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Anyone watching television in the last few months has been inundated with marketing for the “Barbie” movie. It wasn’t just in the movie commercials. It was in commercials for cars and other products. It was inserted into the plots of reality shows. It was everywhere. It’s not a movie I had any interest in seeing, whether it was a movie made for grade-school girls or a satirical sendup for the angry feminists.
But my wife wanted to see it, so off we went. It was the worst movie we’ve seen since “Elvis.” It’s a disjointed mess. Just like “Elvis,” we sat through it despite the temptation to skedaddle.
It’s like a series of bad “Saturday Night Live” sketches that are placed at the end of the show. Any movie that ends with a triumphant first visit to the gynecologist? Eminently skippable. “It’s like Pinocchio, with tampons” did not make the newspaper blurbs.
Mattel wanted to make a Barbie movie to sell more Barbies, but they couldn’t just make a cartoon for little girls. No, it had to make an ironic adult blockbuster mocking itself with a preposterously plastic indictment of the patriarchy. Film critic Christian Toto counted 10 utterances of “patriarchy” in this movie — and none of them made all the promotional material that inundated TV watchers. It snuck up on you at the cineplex.
It made me think of leftists like Todd Gitlin writing about capitalist “hegemony,” about how capitalism is so malignantly adaptable that it absorbs socialist critiques and somehow evades its own collapse. So the mega-corporation that makes Barbie dolls subjects the audience to a teenager yelling at Barbie, “You represent everything wrong with our culture! You destroyed the planet with your glorification of rampant consumerism, you fascist!”
Barbie is not a fascist. She’s a toy. But yes, she’s a flashy and colorful toy, with many accessories. If they made Maoist Barbie, she’d only come with one outfit and a little red book. Surely, the movie will lead to more Barbie doll sales. Rampant consumerism still wins.
At the movie’s beginning, “Barbieland” is a utopian matriarchy. Women run the world, with a female president and an all-female Supreme Court, and the stable of Ken dolls are oafish, stone-dumb accessories. “It’s not man-hating,” my wife argued. Well, if you scripted a G.I. Joe movie where all the women were this painfully dumb, the script would be shredded and then burned.
Greta Gerwig, the mastermind of this dreadful melange — whose film “Lady Bird” was a much better movie — clearly set out to make a cartoonish indictment of men and the buffoonish women who have submitted themselves to them for millennia. Naturally, the indictment of old-time religion is in there somewhere.
“Barbie was invented first,” Gerwig told Vogue. “Ken was invented after Barbie, to burnish Barbie’s reputation in our eyes and in the world. That kind of creation myth is the opposite of the creation myth in Genesis.” Gerwig explained that at the film’s beginning, Barbie lives in a world with no aging or death, and then she becomes self-conscious — like Adam and Eve. She said this “resonates” with her, and her Catholic school upbringing. Obviously, she’s turning the Bible upside down and inside out.
This feminist screed could have been worse. It could have ended with Barbie triumphantly getting an abortion. But that could represent one less little girl reaching for a Barbie doll.
Good article. Its a shame this film has done so well. But it had great marketing and it looks colorful and fun. But it’s clearly pushing a feminist message and unfortunately, a lot of people have sat there and soaked it up.
Before this film came out, if you had asked anyone who was Barbie’s guy, they would’ve answered Ken. But they chose to have Barbie not want to be with Ken.
Here’s an experiment for you: reverse the genders anytime the feminists talks about men. I’ve come to the realization the feminists say they are about equality, but are actually about gender superiority.
I feel for the men out there and the young men who would like to have a wife and kids some day. But feminism isn’t good for women either. For one thing, it gives women a warped view where they see themselves as victims and men as their enemies. What kind of a society can we have if men and women are divided, with men being villainized? – A Marxist one?
Guess the ‘trans’ movement is taking the wind out of the sails of the ship the feminists called equality.
Much ado about nothing.
Sometimes funny, sometimes boring- the average stuff from Hollywood, pink version!
That matriarchy was given priority prior to patriarchy is common sense.
That women lead for 100000 years by natural authority- the same.
It was due to religious beliefs, that the woman’s body was the altar of life, that gave woman the advantage – and justifiably so!!
To Christendom: CHIVALRY is/should be(!) natural for Christian (for all!) men, “Ladies first” a Christian man’s absolut and indisputable lighthearted naturalness.
Without claiming compensation.
Unintelligible word salad from another woke dope.
Chivalry is a good thing, feminism is not.
You say, “CHIVALRY is/should be(!) natural for Christian (for all!) men, “Ladies first” a Christian man’s absolut and indisputable lighthearted naturalness.”
But for a Christian man, shouldn’t it be, Christ first, rather than ladies first? Seriously, I get your point, I’ve also heard from Christians comments that go too far and aren’t even Biblical like when a pastor said something to the effect of, “God loves men, but He really loves women.”
That pastor was wrong. Yes God loves both men and women, He does not love women more as the pastor implied. Husbands should cherish their wives and men should treat women kindly, but it bothers me when people seem to forget men are people too who should also be treated kindly and helped when needed. “Love your neighbor” includes men.
I did not see the movie but its THE topic of intellectual discussion everywhere, so it succeeded as just another distraction from more serious issues. `We live in a world of distractions.
My experience is that people were eager to see the movie because it was so hyped. They had fun seeing it and found a happy message in it. One young person said the message was `’there are many types of `Barbies.” Which seemed both nonsensical and a match for gender fluidity or whatever. Also I see that neighbors are still excited to take their young children to Disney movies and have no awareness or don’t care about Disney’s current agendas.
So winning points to the woke establishment Regular people and kids love movies, toys, and being distracted by bright shiny objects. Propaganda wins the day. Again.
“and have no awareness or don’t care about Disney’s current agendas.”
That’s right, and might be the reason why conservatives keep losing. Wonder how many conservatives are back to drinking Bud Lite. Blown opportunities.
It’s so simple, even a public school student could figure it out: The left wants Marxism more than conservatives don’t want Marxism. Of course, the non-Marxist useful idiot liberals don’t have a goddam clue. No help from those grinning fools.
I recall several years ago conservatives could have brought the NFL to their knees, and I don’t mean playing the Star Spangled Banner. They started to, but pro football proved more compelling than the preservation of land of the free and home of the brave.
These days, conservatives could annihilate NASCAR, but I’m sure NASCAR will emerge unscathed.
Such is human nature, perhaps.
It’s one step backward and two steps forward for these leftist organizations, as they laugh at us.
I would have upvoted you, you wrote a good comment, except that you took God’s name in vain.
I’m no super righteous person, but I do wish God’s name would’t be paired with a curse word. Please be more respectful in the future.
Thank you.
Woke movies do not deserve your money
The OLD and FUNNY SNL would have a HUGE INVENTORY of SATIRE with all the biden bunglers and woke movies!! Imagine a skit with the – not the “hamburgler” – but with the “luggage looter” who dresses like an insane, gay “Joker”! OR how about a “Barbie” skit where Barbie and Ken finally decide to “do the dirty deed” and then DISCOVER there are NO OPENING NOR PROTRUSIONS!!! I do hope that people note the RATING of the movie and DO NOT SUBJECT THEIR CHILDREN to this until they are AGE APPROPRIATE!! As I usually post on these articles dealing with the left’s insanity – LEAVE THE CHILDREN ALONE!
Selling dolls. It is called capitalism. Why would adults go to a child’s movie?
To appear kool in the eyes of the chldren.
One of the more nuanced reviews I have read is from a mid-20s “fangirl” (she refers to herself as a Star Wars gal),who delivers her remarks sitting in front of bookshelves full of action figures and fantasy /sci-fi merchamdise from various franchises. She says that, although she happily grew up and played with Barbie, if the doll and its marketing message then was what the message from this movie is now, she never would have played with Barbie in the first place.
To paraphrase H. L. Mencken, no one ever went broke underestimating American taste. ‘Nuff said.
From the clips, the movie looks too cringy to watch.
I grew up with the beginning of feminism and it’s so much worse and destructive than it was then.
Barbie will always be 19 years old as she was created by Mattel in 1959. So why didn’t the movie portray her as a bright college freshman with a great boyfriend she chooses instead of beta Ken? Obviously, the Barbie in the movie should have been played by someone much younger.