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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The trick is, though, that the Ken dolls only act condescendingly when the ‘deprogrammed’ Barbie dolls pretend to be ignorant. There’s a kind of fundamental incompatibility between the fantasy and the reality that people are overlooking. SMG mansplaining a literal mansplaining montage is perfect CineD
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Jul 30, 2023 19:50
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The use of "Butterfly" was extremely appropriate. Helen Mirren should've made a snippy remark over the financial literacy bit, maybe about how women outperform men in the stock market on average. Otherwise, lots of people really do park all their money in checking/savings without seeking any greater returns or investments!
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Jul 30, 2023 19:56
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Honestly after watching it a second time. I think I'm pretty confident that Ken is a gay man and that's his truth.
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Jul 30, 2023 21:50
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I definitely slid a bit on the Kinsey scale watching some of those dance numbers.
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Jul 30, 2023 22:35
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Hollismason posted:Honestly after watching it a second time. I think I'm pretty confident that Ken is a gay man and that's his truth. It makes biographical sense. Ken was named after Ruth's son Kenneth, just like Barbie after her daughter Barbara. And real Ken was super gay erotic photo/film guy. Super weird that Barbie and Ken are siblings though. No wonder Kenneth became the blacksheep of the family
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Jul 30, 2023 23:08
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Simply Simon posted:The stakes are that without breaking the rule of Kens, Ken dolls instead of Barbie dolls will sell like hotcakes and set feminism back 50 years Right, but let’s just out and say it: Barbie dolls have never actually had the power to “set feminism back” very much at all. It’s like the old story about Star Trek having the first inter-racial kiss on TV, when it wasn’t. It was only the most prominent example - the major network NBC coming late to the game, taking advantage of the work already done by, like, the civil rights movement in reality. What I’m writing is simply that culture is downstream of politics. In order for Kendom toys to become a smash hit, the conditions would need to already be in place for people to accept Kung Fury junk. This is even shown in the film, when Will Ferrel checks a chart of data analytics or whatever, and it tells him that Kendom will be a viable product line. But this raises that same question of who’d ever buy these Kendom toys? It’s a product line directed at Sasha: a “dark, weird” version of Barbie. The Mojo-Dojo playset is literally just a pre-vandalized Malibu Dream House. The two things that differentiate Jurassic Park dolls from other dinosaur toys are 1) that they’re literally branded with the Jurassic Park logo (in that meta sort of way) and 2) they tend to feature Dino DamageTM: simulated pre-destruction of the toy. Animals have removable limbs, cars have chunks missing, etc. Universal Studios has a simulated boat ride accident, and Kendom follows that same logic. The degradation of Barbieland is folded back into the Barbie brand, as a key component of it. Anyways, the movie’s politics are well-summarized by how the dad character awkwardly cheers a leftist slogan and Gloria immediately chides him for cultural appropriation. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Jul 30, 2023 |
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Jul 30, 2023 23:30
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Hollismason posted:Honestly after watching it a second time. I think I'm pretty confident that Ken is a gay man and that's his truth.
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Jul 31, 2023 00:16
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Right, but let’s just out and say it: Barbie dolls have never actually had the power to “set feminism back” very much at all. It’s like the old story about Star Trek having the first inter-racial kiss on TV, when it wasn’t. It was only the most prominent example - the major network NBC coming late to the game, taking advantage of the work already done by, like, the civil rights movement in reality. Did you actually watch the movie because Will Ferrell never checks a data chart saying Kendom will be successful. He calls some guy and the guy is like "Mojo Dojo Casa " is selling like crazy.
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Jul 31, 2023 00:22
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The movie firmly establishes a heightened reality in which the real life gets directly influenced by things happening in Barbieland, it is thus text that Barbie dolls actually have a lot of power and having toxic Ken dolls have power is bad. This serves to underline the main theme, which is "man this is ridiculous, it couldn't happen in real life, because that is much stupider"
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Jul 31, 2023 00:40
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Simply Simon posted:The movie firmly establishes a heightened reality in which the real life gets directly influenced by things happening in Barbieland, it is thus text that Barbie dolls actually have a lot of power and having toxic Ken dolls have power is bad. This serves to underline the main theme, which is "man this is ridiculous, it couldn't happen in real life, because that is much stupider" I'm still confused over who has the power to influence which reality. The movie tells us that girls playing with barbies in the real world have the ability to affect the personality of an individual Barbie. Then someone told me that the Barbies can't be to blame for how Kens are treated because the Mattel board controls the Barbies or something. But then a single Ken gets into the real world and goes back with a few books and suddenly he now controls not only Barbieland, but he is causing new products to be created and sold in the real world?
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Jul 31, 2023 00:46
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Hollismason posted:Did you actually watch the movie because Will Ferrell never checks a data chart saying Kendom will be successful. He calls some guy and the guy is like "Mojo Dojo Casa " is selling like crazy. Yeah, I think its Gloria's idea of "ordinary, anxious Barbie" that he initially scoffs at then checks the charts. The point still stands that toys reflect, but don't create, pre-established ideas. Like that's the lesson Barbie learns in the real world when she sees that the narrator who said Barbies solved inequality was lying, and that the aestheticia beauty of elderly women was novel to her simply because it isn't currently marketable.
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Jul 31, 2023 00:54
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crowoutofcontext posted:Yeah, I think its Gloria's idea of "ordinary, anxious Barbie" that he initially scoffs at then checks the charts. Yea she pitches ordinary Barbie and the guy is using a Ipad and says "Oh yeah no that'll sell like crazy".
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Jul 31, 2023 01:00
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Hollismason posted:Will Ferrell never checks a data chart saying Kendom will be successful. Yeah he does; it's implicit from the later scene when he and the board do exactly that with Ordinary Barbie. They must have punched the phrase "Ironic Boy-Culture Ken" into the same computer before going ahead. It's also just commonsense, because of course they're going to do focus testing and demographic research and whatnot. The film uses its "just a movie / all in her head" meta conceit and unrealistically breezy pace to elide the part where the toys are actually produced, but the diegetic Mattel company is still a company. Even if it is all in Gloria's head, she clearly believes (that Mattel's board believes) that there's insane demand for this Kendom stuff. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Jul 31, 2023 |
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Jul 31, 2023 01:30
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Yeah he does; it's implicit from the later scene that he and the board do exactly that with Ordinary Barbie. They must have punched the phrase "Ironic Boy-Culture Ken" into the same computer before going ahead. He literally does not do this.
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Jul 31, 2023 01:38
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what is Gloria's job? Her desk is just literally an inch in front of the board meeting room, not an office, a meeting room.
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Jul 31, 2023 01:40
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Cojawfee posted:I'm still confused over who has the power to influence which reality. The movie tells us that girls playing with barbies in the real world have the ability to affect the personality of an individual Barbie. Then someone told me that the Barbies can't be to blame for how Kens are treated because the Mattel board controls the Barbies or something. But then a single Ken gets into the real world and goes back with a few books and suddenly he now controls not only Barbieland, but he is causing new products to be created and sold in the real world? GateOfD posted:what is Gloria's job? Her desk is just literally an inch in front of the board meeting room, not an office, a meeting room.
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Jul 31, 2023 01:48
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CapnAndy posted:It's supposed to only flow one way. The girls playing with barbies created Barbieland, but now that it exists, it's still connected to the same collective unconciousness that generated it. If you alter it, then, well -- it reflects the zeitgeist, so if it changed, then so must the zeitgeist, by definition. As above, so below. That's why the execs are worried about a doll coming to the real world, but absolutely flipping out about a real person going to Barbieland. That still doesn't explain how Ken was able to just change everything just by learning vaguely what patriarchy is. Do the Kens have the real power to control Barbieland but are instead kept ignorant and powerless by the ruling Barbie class?
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Jul 31, 2023 01:59
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Cojawfee posted:That still doesn't explain how Ken was able to just change everything just by learning vaguely what patriarchy is. Do the Kens have the real power to control Barbieland but are instead kept ignorant and powerless by the ruling Barbie class?
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Jul 31, 2023 02:26
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CapnAndy posted:That's an ungenerous reading, but... sure? Barbieland is defined by how its inhabitants act, and the Kens live there too. Also don't forget that all the Barbies buy into patriarchy wholeheartedly and need to be deprogrammed, because they have no natural defenses against it. Everyone was into it until Stereotypical Barbie got home. The scene mentioning how Barbies haven’t developed “immunity” to patriarchy as a comparison to “Native Americans and smallpox” was fuckin atrocious and made more than one person in the theater audibly groan.
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Jul 31, 2023 04:26
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CapnAndy posted:I mean, even if we hadn't moved past "oh you're a dude who likes feminine-coded stuff, you are gay then" as a society, literally all of his anguish is because he's in love with Barbie and she only likes him. Ken's not in love with Barbie, he just thinks he is because she's the ideal of what men are supposed to like. His attraction to her is entirely around living up to the masculine ideal and his anguish is over his own self-worth due to the loss of status that comes with her constant rejection
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Jul 31, 2023 07:20
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I think Ken loves Barbie, but he's not in love with Barbie - his love for Barbie is just like his job being Beach, that's what is Right and what Must Be.
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Jul 31, 2023 08:00
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Hollismason posted:He literally does not do this. I'm not sure what's being argued here. What I wrote is "simply that culture is downstream of politics. In order for Kendom toys to become a smash hit, the conditions would need to already be in place for people to accept Kung Fury junk.' So are you writing that, in the film, politics is downstream of culture; Mattels execs just randomly starts selling toys that nobody wants, and this causes the world to becomes more regressive? 'Cause, before that happens, the film presents a reality where Barbie gets sexually harassed every thirty seconds.
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Jul 31, 2023 14:53
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CapnAndy posted:Also don't forget that all the Barbies buy into patriarchy wholeheartedly and need to be deprogrammed, because they have no natural defenses against it. Everyone was into it until Stereotypical Barbie got home. I don’t think Alan or Weird Barbie were into it.
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Jul 31, 2023 15:03
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I'm not sure what's being argued here.
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Jul 31, 2023 15:38
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:In order for Kendom toys to become a smash hit, the conditions would need to already be in place for people to accept Kung Fury junk. Would've been interesting if patriarchy was blamed for all the Kung Fury junk, then the "just a Ken" musical number happens and they determine that being "Kenough" still includes all the Kung Fury junk, just without pretending it makes them any more desirable except maybe to horse girls.
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Jul 31, 2023 15:45
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Cojawfee posted:That still doesn't explain how Ken was able to just change everything just by learning vaguely what patriarchy is. Do the Kens have the real power to control Barbieland but are instead kept ignorant and powerless by the ruling Barbie class? Maybe the flow got jumbled when Barbie crossed into the real world and started interacting with it.
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Jul 31, 2023 15:48
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Halisnacks posted:I don’t think Alan or Weird Barbie were into it. Nome of the discontinued Barbies were. Probably since they weren't being sold anymore they weren't affected by the weird feedback loop changes to Barbieworld.
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Jul 31, 2023 16:00
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You could've done a similar gag to demonstrate the real world being correspondingly warped with having Gloria and CEO dolls suddenly existing and selling out, but that wouldn't be making the same point, so they go with the patriarchy merch instead. Although now that I think of it, a gag where for the rest of the movie Gloria and CEO keep subconciously acting like boyfriend and girlfriend (because that's how all the little girls are pairing them) and being all the more motivated to undo all the changes and get out because of it would've been pretty funny.
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Jul 31, 2023 16:35
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CapnAndy posted:What's being argued is that you're incorrect about why Ken's patriarchy merch is selling. There is no scene where the execs do a quick study and realize "oh yeah, that'd make money" -- as has already been pointed out, that happens with Gloria's pitch of Ordinary Barbie. The Mojo Dojo Casa House starts flying off the shelves because of Ken's takeover of Barbieland, which warps the real world correspondingly. It's treated as a symptom; the CEO warned that things were going to get very weird if the real world was allowed to contaminate Barbieland, and the warehouse worker calls him up to inform him that, yes, things have gotten very weird: they have warehouses full of a product that they don't make and is objectively terrible, but it's selling like crazy. Ok, but what does "getting really weird if the real world [is] allowed to contaminate Barbieland" mean? Its thoroughly established that the various personal Barbielands are just representative of the underlying concept - literally, the idea of Barbie in the minds of the people. It's the same as McDonaldland being inhabited by Ronald, Grimace, and Mayor McCheese. The Barbieland of the film is specifically Gloria's, and the basic plot is that Gloria's idea of the Barbie brand is crumbling because it literally cannot withstand contact with reality. If reality itself "gets weird" and likewise crumbles due to Gloria's lack of faith in the brand - generating what you describe as an alternate-universe, alternate-timeline kind of situation - that points to Gloria just kinda going crazy. But nobody ever 'just' goes crazy. There's a form to it: If the Barbie toys in stores are magically transmuted into garbage, it can be interpreted as Gloria's realization that Barbie has all along been "objectively terrible [despite] selling like crazy". Barbie is revealed to have, all along, been just sexist bullshit with cars and horses: Barbie only existed to serve Ken, never actually owned the Malibu Dream House, and it can all be instantly taken away, etc. Under this interpretation, nothing has changed in actual reality; it's just Gloria's perception of the brand. She's just now seeing it from Sasha's point of view: Barbie's fascist! However, Gloria is in the unique position of (seemingly) working as a concept artist/designer at Mattel - which, diegetically, is a surreal and magical place straight out of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". Execs can hold conversations with the toons in Toontown, and Gloria literally holds powers of creation because she's a cartoonist. In this situation, we can see Kendom as another one of Gloria's "weird" designs - but one that the company approves, finalizes, and mass-produces with exaggerated speed. So, under this interpretation, reality has simply "contaminated" Gloria's mind and made her designs "weird", but the diegetic Mattel is basically just functioning as a regular company, selling a new product line. Either way, the Barbie/Ken toys are approved before going into production. Your interpretation, that things are just randomly weird for no reason, isn't as strong.
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Jul 31, 2023 16:51
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Either way, the Barbie/Ken toys are approved before going into production. Your interpretation, that things are just randomly weird for no reason, isn't as strong. Nobody had the idea for the Mojo Dojo Casa House before Ken did, and, again, the warehouse worker finds their sheer existence baffling enough to call the CEO and report it, along with the news that it's selling really well for no reason. That this was a pre-planned, approved product is just an impossible reading of what's going on in that scene. CEO says, out loud, before they go into Barbieland, that things are at risk of getting weird, then later on he gets phone call from a worker who says, again out loud, that things have indeed gotten weird, and cites the fact that they're selling a product they don't make as his example. Things didn't get weird for "no reason", they got weird because the real world contaminated Barbieland. Also, it's not just Gloria's Barbieland. It's everyone's. Remember, Gloria's only playing with Stereotypical Barbie. She's just forged an unusually strong connection and is changing things because she's playing with her Barbie outside the normal bounds of how they're supposed to be played with, and also so the movie can happen.
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Jul 31, 2023 17:04
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CapnAndy posted:Also, it's not just Gloria's Barbieland. It's everyone's. That's straight-up not true within the text of the film. Gloria repeatedly comments on how all the toys within Barbieland were ones she had growing up.
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Jul 31, 2023 17:27
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Yeah its pretty clear that Barbieland is Glorias Barbieland. There's even a scene where she verbatim repeats that "Oh I had a weird Barbie and played with her too hard" which implies that weird Barbie is Gloria's weird Barbie. It also explains why Barbie's that were marketed toward adults like Sugar Daddie Barbie is there.
Hollismason fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Jul 31, 2023 |
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Jul 31, 2023 18:21
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Wouldn’t that make the metafailure of the plan to distract the Ken-Bros a commentary from Gerwig on Gloria’s brand of liberal feminism, undercutting the monologue?
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Jul 31, 2023 18:29
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Hollismason posted:Yeah its pretty clear that Barbieland is Glorias Barbieland. There's even a scene where she verbatim repeats that "Oh I had a weird Barbie and played with her too hard" which implies that weird Barbie is Gloria's weird Barbie. It also explains why Barbie's that were marketed toward adults like Sugar Daddie Barbie is there. Every girl has had a weird Barbie
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Jul 31, 2023 18:30
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Pirate Jet posted:That's straight-up not true within the text of the film. Gloria repeatedly comments on how all the toys within Barbieland were ones she had growing up.
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Jul 31, 2023 18:38
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I enjoyed watching this film while imagining every line being calculatingly approved by Mattel.
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Jul 31, 2023 18:38
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kiminewt posted:I enjoyed watching this film while imagining every line being calculatingly approved by Mattel. Some intern had a great time explaining cock rings during a meeting
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Jul 31, 2023 18:42
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Pirate Jet posted:That's straight-up not true within the text of the film. Gloria repeatedly comments on how all the toys within Barbieland were ones she had growing up. Which is a neat trick, because Gloria is 40something, at least, and Growing Up Skipper was released in 1975 and didn't last long. Rarity posted:Every girl has had a weird Barbie I think the odds of having had a weird Barbie are a lot higher if you have a destructive sibling, either very young or just obnoxious.
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Jul 31, 2023 19:11
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CapnAndy posted:What's being argued is that you're incorrect about why Ken's patriarchy merch is selling. There is no scene where the execs do a quick study and realize "oh yeah, that'd make money" -- as has already been pointed out, that happens with Gloria's pitch of Ordinary Barbie. The Mojo Dojo Casa House starts flying off the shelves because of Ken's takeover of Barbieland, which warps the real world correspondingly. It's treated as a symptom; the CEO warned that things were going to get very weird if the real world was allowed to contaminate Barbieland, and the warehouse worker calls him up to inform him that, yes, things have gotten very weird: they have warehouses full of a product that they don't make and is objectively terrible, but it's selling like crazy. CapnAndy posted:Nobody had the idea for the Mojo Dojo Casa House before Ken did, and, again, the warehouse worker finds their sheer existence baffling enough to call the CEO and report it, along with the news that it's selling really well for no reason. That this was a pre-planned, approved product is just an impossible reading of what's going on in that scene. CEO says, out loud, before they go into Barbieland, that things are at risk of getting weird, then later on he gets phone call from a worker who says, again out loud, that things have indeed gotten weird, and cites the fact that they're selling a product they don't make as his example. Things didn't get weird for "no reason", they got weird because the real world contaminated Barbieland. I think the way Barbieland was changed by Ken after visiting the real world was based on the precursor to the Yes men: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbie_Liberation_Organization https://youtube.com/watch?v=DzTWF1jVwH4 and then maybe in the movie it’s suggested that Mattel capitalizes on selling the mojo dojo casa houses even though they didn’t actually intend to design it, but 
Computer Serf fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Jul 31, 2023 |
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Jul 31, 2023 19:20
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weekly font posted:Some intern had a great time explaining cock rings during a meeting I guarantee it wasn't necessary for a 20-something intern circa 2023 to explain to Mattel that "Earring Magic Ken" came with a cock ring. They know. There's no way that infamous 30-year-old bit of lore is a secret.
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