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Said I don't know if I've ever been good enough I'm a little bit rusty, and I think my head is cavin' in
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Aug 15, 2023 20:51
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Is there any male character in the movie who isn't, in some way, written to be a loser? I'm not sure what the problem is with calling dudes in this movie losers, the men being funny losers is the hook that half the movie's jokes hang on?
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Aug 15, 2023 21:24
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Skulker posted:The only thing we see the husband do is make mistakes and look a bit awkward. His only scene with other characters features him being corrected, immediately and loudly, by his family. A badass thing Gloria does is immediately highlighted as being nothing to do with him. I don't think he's a loser, but I wouldn't judge anyone for having that reading. Wow that's terrible. You know what would be crazy though? Imagine if any or all of the above were applied to depictions of women at any point of human history. Why, that would be one wacky and far out alternative reality, wouldn't it?
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Aug 15, 2023 21:57
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I'm baffled by the reading that Gloria's husband is a loser. All we know about him is that he's trying to learn Spanish to bond with his wife and kid, but he's really bad at it (witness his being pleased to defeat Duolingo). It seemed sweet to me: do something you're bad at, but keep trying because it's important. The two things we immediately find out about him are that he is independent and capable (wife says “he’ll be fine” when questioned about her leaving for an indefinite amount of time) and that he is attempting self improvement (learning a second(?) language). Dude is a role model.
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Aug 15, 2023 22:14
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lmao the husband being a dud didn't come up because people are Worried About The Portrayal Of Men, it's because his dud status highlights the extent to which he exists purely to frustrate any possible subtext between the female leads the movie is actually about and underscores the weirdly heteronormative "men! what can ya do!" tone the movie takes
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Aug 15, 2023 22:15
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Breetai posted:Wow that's terrible. You know what would be crazy though? Imagine if any or all of the above were applied to depictions of women at any point of human history. Why, that would be one wacky and far out alternative reality, wouldn't it? I specifically said I don't agree with that reading but understand how someone could arrive at it, and I am unsure why you're doing this weirdly aggressive spiel at me.
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Aug 15, 2023 22:19
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Skulker posted:The only thing we see the husband do is make mistakes and look a bit awkward. His only scene with other characters features him being corrected, immediately and loudly, by his family. A badass thing Gloria does is immediately highlighted as being nothing to do with him. I don't think he's a loser, but I wouldn't judge anyone for having that reading. Gloria's arc is nominally about reconnecting with her teenage daughter, which winds up being mostly a footnote. On balance I think it's a good thing that Barbie (and everyone else) ultimately fails to accomplish anything except unfucking her own mess. There's not much of a call to action, Barbie isn't changing the world for the better and won't even really improve your life. As far as corporate propaganda goes it's pretty lowkey, a very defensive sort of spin. Look how bumbling and harmless and lacking in agency Mattel is, Barbie just sort of exists on her own trying to survive in the same hellworld as all of us 
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Aug 15, 2023 22:29
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Skulker posted:Ken resolves his with a big song and dance number - he's Ken, he's enough - and then has the exact same revelation again in the next scene. I read that as the Kens not quite finishing the thought. They haven't fully internalised what it means to just be Ken, so the lyrics are more them almost getting it but not finishing the thought. They realise that they deserve better, but don't go all the way and are still thinking of the Barbies as completing them, hence brainwashing them into being subservient. They don't truly realise what it means to be Just Ken until Barbie encourages them to drop the "just" or "and" or any other qualifier and think what does Ken mean on it's own.
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Aug 15, 2023 22:31
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developing a barbie theorem about how, like war, patriarchy is a subject where depiction and criticism easily slides into glorification (see wolf of wall street).the holy poopacy posted:On balance I think it's a good thing that Barbie (and everyone else) ultimately fails to accomplish anything except unfucking her own mess. There's not much of a call to action, Barbie isn't changing the world for the better and won't even really improve your life. As far as corporate propaganda goes it's pretty lowkey, a very defensive sort of spin. Look how bumbling and harmless and lacking in agency Mattel is, Barbie just sort of exists on her own trying to survive in the same hellworld as all of us this is, no joke, the most poisonous, lowest, and disgusting form of corporate propaganda the movie could have engaged in by a country mile. absolutely vile and loathsome stuff.
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Aug 15, 2023 22:35
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The dance number is them realizing that fighting amongst themselves is stupid because they are all Ken. He still hasn’t learned the lesson of what “Ken” is independently of Barbie
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Aug 15, 2023 22:36
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it's pretty funny they used "blond fragility" and not "male fragility" in ken's song. like it's not a term anyone uses, the sole purpose of the switch from the obvious form seems to be to not make the worst kind of dude mad, and "blond fragility" tarnishes barbie by association and extends the idea that feminine things are weak. incredible stuff.
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Aug 15, 2023 22:40
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Valentin posted:this is, no joke, the most poisonous, lowest, and disgusting form of corporate propaganda the movie could have engaged in by a country mile. absolutely vile and loathsome stuff. Is it? I suppose there's a certain insidiousness to it as compared to a more obviously pro-brand consumption spin but I think enough people would be susceptible to the pro-brand consumption spin anyhow that I think this might be the lesser evil.
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Aug 15, 2023 22:45
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Guy A. Person posted:The two things we immediately find out about him are that he is independent and capable (wife says “he’ll be fine” when questioned about her leaving for an indefinite amount of time) and that he is attempting self improvement (learning a second(?) language). Dude is a role model. There’s not much interesting about the husband character in isolation, but his role in the film is contextualized by Gloria’s decades-old fantasy of the Kens as printer-carrying manchildren that she can manipulate for her amusement. Like, it says something that Gloria has her Barbie apologize to her Ken for ‘leading him on’ over the years. It makes you wonder why the incels aren’t happier with the movie. In any case the husband’s one importance in the movie is that he illustrates the family’s limited ‘growth’ by being allowed to meet Barbie and ride along in the car.
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Aug 15, 2023 23:17
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Lobster Henry posted:I’m not sure how elegantly the two stories map onto each other, but surely the satan figure would be gloria? Yeah it makes sense but I'm trying to read it as putting the doll's drama centre-stage. Even if its all in Gloria's head, stories about people's subjective delusions gesture toward collective truths if they are popular and relatable. The movie wouldn't work if "Barbie's are inspirational toys that help girls love themselves" wasn't a big thing. I might be generalizing, but stories about toys "coming alive" and restoring idealism in adults didn't really exist until the 19th century (Pinocchio?)when childhood innocence/ importance ofchildhood psychology became a standard cultural belief aslongside mass produced toys and children's literature becoming big business; and these stories kinda supplant religious/folk tales . Recently "toys becoming alive " is almost a genre of its own with almost 1 or 2 films coming out a year and hundreds of children's books. Paradise Lost and Barbie don't really elegantly connect, but if you read the opening scene of the film very literally and the Barbie's/Ken's own understanding of their "reason for being" it seems like they are more angels in paradise that are supposed to inspire the whole world to be equal. Like a lot of toy films, the toys try to synthesize childhood idealism with adulthood cynicism, and the toys remind me of angels or folk-beings in older literature. Ken realizes he's supposed to be subordinate, so rebels and tries to take over heaven like Satan. Sasha is more like a soon-to-be-reformed angry atheist after seeing real angels and Gloria more like Milton himself: a puritan that literally believes Barbies can solve inequality and tepidly trying to grapple with the fact that Barbie-Christ's message is hopelessly muddled by the materialist, money-making Catholic Church/Corporations. But the ending of the film is more milquetoast Anglicanism then anything.
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Aug 16, 2023 01:15
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crowoutofcontext posted:But the ending of the film is more milquetoast Anglicanism then anything.  As a milquetoast Episcopalian, I resent this .... oh, drat.
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Aug 16, 2023 03:56
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I do appreciate that this film is getting seriously analyzed, but it's a film that will very much put a joke being funny ahead of thematic cohesion. It ends with a vagina joke not as a statement on the relationship between womanhood and vagina-having, but because it's funny as hell.
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Aug 16, 2023 06:28
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Valentin posted:it's pretty funny they used "blond fragility" and not "male fragility" in ken's song. like it's not a term anyone uses, the sole purpose of the switch from the obvious form seems to be to not make the worst kind of dude mad, and "blond fragility" tarnishes barbie by association and extends the idea that feminine things are weak. incredible stuff. Wait I thought that line was "blond virginity" edit: wtf I just went and checked, it is "fragility". That's a way less funny line. Metis of the Chat Thread fucked around with this message at 08:34 on Aug 16, 2023 |
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Aug 16, 2023 08:30
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I had also been hearing it as virginity. It made sense to me, since he has no genitals and was constantly rebuffed by Barbie.
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Aug 16, 2023 09:07
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Vegetable posted:I do feel the gynecologist joke at the end misses the mark. It’s a joke about how Barbie dolls don’t have genitals, yes. But in what’s already a pretty cis movie the throwaway line reeks of gender essentialism. Albatrossy_Rodent posted:I do appreciate that this film is getting seriously analyzed, but it's a film that will very much put a joke being funny ahead of thematic cohesion. The citizens of Barbie Land are gendered with desexualized bodies — between the two worlds, stereotypical Barbie’s body undergoes a similar transubstantiation as the Mattel products in the establishment of Kendom. The Barbies then retake their land and bring a return to normalcy through the maintenance of an ironic distance to their subjection. “If gender attributes, however, are not expressive but performative, then these attributes effectively constitute the identity they are said to express or reveal. The distinction between expression and performativeness is crucial. If gender attributes and acts, the various ways in which a body shows or produces its cultural signification, are performative, then there is no preexisting identity by which an act or attribute might be measured; there would be no true or false, real or distorted acts of gender, and the postulation of a true gender identity would be revealed as a regulatory fiction. That gender reality is created through sustained social performances means that the very notions of an essential sex and a true or abiding masculinity or femininity are also constituted as part of the strategy that conceals gender’s performative character and the performative possibilities for proliferating gender configurations outside the restricting frames of masculinist domination and compulsory heterosexuality.” - Judith Butler, Gender Trouble In other words, Barbie’s gender performance retroactively constructs essential sex. Culture/discourse constructs the corporeal.
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Aug 16, 2023 16:53
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Albatrossy_Rodent posted:I do appreciate that this film is getting seriously analyzed, but it's a film that will very much put a joke being funny ahead of thematic cohesion. yeah these scenes reminded me of movies from the early 2000s. I kept thinking about Josie and the Pussycats when watching this tbh. I need to watch that movie again honestly, its so good
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Aug 16, 2023 17:10
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Albatrossy_Rodent posted:I do appreciate that this film is getting seriously analyzed, but it's a film that will very much put a joke being funny ahead of thematic cohesion. Without "thematic cohesion", jokes don't actually work. The joke of 'the vagina joke' is really straightforwardly that it presents a trip to the gynecologist as an inspirational moment akin to landing a new career. The point in the film, thematically, is that this is the inverse of what's happening to Gloria, who gets promoted at Mattel because she comes to terms with her mortality and channels that inspirational message into her concept art. The psychosexual link is in the tying-together of mortality and sexuality (Barbie gains sex organs because she chooses to be mortal), while the problematic pro-social therapeutic message is that women should get over their hang-ups to become better (more valuable) workers.
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Aug 16, 2023 18:21
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Without "thematic cohesion", jokes don't actually work. It's not an "inspirational moment," it's a funny rug-pull. You're not meant to be feeling "inspired" as it cuts to credits, you're meant to be laughing. All of your posts read as parody of the most pretentious reading possible.
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Aug 16, 2023 20:39
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Albatrossy_Rodent posted:It's not an "inspirational moment," it's a funny rug-pull. You're not meant to be feeling "inspired" as it cuts to credits, you're meant to be laughing. The joke is that it’s an inspirational moment not to you but to the Barbie, who is excited about something that we recognize as mundane and even somewhat unpleasant. The joke is grounded in the narrative, where Barbie ends up aspiring to become mortal. To Barbie (and Gloria’s family, who drive her to the clinic and offer words of support), becoming human is akin to an exciting new career. And you might note that, as “Stereotypical Barbie”, Barbie specifically had no imaginary career. This joke is extensively set up by the “Ordinary Barbie” concept pitched by Gloria, the repeated declarations that Pregnancy Barbie is creepy, etc. It then undercuts and affirms the happy ending by presenting the human condition (which Gloria was terribly anxious about) as silly. Your take appears to be that Barbie says “vagina” and it’s funny because it’s stupid and random. Like funniness is just a blast of noise in the place of intelligible speech. But that’s not how it works. If Barbie had said “dentist” or “neurologist”, it would be a lovely non-sequitur.
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Aug 16, 2023 22:44
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Hari Nef was stunning in this film and also a little unrecognizable if one last remembers her as the mean postgrad from YOU
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Aug 16, 2023 22:47
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I thought the ending was funny because foreshadowing is a literary device —
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Aug 16, 2023 23:12
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Albatrossy_Rodent posted:All of your posts read as parody of the most pretentious reading possible. Welcome to the SMG experience
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Aug 16, 2023 23:36
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Albatrossy_Rodent posted:It's not an "inspirational moment," it's a funny rug-pull. You're not meant to be feeling "inspired" as it cuts to credits, you're meant to be laughing. He's been doing this for 20 years without missing a beat, and although it comes off as absurd a lot of the time, I absolutely have to respect the long-term effort here. Ngl, SuperMechagodzilla posted:Ok, so: Matrix references. Lots of Matrix references. is a hell of a read I never would have come up with, but it's supported by the text as far as I can tell, and is a more insightful critique than any actual movie critic would provide. SMG is CD.
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Aug 17, 2023 00:31
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There’s usually a paradox in labelling something ‘pretentious’, because the word is basically a synonym for incompetence. Like, if you’re claiming that you have something very meaningful to say, but it turns out to be wrong. So, in this example, I’m making a fairly basic statement that the film was written by professional writers who included all the references to sexuality and such for fairly obvious reasons. Like, they didn’t just go with whatever made them chortle in a totally unexamined way; the film’s pop-feminist comedy stylings are extremely unambiguous. That’s just straightforwardly true, which means that the accusation of pretentiousness - the unfounded claim that the above statement is somehow wrong - is actually very pretentious.
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Aug 17, 2023 00:50
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Gloria's husband comes off as perfectly nice, just dorky. I can identify with that. Just like the jokes around the Kens, there's nothing mean, it's all relatable. My wife and I have been repeating "HERE, LET ME SHOW YOU" often.
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Aug 17, 2023 01:17
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Rarity posted:Welcome to the SMG experience Half of the reason I love this particular subforum is because of the SMG experience. I may not agree with all of their takes, but I'm never not impressed nor entertained. Edited to include post that I missed but totally agree with: Eason the Fifth posted:He's been doing this for 20 years without missing a beat, and although it comes off as absurd a lot of the time, I absolutely have to respect the long-term effort here. Ngl,
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Aug 17, 2023 01:53
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Eason the Fifth posted:is a hell of a read I never would have come up with, but it's supported by the text as far as I can tell, and is a more insightful critique than any actual movie critic would provide. Even beyond that, the reading that this is someone's Barbie World rather than the one-and-only Barbie World isn't exactly a Room 237 wild nonsense take.
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Aug 17, 2023 15:04
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I was so into this and they lost me after the thoughts of death ends up being tied up with a super corny mom/daughter thing instead of being actually interesting Also, I think I expected a lot more on-the-nose social commentary than the trope-rear end battle of the sexes poo poo this is. That's probably on me for seeing this late, seeing all the hype and thinking it would tackle the fact that gender roles are absolutely made up arbitrary bullshit and why is that exactly? So yeah, as good as it could be from a director I like taking on a branded content film. I also felt better that my date agreed with me, and thought it was mid more than I did, before I even said anything. Makes me feel less bad for thinking a female empowerment film was kinda weak, since I know I'm the secondary audience at best...but she wasn't feeling this either. zer0spunk fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Aug 17, 2023 |
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Aug 17, 2023 15:45
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On the other side of the coin my gf loved it and I thought it was pretty funny and I thought it was about as good of a movie you can have about Barbie. I pretty much chuckled outloud at nearly every Ken related joke. The entire battle between the Ken's was one of my highlights as was the segment where Ken is learning about the patriarchy.
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Aug 17, 2023 19:38
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If anything, the whole thing of Barbie having her physical sexual characteristics actively changing from what she's used to in line with her new understanding of her own identity and gearing up to face the new mundane realities of taking care of her body with proper medical specialists is arguably more of a trans narrative than not.
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Aug 18, 2023 07:05
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Yeah as someone pointed out earlier it punches it right at the end that society accepts Barbie is female no questions asked, when of course she doesn’t have female reproductive organs, the one marker terfs etc take to be the essential marker of gender. Barbie having essentially gotten magical bottom surgery was a hell of a way to end the film and was also a good joke to finish.
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Aug 18, 2023 08:11
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I was disappointed that the film couldn’t resist teleporting to an all white space with a borderline non existent character to have an emotional breakthrough. The point had been made at that point, it just ceased the fun train.
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Aug 20, 2023 04:08
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For a very unsubtle movie, the narrative of Gloria and her husband who is in two brief scenes if I remember correctly, is surprisingly subtle. They exist independently from one another, and what's going on with Barbie is fundamentally Gloria's thing which has nothing to do with her husband whatsoever. It nicely mirrors what's going on with the Kens: they need to learn to be Ken.
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Aug 20, 2023 06:59
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Kemper Boyd posted:For a very unsubtle movie, the narrative of Gloria and her husband who is in two brief scenes if I remember correctly, is surprisingly subtle. I didn't get much from those other then "he's trying to learn spanish to be a better husband/father" so if there was something beyond that it was lost on me. It was weirdly wholesome in a movie where most male characters are insufferable (by design)
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Aug 20, 2023 16:28
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Of course his kid is at least 10 so it's been at least an entire decade where, presumably, he couldn't be arsed.
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Aug 20, 2023 17:03
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Skulker posted:Of course his kid is at least 10 so it's been at least an entire decade where, presumably, he couldn't be arsed. I thought that felt realistic, as I've personally started Duolingo too many times over and now that owl doesn't believe me. well why not posted:I was disappointed that the film couldn’t resist teleporting to an all white space with a borderline non existent character to have an emotional breakthrough. The point had been made at that point, it just ceased the fun train. I'm not as sentimental as I thought because this also did nothing for me at all. Barbie meets her maker should have hit more, but it just felt like any other exposition dump on a white void that we've seen since the matrix did it That and the wistful nostalgia gloria plotline thing just felt super cornball. maybe I'm just dead inside 
zer0spunk fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Aug 20, 2023 |
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Aug 20, 2023 17:17
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