a child I was interested in Superman comics and also other super hero comics, and now they are made into films with adult actors. Perhaps the trans sexual and LGBTQ movements are a sort of childish fantasy that people try to make into a reality. And of course the beauty pageants for children also blur the boundary of adult child, just as trans sexualism blurs the dividing line between male and female. The idea of a male who impersonates a woman so much so that he is chosen as a beauty queen is also an infantile fantasy. They reason such impersonators are given the prizes is perhaps to keep the fantasy world from collapsing under its ridiculous unreality.
Very true.
We’ve broken down the boundaries between fantasy and reality and then we made living in a fantasy world into a civil rights cause
Every man is entitled to pretend he’s a woman , every woman is entitled to be an action hero, children should be treated like adults,, adults like children
To disbelieve is the ultimate hate crime
Hey, Superman is cool! A Kansas farm boy more powerful than any mythological god but he uses his power to help people instead of dominate them. He would give his life to protect any potential victim. I know he’s a fictional character but he’s a great role model. 🙂
A Barnie movie? I like that! Maybe we can have a Tinkie Winkie movie for thirty-somethings too. It certainly would not be off the charts in today’s Hollywood.
Thank you, Mr. Greenfield. Your commentary here is the most insightful — indeed, the most “grown up” — I’ve yet read on the subject of this monstrous movie and how indicative it is of most Hollywood product anymore.
Two days ago, before I’d seen what you’ve written here, I wrote the following Disqus comment in response to a Breitbart article:
“Barbie [the movie] is all surface glitz; a piece of pop-culture junk made by juvenile adults (perhaps better identified simply as leftists) hoping to appeal to other adults who, like them, have grown older but no wiser.”
Clearly, you and I are on the same page. But where I stopped, content to leave what I hope is a pithy comment, you’ve gone on to identify the root of the problem and its consequences. And your analysis beats any other I’ve seen.
I’m an ardent film buff. I’d be thrilled if Hollywood and the rest of the film industry could reverse course and start producing more films and television shows that once again appeal to mainstream tastes and moral standards. Grown-up entertainment for grown-ups. Fat chance of that happening anytime soon, I suspect. In the meantime, I refuse to help finance Hollywood’s infantilism.
A lot of European movies are good now. South Korean ones, too, although I can do without the zombie stuff.
The American movies have “diamonds in the rough” but you have to be xcircumspect in your choices. And there are some good TV series you can stream (Screw paying for them.) “1923” with Harrison Ford is quite good.
Thank you. People tend to tell the stories they want to see. Hollywood is under the control of infantile leftists who are doing just that, and they have no connection to mainstream America.
May we PLEASE have the REAL Looney Tunes and Hanna Barbera cartoons back?
You know; the ones from the 1960s or older?
And Betty B. Woody W. Popeye. Classic Disney. There are many more.
I am tired of “pink.” Woke. Vanilla…
The MGM cartoons were great, too.
Also Road Runner, Wylie Cyote, and Charlie Brown.
All classics. Who knows what sort of crap kids are subjected to nowadays.
It’s good for parents to be careful about what their kids see.
On a different article, a commentator named Marauder wrote:
“Apparently at the beginning of this movie, there’s a scene that’s supposed to represent the arrival of Barbie on the toy market. A giant-sized Barbie towers over little girls, who – now presented with a new sort of doll – start throwing and smashing their baby dolls. Baby dolls, according to the philosophy of this movie, are retrograde, because they encourage little girls to pretend to be mothers. Now that they can play with Barbie and imagine themselves in one of her many personas and careers, the little girls literally destroy baby dolls.
Apparently it’s a parody of part of Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” in which apes smash bones. (I haven’t watched that movie.) But parody or not, I think the implications are distasteful. Eeeew, it’s so old-fashioned and patriarchal for little girls to imagine themselves as mothers! We should just smash that whole idea and encourage little girls to focus on careers.
I prefer the end credits of “Toy Story 3,” where the audience sees that Big Baby the baby doll is being cared for by Barbie and Ken. In my experience, feminism in the modern era is largely about one group of women accusing another group of women of being stupid, brainwashed, and actively hurting other women by making choices about how to live their own lives.”
You should watch “2001: A Space Odyssey.” It’s very good. It’s hard to believe it was made way back in 1968.
Funny enough, the monkey men scenes had the worst special effects, while all the space stuff was excellent. The homo erecti or whatever were perfect examples of islamopithecines, though.
The space baby ending was weird but the rest of the movie was very good, especially the parts about the sentient computer which went insane.
The message isn’t subtle, is it?
Being grown up means throwing away baby dolls and embracing the glamorous lifestyle.
The fight, if we can call it yet, against the Left war on children might get worse yet, especially considering that governments are washing their hands of it.
I figure someday when Barbie is on Tubi for free, I might watch it, because it’s a satire on itself.
I wouldn’t bother. You could watch a log burning in a fireplace and get more entertainment. Or a bird crapping on a car.
Maybe I’m just in a happy mood, but I found the article rather funny, in contrast to the dire happenings in our country, compared to which, a bad movie is a bump in the road.
BTW, walking by the theater this evening, I saw what looked like mothers and daughters, teenage and 30-something girl groups and couples, and one teenage (heterosexual) couple, all dressed at least partially in pink.
You should of slapped them.
Kidding! Just kidding. But not really.
people seem surprised at the unending drivel being shunted out of hollyweird . a judge who doesn’t know what a woman is , wrong pronouns , men who believe they are women , a plastic doll becomes a movie , women who believe they are men , people who believe they are neither . parents and politicians who coerce their children into being mutilated , its called a reprobate mind and it will get worse .
Why pay for propaganda when you can get all you want for free???
Thousands of Parents decided not to allow their children to be influenced by the woke culture that is immoral and depraved. Its cost the Businesses and amusement parks millions of dollars and store closings.
Un-holy-wood.
And not original- that’s the trademark of woke.
Not a Busby Berkeley musical.
Not a Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire romance.
Perhaps a woked up kookamonga mutant cousin to the movie Enchanted.
The reality:
In the beginning, for a little girl, putting on and taking off the different Barbie clothes and little plastic, cork and vinyl shoes, helps develop fine motor skills – it’s tricky fitting sleeves onto those unbending arms.
A little later, they design and sew their own fashions for the doll from whatever is in the sewing box.
Around age ten, they lose interest when they realize that Barbie is anatomically lacking; and they move on.
The movie wants to make Barbie monolithic, revolutionary, inciting violence in little girls to smash with a vengeance to smithereens the baby like dolls that came before. A vacuous space odyssey. But isn’t that funny?
But there’s nothing monolithic to children about Barbie.
Simply, Barbie was born a mannequin.
The doll didn’t replace other dolls. Its maker merely ingeniously introduced an
easily-held-in-a-child’s-hand, high fashion mannequin with a wonderful, different wardrobe and accessories for every occasion.
Girls naturally grow out of dressing dolls to dressing themselves.
To call the movie’s title character Barbie is a gimmick to rake in the dough. In woke lingo, the movie culture appropriates the doll’s name. It has nothing to do with anything real. No soul. No genitalia. How superficial and self serving is that, hmmm?
Answer: $$$$$$$$$$$$