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the gyno joke really was a misstep, as were the end of evangelion revelation scenes. few movies slam the breaks on “fun” harder than this
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Feb 13, 2024 02:40
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The barbie certainly would be a biting critique of gender roles In the 1990s
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Feb 13, 2024 03:08
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This conversation is weird to me because I read the final scenes as a woman who doesn't have a vagina being told that she doesn't need anyone's permission to be a woman, she already is a woman because she knows that she is in her heart, and then choosing to gain a vagina as part of her particular self-image as a woman. Y'know, like many trans women do.
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Feb 13, 2024 03:32
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This thread should invest in a ring with all this stretching going on
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Feb 13, 2024 04:02
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A woman in a movie has a vagina and goes for a routine medical exam. Somehow, this is interpreted as the movie saying "all real women have vaginas". I actually can't remember the text for sure, but from what i remember Barbie doesn't wish to be "real" because she already is real. She wishes to be human.
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Feb 13, 2024 04:33
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Ravenfood posted:A woman in a movie has a vagina and goes for a routine medical exam. Somehow, this is interpreted as the movie saying "all real women have vaginas". I think I explicitly mentioned that I understood the purpose and value of the scene (destigmatizing and in fact encouraging gynecological care is good!), just that it was odd when accompanied by other scenes and themes in the film. As you mentioned, Barbie's journey is discovering her humanity, her place outside a brand or symbol. I just the thought the specific combination of gaining humanity and "I now have genitals" was kind of weird. I know that's not what they meant, it's just how I took it. 
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Feb 13, 2024 06:05
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It's also literally just the ancient joke about Barbie dolls having featureless crotches.
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Feb 13, 2024 06:25
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I coulda sworn I posted this already in this thread but I guess maybe it was in another thread; I’m just a dumb cishet guy so I asked my trans roommate about the vagina ending. They said it didn’t come across as exclusionary because Margot Robbie is playing Stereotypical Barbie, and saying that vaginas are associated with the stereotypical woman is not problematic. They said it would have been a problem if the movie said you have to have a vagina to be a woman, which in their view the film did not
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Feb 13, 2024 07:05
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Here’s a change Barbie walks excitedly into the building. She walks up the concierge. “Hey can I use the bathroom, I have to take my first huge poo poo!!” Dun dun The end
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Feb 13, 2024 07:59
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CelticPredator posted:Here’s a change Then the end credits scene is Robbie doing the Jeff Daniels poop bit from Dumb and Dumber.
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Feb 13, 2024 12:02
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Xealot posted:It's a good and successful movie. But imagining the version of Barbie where Hari Nef or Issa Rae wind up in "the real world" sounds super goddamn interesting. …you have no idea how bad I now need to watch this version. (Kate McKinnon can go along with them to the Real World for comic relief too.)
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Feb 13, 2024 12:15
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well why not posted:the gyno joke really was a misstep, as were the end of evangelion revelation scenes. few movies slam the breaks on “fun” harder than this I'm a cis guy, so my reading is going to be different and perhaps not as sensitive to some subtext, but I do feel a lot of discussion about the ending omits that it's framed as Barbie going to a high-powered job interview, and it looks like the film preparing to undercut itself a little bit before subverting that.
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Feb 13, 2024 13:01
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Watched this over the weekend. Pretty mid
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Feb 13, 2024 16:26
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Lotta cis people with opinions huh. Interesting
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Feb 13, 2024 16:55
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Just because Margot Robbie doesn't turn into the camera and say "Now that I am a real woman I have a vagina, which is synonymous with womanhood" doesn't mean there aren't unintended symbolic implications to the ending scene. Yes, the explicit text of the ending speech is the very inclusive message that Barbie doesn't need anyone's permission in order to be the person she wants to be. But that just makes the contrast with the subtext of the ending gag more jarring, not less.
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Feb 13, 2024 17:36
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tokin opposition posted:Lotta cis people with opinions huh. Interesting I'm a trans woman and I think the gyno joke is fine, does that count?
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Feb 13, 2024 17:47
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Rarity posted:I'm a trans woman and I think the gyno joke is fine, does that count? I mean sure, I just find it funny how many posts on the topic start with "Im a cis guy and I think..." Maybe I'm just bitter because I work in tech
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Feb 13, 2024 18:05
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tokin opposition posted:I mean sure, I just find it funny how many posts on the topic start with "Im a cis guy and I think..." I mean there were certainly two on this page for sure, it didn't really start happening until after your "limbo" post tho. I think most people just find your posts baffling, they don't really seem reflective of what's going on in this thread aside from the self fulfilling prophecy of calling cis people silly idiots which obviously baits them into acting like silly idiots (which is a funny troll tbf)
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Feb 13, 2024 18:19
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MacheteZombie posted:Watched this over the weekend. Pretty mid Like a lot of event movies it was better in the theater where everyone was dressed in pink and excited. I tried watching it at home and it was ok but I did something else after like 15 mins lol
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Feb 13, 2024 19:37
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Disco Pope posted:I'm a cis guy, so my reading is going to be different and perhaps not as sensitive to some subtext, but I do feel a lot of discussion about the ending omits that it's framed as Barbie going to a high-powered job interview, and it looks like the film preparing to undercut itself a little bit before subverting that. my question is then "hey why is this movie's stance that barbie has too many jobs and also those jobs aren't real," such that her going for a real world job interview would be "undercutting itself." so many of this movie's gags are that all the career women Barbies are doing joke pink versions of their jobs, feministly. motherhood on the other hand is fully sacralized by the ending.
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Feb 13, 2024 20:00
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CelticPredator posted:Like a lot of event movies it was better in the theater where everyone was dressed in pink and excited. Yeah I had a blast watching it opening weekend with a packed theater of people all in pink and hype as gently caress. I've watched it on streaming a couple times since and it's still pretty solidly fine with occasional bits that still make me laugh ("The president's here!" "I am! You're welcome." and other such moments especially with Issa Rae). My perspective on the last moments of the film, especially the conversation between Barbie and Ruth, feel like more of a dig at parenthood/motherhood (especially truly bonkers parental reactions to people who come out as gay/trans/etc.) than womanhood. Like, just because I created you doesn't mean I control who you choose to be; Ruth 'created' Barbie but it's completely under Barbie's control to decide who she is (which with the final scene seems to be "human woman with a vagina") and no one else can dictate that for her. A less mass-market/brand-focused movie maybe takes more of a swerve with that final scene but it didn't bother me (as an NB person).
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Feb 13, 2024 20:43
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Valentin posted:my question is then "hey why is this movie's stance that barbie has too many jobs and also those jobs aren't real," such that her going for a real world job interview would be "undercutting itself." so many of this movie's gags are that all the career women Barbies are doing joke pink versions of their jobs, feministly. motherhood on the other hand is fully sacralized by the ending. My reading of it is that, as a brand exercise, the film was in conversation with the Barbie "You Can Be Anything" slogan and launders the brand of the criticism that that means thin, professional, blonde and most of the other things that have come to be associated with Barbie. I took the ending to be setting up that she was still going to be some kind of girlboss, but subverting it with, hey, she's just like a lot of the implied audience!
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Feb 13, 2024 20:48
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tokin opposition posted:I mean sure, I just find it funny how many posts on the topic start with "Im a cis guy and I think..." Ghost Leviathan posted:It's also literally just the ancient joke about Barbie dolls having featureless crotches. that's why I found it confusing. The movie several times makes fun of their lack of genitals before this. Which was fine and funny and all. But then she became a real human being™️ and has a vagina now? Was that a requirement? Is she getting an operation? Is the joke that women go to gynecologists? I can see several plausible readings here and not sure what the movie was going for here, seems like a weird choice.
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Feb 25, 2024 01:34
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The whole point is that she wished to be human, even if it means doing human things like ageing and dying and dealing with actual fluids. Pretty sure the joke is she now has to deal with various squishy soft complicated bits her body previously didn't have, and it's presented as if she was going for a big important job interview, because the movie likes to make silly jokes about its premise. ed: To get a bit further, the recent Werner Herzog take is definitely fitting if we're reviving this thread. https://twitter.com/ecto_fun/status/1761135727176286278 The intro is specifically all about pointing out the weirdest parts of Barbieland's artificiality, how it's a home for dolls, not for humans. There's no actual eating or drinking, indeed no actual fluids at all. There's no walls when you're just picked up and placed wherever you need to be. Midge is always pregnant but never gives birth. (a concept that even IRL raised questions as making the idea of the doll weird) There's no actual problems for Barbies- which means there's no actual empathy. Stereotypical Barbie starts having problems, emotional vulnerability and an existential crisis, and gets nothing but bewilderment and disgust from other Barbies because they have no concept of that she could use comfort and sympathy. (And of course, Allan and the Kens also have problems that no one had noticed) Also possibly the joke there when Weird Barbie picks sanitation as the government job she wants to do; while on the surface it's a perfect 'It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it' pick for a responsible person who deals with the weird and unpleasant but absolutely necessary things, possibly also the joke in that in a world with no fluids, no digestion and very little actual waste in general, sanitation is an extremely cushy gig. Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Feb 25, 2024 |
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Feb 25, 2024 02:02
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It’s funny the toy has to have her vagina looked at
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Feb 25, 2024 02:35
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The humour is that our expectation that she is on her way to a job interview (as is coded in the scene immediately preceding the ending) is subverted quite strikingly, coupled with the incongruity of her excitement at being about to undergo a gynecological examination (which is typically viewed as unpleasant to receive). This is neither subtle nor difficult to interpret.
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Feb 25, 2024 02:59
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yes that is the text congratulations to you guys on watching the movie the subtext whether intentional or not is that having a vagina and seeing a gynecologist is akin to your job interview for womanhood. that's the weird part. that's the faint hint of jk rowling politics that the people talking about it being off in tone compared to the rest of the more mainstream liberal diet woke perspective of the rest of the movie, are referring to
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Feb 25, 2024 03:03
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ram dass in hell posted:yes that is the text congratulations to you guys on watching the movie Throughout the entire film it is clear that Barbie both regards herself and is regarded as a woman, and Ken regards himself and is regarded as a man. Their gender is affirmed through Ken's desire to enforce the patriarchy and Barbie's desire to oppose it. Barbie's transformation at the end of the film bestows humanity upon her, however her womanhood has never been in question.
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Feb 25, 2024 03:11
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they want genitals
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Feb 25, 2024 03:20
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ram dass in hell posted:yes that is the text congratulations to you guys on watching the movie It's exactly in line with a mainstream liberal diet woke perspective.
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Feb 25, 2024 03:25
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CelticPredator posted:they want genitals Barbie's attitude towards having genitals throughout the movie is entirely ambivalent, evidenced by the extraordinarily blase manner in which she mentions her lack of genitals matter-of-factly when subjected to the ogling of human men. Her transformative journey is spurred by a desire to deal with her existential crisis and this is resolved via her accepting the mantle of humanity despite the fact that this will introduce complexity and unpleasantness to her existence. Her acquisition of genitals is ultimately tangential to her arc of attaining humanity, not a driving force behind it
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Feb 25, 2024 03:50
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It’s not her main goal but she does want them bc she wants to be human
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Feb 25, 2024 04:27
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ram dass in hell posted:the subtext whether intentional or not is that having a vagina and seeing a gynecologist is akin to your job interview for womanhood. that's the weird part. I don't think you've properly examined this notion of a "job interview for womanhood", though, because why would womanhood be a thing determined by the gynecologist? Like, the doctor's going to say "no" and hire somebody else? And then what? Does Barbie remains 'unemployed' in terms of her gender? Before you say it's a metaphor for medical gatekeeping, go back over the plot. In the specific events of the film, Barbie became a human being (as opposed to an immortal, angelic figure) long before even getting out of the car. She specifically decided to become a human cis woman (or 'realized that she always was') back in the white room with the inspirational stock footage montage. And that makes perfect sense because Barbie's gender was "stereotypically female" from before the start of the movie. The film repeatedly, constantly reminds you that Barbie is a woman before she has any genitals whatsoever. Vaginas, specifically, aren't the issue. The Barbie Movie absolutely fumbles the gender stuff overall, but that's pervasive across the film and not something isolated to the final shot, as if everything depends on that. Like, the queer and gender-nonconforming barbies were kept segregated over in some kind of a fuckin' leper colony for broken toys and 'unmarketable' concepts - concepts that are unmarketable to Gloria, who is a cis woman who's internalized racism and so-on. Gloria is homophobic, transphobic, uncomfortable with women's bodies, and overall just a bit of a dumbass. The film's tactic is simply to lampshade this stuff by - for example - having the daughter point out that Gloria's personal Barbie (who has had an enormous impact on Gloria's psyche) is her white saviour. Even characters outside the queer ghetto are kept at a distance in Gloria's brain. "Wheelchair Barbie", for example, disappears after the opening scenes as an example of Gloria's overall indifference to people with disabilities. The unstated point of the movie is that somebody else might have Wheelchair Barbie function as 'her' Barbie, and consequently have 'her' Barbieland take a very different form. And we can say the same for other people's personal Barbielands. What if a trans woman has a Barbie that she imagines as being, likewise, trans? But that leads us to the real oppositional reading: that these people are very unlikely to get jobs as concept artists at Mattel. Gloria was hired (and promoted. And, ultimately, has a movie made about her) because her personal vision of the brand fits perfectly with that of the corporation. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Feb 25, 2024 |
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Feb 25, 2024 05:00
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I don't think you've properly examined this notion of a "job interview for womanhood", though, because why would womanhood be a thing determined by the gynecologist? Like, the doctor's going to say "no" and hire somebody else? And then what? Does Barbie remains 'unemployed' in terms of her gender? 👆 been saying this
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Feb 25, 2024 05:08
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For in-jokes that they don't spell out, the rumour that Weird Barbie was once 'the most beautiful Barbie of them all' kinda pans out- eagle-eyed watchers have noted that in the flashback, she started as Totally Hair Barbie, the best-selling doll in the entire history of the franchise. And I may have mentioned that Gloria's daughter and her posse are references to Bratz dolls, which have their own history with Barbie. Apparently when they first came out they were touted as a counterpoint to then-controversial Barbie dolls, being more relatable to kids and having stylised designs that (supposedly) wouldn't encourage unrealistic and unhealthy body image standards. (also something about a plagiarism lawsuit as they were made by a former Mattel employee?) Of course, Bratz kinda ended up a fad as conceptually there wasn't much else for them to do with the concept besides 'fashion'. Random extra note; Reading up on Toy Story got me some ideas, about Barbie basically kinda being a wayward daughter figure for Gloria, who has internalised her insecurities and flaws, and presents the exact problems that the human daughter is actively trying to defend herself against. Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Feb 26, 2024 |
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Feb 25, 2024 11:58
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ram dass in hell posted:yes that is the text congratulations to you guys on watching the movie
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Feb 26, 2024 14:07
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Ravenfood posted:It is very clear that she is a woman throughout the entire movie, including when she does not have a vagina. This is actually the point of the opening scene and it's riff on 2001 where it makes clear that prior to the creation of Barbie womanhood was designated by the biological function of motherhood. (I don't agree with this but I do believe that this is what the movie is trying to say in that scene.) The arrival of Barbie like the obelisk is meant to imply that womanhood is primarily a matter of self-determination and not biology, and that this is revolutionary not unlike the introduction of weaponry to humankind. The bulk of the movie then is essentially the struggle of white western liberal feminism where we've agreed that gender is construction but nonetheless it holds women back more than men. See SMG's post which clearly outlines the problems that are created when you try to align white western feminism and capitalism. I think this is why the closing scene does seem off, because it seems to contradict the opening scene in that it's a return to biological based determinism, but in the context of what's come before in the movie I do think the clear reading is that we've never had any doubts that Barbie is a woman even though she doesn't have a vagina so you can see that biological determinism is still dead.
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Feb 26, 2024 15:23
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I think one thing we should also be mindful of is the form that the final joke takes. The movie obviously doesn’t end with full-frontal nudity, and certainly doesn’t end with Mattel releasing a line of Gloria-designed ‘anatomically correct’ Barbies. It’s just Margot Robbie talking into the camera, and then it cuts to credits. Strictly speaking, this means Barbie’s achievement is not that she gains (or grows?) genitalia, but that she’s allowed to say the word “vagina” in an official Mattel advertisement. This is because, of course, the character is literally Margot Robbie playing ‘Margot Robbie as Barbie’ (in the same way that Michael Jai White doesn’t play the character Black Dynamite, but rather plays ‘Ferrante Jones as Black Dynamite’). Margot Robbie is, to our knowledge, an average human cis woman actress, and ‘Margot Robbie’ the character doesn’t have any sort of arc at all. Her genitals aren’t changing, is what I’m getting at. And the actual designs of the dolls don’t change either. Even the act of saying “vagina” is unexceptional, since that's not at the end of the film but partway into the runtime. There are already multiple jokes about childbirth and puberty and whatnot. So, what actually is going on? Simply, the narrative of the film depicts a subjective shift in how the characters interprets the infamous flat crotch of the Barbie toy. Is it an empty void (as Barbie declares “I don’t have a vagina”), or is it a blank canvas where anything can be imagined? So, in this case, Gloria uses the blank crotch of the Barbie as a tool to work through her personal fear of mortality. This is part of the preferred reading of the film: Barbies are simply neutral art objects that don’t represent anything, but instead poses a challenge to the audience. “What do you represent?” This is why, in the very first scene of the film, Barbie is a weird chunk of plastic until the girls look at it, and the plastic is instantly transmuted (through fantasy) into a living person. This is a pernicious trick of the film, though, because it’s already taken the “not all women have vaginas” criticism into account. As with the “white saviour” joke, and the “they shouldn’t have cast Margot Robbie as an insecure person” joke, Mattel is absolutely okay with you attacking the film in ‘cultural’ terms. They even encourage it, because that’s an excellent distraction from, say, the working conditions in Mattel’s overseas factories. It’s part of the whole rebrand. “Haha, yep, Barbie definitely is a white woman! You totally got us there!” SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Feb 29, 2024 |
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Feb 26, 2024 19:28
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It's not even that. The word she says is gynecologist.
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Feb 28, 2024 12:34
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When you make a big effort post based on you misremembering a line in a movie.
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Feb 28, 2024 19:01
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