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watchin barbu
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Jul 22, 2023 20:40
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Bogus Adventure posted:I look forward to your breakdown of it Ok, so: Matrix references. Lots of Matrix references. The movie takes place inside the mind of the character Gloria, a Mattel employee. Gloria lives in "the real world", which is not the actual real world, but "reality" as depicted in what's explicitly a 'meta' advertisement starring various Hollywood actors. In other words, "Gloria" is actually America Ferrera, playing herself, playing Gloria - the fictional mascot who is set to become the new face of the Mattel company. This is how the movie cushions its messages: first by saying it's only a toy commerical, then by saying that it's all just this one person's silly fantasy within the commercial. So, don't be fooled; we need to interrogate exactly those premises. But, given that we already agree that corporations are bad, any criticism of the film comes down to our ability to examine Gloria as she Like, where are Trans Ken, Wheelchair Ken, etc.? That's a rhetorical question, because the answer is simply that Gloria didn't think about that. It wouldn't fit into her conception of the Barbie brand, where Ken is (or should be) a vehicle for cisgendered girls* to safely confront harassment and microaggressions through parody. The "Kendom" thing clearly reveals that Gloria has no clue what kids actually like, outside her wheelhouse of "Barbie, but Weird Twitter". No way are Kendom products actually selling that much, even as ironic purchases. In fact, isn't it kinda odd that there are effectively no children in the movie at all? *The film's 'colourblindness' on such issues as trans rights leads to some odd scenes, like when Gloria makes Doctor Barbie stand up and... express generic criticism of tropes in romantic comedies? The elephant in the room is that Mattel wouldn't dare make Ken even subtly transphobic. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Jul 23, 2023 |
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Jul 23, 2023 04:18
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Looten Plunder posted:Isn't stereotypical Barbie the only Barbie that belongs to America Ferrara? The rest of the Barbie's belong to other people None of the Barbies belong to anybody, strictly speaking. All of the doll characters are actually 'the idea of a doll', existing in Gloria's unconscious fantasy world. Gloria specifically has this fantasy because she's heavily, heavily invested in the Barbie brand - like, fanatical to such a degree that she got herself a job at the company, and gets in a high-speed car chase when she hears of Barbie coming to the real world. Meanwhile, the goal of the Will Ferrell character is to prevent Gloria's ostensibly-unmarketable "dark" ideas from spreading to potential customers. So, whatever hint of a collective dimension to the fantasy world, this is strictly Gloria's show. That's the response to Mat Cauthon's post, as it happens: Barbieland isn't a utopia or a dystopia, because it isn't an actual society - or at least not anything recognizably human. The idea-doll characters are immortal and don't actually do things like eat or whatever. Their status is determined by the degree to which they are "good ideas": both Gloria and the diegetic filmmakers ranking them in terms of their marketability or something.
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Jul 23, 2023 06:11
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QuoProQuid posted:contrary to the conservative freakout over this movie, the overall message was pretty clearly not anti-men but anti-patriarchy. the movie does a good job of emphasizing how Ken bringing patriarchy to Barbieland gives him more power but doesn't make him happier. Ken doesn't bring patriarchy to Barbieland. Barbieland is a fantasy realm that was already entirely controlled and sustained by Mattel and Warner Bros Discovery (whose HQ is conspicuously visible from the Mattel boardroom's window). This means that it was always an outgrowth of the patriarchy in "the real world". That's the Matrix analogy they're going for, with Barbie obviously in the role of Tom Anderson/Neo. Unlike the Matrix, though, there's no functional economic system within the simulation. Ken just says "the abstract concept of patriarchy is good", then suddenly has a flatscreen TV because that phrase memetically infected the cartoon president. Barbie The Movie is consequently neither anti-men nor anti-patriarchy. It's straightforwardly in favor of the patriarchy, albeit in a moderate-centrist way. Gloria advocates for gradualism, probably gets a promotion within her male-dominated company, and indulges in harmless power-fantasies on the side. 'I can be an astronaut, and bully a dickless Ryan Gosling!'
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Jul 24, 2023 07:58
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weekly font posted:I wish they weren’t cowards and made Ken the gay friend we all know he always was. Honestly the movie would even work better if a new corporate mandated poochie-rear end boyfriend doll to reinforce cis hetnorms was the villain Yeah the movie is, like, astonishingly straight given the subject matter. But it makes sense! I initially thought it was a total cop-out that the 'leftist' straw-girl calls Barbie a fascist. Like, she calls the innocent character a fascist, and makes her cry, while leveling no such criticism at the Mattel company (or WB, for that matter). It's like going to Disneyland and insulting the mascots. Imagine if the character instead turned to the camera and called David Zaslav a fascist - or dissed the actual Mattel CEO (Ynon Kreiz, apparently). Obviously, she would never be allowed to do this. But then, in the end, the moral of the movie is pretty much directly stated: Barbie the character is a fascist, and that's okay because girls deserve escapist power fantasies too. We're gonna oppress the Kens, but in a funny way, because it's not real.
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Jul 24, 2023 16:17
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A quirk of the movie’s logic is that it says there’s actually nothing wrong with Kendom and Ken’s behaviour, because it’s just another silly power fantasy that we enjoy with irony. All that’s ultimately at stake is that the fantasies are, inexplicably, mutually exclusive: Mattel will stop making Barbie toys because Kendom is popular, saddening adult fans of Barbie. Of course, in actual reality, Mattel would simply release Kendom as a parallel joke product line for the exact same target market as this feature film.
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Jul 24, 2023 20:21
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As an overt advertisement for a Barbie toys, the film is specifically marketing Barbie dolls to different age demographics along the narrative’s progression. Barbie is first sold as a sincere power fantasy for young children, then as an ironic power fantasy for teens (“dark and weird”). Finally, there’s the tricky part: a proposed return to sincerity with a “I Am Barbie” messaging for adults, where Barbie the character is understood as a person and has therefore, all along, been conflicted and suffering.
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Jul 25, 2023 06:19
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Because Barbieland is specifically Gloria's doll-rated fantasy, Kendom is her distorted image of what "boy culture" is like. This is why it's totally out of touch and based on stuff like: a young Sylvester Stallone, cowboy toys, 90s beer commercials, karate bandanas, Matchbox 20, Bill Clinton, the musical 'Grease'....
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Jul 25, 2023 19:23
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Xander B Coolridge posted:Doesn't Barbieland adjust itself based on who is playing with Barbie? Gloria isn't an active participant in Kendom's creation so I'm not sure how this reading is supported In the same way that Barbie is specifically Gloria's Barbie, the unstated implication of the film is that there are Barbielands generated by anyone heavily invested in the "Barbie" brand. Since Gloria's Barbieland is purely imaginary, it also includes toys that Gloria is aware of but hasn't necessarily owned or played with. Some of the toy-concepts, as we see from her sketches, are products that don't even exist - but that she invents for herself. That's the entire plotline of Barbie getting anxiety. And, later, it's why Kendom happens: it's Gloria's weird idea of if what happens Barbie if the character 'fails' and the brand is somehow 'overtaken by boys'. Gerwig helpfully explained the joke in an interview. Asked why she included a joke about #ReleaseTheSnyderCut, she replied: "I don't even really know. I knew Zack Snyder's Justice League was a thing, but I didn't know the contours, all the ins and outs. ... And I think that was the point: it was like Barbie had a vague knowledge of it, and then - all of a sudden, in a certain state - it really meant a lot to her. And then it went away." -Greta Gerwig, edited for grammar & clarity Like Gerwig herself, none of the characters in the film have actually seen Justice League, and they consequently hold no actual opinion of it. Gloria is only vaguely aware of it as "a boy thing", and the citizens of Kendom behave accordingly. It's like in Solaris, when Kelvin interrogates this copy of his wife, and he realizes that she is sourced entirely from his memories. She is only Kelvin's distorted, incomplete idea of his wife. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 08:00 on Jul 26, 2023 |
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Jul 26, 2023 07:56
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Combed Thunderclap posted:I thought it was part of the commentary that all the Mattel employees are silly men acting like generic Businessman dolls despite being in The Real World, implying that corporate existence is just another kind of Barbieland filled with bubbleheaded Ken-types. The only exceptions are two women (Gloria and Ruth). That’s not precisely it, because the Kens are not really human and just represent the idea of a doll. Will Ferrel, as a contrast, is human (albeit a dumb guy). So, just to recap the premise of the Matrix trilogy: in an abstract post-apocalyptic future-time, robots develop a life-support system for humanity. There’s debate within the films as to why the robots are doing this, but it’s most likely to serve as a type of wildlife preserve for the dying humanity. The robots’ system is run by a variety of hyperintelligent AIs who behave like angels, and the whole thing is an allegory for Gnosticism. When an angelic AI malfunctions, it is “cast down to Earth”: exiled to the matrix system, where it can be contained inside a humanoid avatar. The Gnostic demiurge polices reality from a magical skyscraper, using “agents” who appear as men in black suits. This is conspiracy theory imagery - thematic overlap with the movie Men In Black, which uses aliens in place of AIs, to the same effect: “Every time you've heard someone say they saw a ghost, or an angel. Every story you've ever heard about vampires, werewolves, or aliens, is the system assimilating some program that's doing something they're not supposed to be doing.” Anyways, the point is that the matrix just straightforwardly is reality on Earth. It’s our everyday symbolic reality, where there is a capitalist system, smog, pollution, etc. And this means that, when Barbie travels to “the real world”, she is actually entering the matrix - cast in the role of a malfunctioning AI. And, more importantly, this means Gloria is an MIB - a rogue agent. When told that a woman is walking around claiming to be Barbie, Gloria immediately understands the situation and the stakes. She knew, from the very beginning, that Barbieland exists. But this is where the story differs from Matrix, because Will Ferrel’s character isn’t the demiurge in charge of all reality. He’s just one among thousands of human CEOs influencing humanity through individual IPs and brands. There’s absolutely nothing special about him, except that he controls access to the Barbie IP - which makes him magical to Gloria. He holds enormous influence over Gloria’s sense of reality and sense of self. She thinks that working at Mattel grants her special powers. But, as with any conspiracy theory, the paranoid fantasy is used to make sense of a more complicated reality. A reality where, for example, Barbie dolls are made in factories owned by capitalists who exploit workers. The CEO is not a fun guy. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Jul 28, 2023 |
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Jul 28, 2023 02:10
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Xealot posted:Yeah, I would’ve loved it if that scene was just idiot bros explaining NFTs. Hopefully poorly. That goes against the entire point of the film, where the Kens do not do anything truly bad. Like, " I wear a fur coat, I'm annoying". Who gives a poo poo? Their cultural behaviours are not grounded in actual inequality, which the film carefully avoids addressing at any point. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Jul 30, 2023 |
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Jul 29, 2023 20:02
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Panfilo posted:My wife elbowed me hard during the mansplaining part, on my end I just love explaining things to everyone though I've learned to pipe down about it to my wife over the years. But unlike the guy in the Chinese theater that just stormed off in a huff I can laugh at myself about it. 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. Like, when Gloria uses her heartfelt speeches to induce cognitive dissonance, she’s talking about things that her audience of Barbie dolls has never actually experienced. She’s pushing these cartoon fantasy characters into imagining human hardship because they otherwise don’t comprehend it. Being immortal robots, they would be perfectly happy serving up limitless imaginary beers forever. Gloria has to introduce the pain of reality into this perfect system because, well… what are the stakes again? That the Barbie brand will be discontinued?
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Jul 30, 2023 02:48
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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: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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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: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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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. Gloria’s Barbieland is occupied both by toys she’s owned and by toys she’s aware of due to her job and/or pop culture. Generally, it’s Gloria’s overall idea of the Barbie brand. CapnAndy posted:You're expecting too much reality from a "real world" populated by stable portals to Barbieland […] No, not really. Like, when you write that “nobody had the idea for the Mojo Dojo Casa House before Ken did”, you need to first ask who - and even what - Ken is. It’s made clear that Ken is ‘the idea of a Ken doll.’ And, so, whose idea? We can discount any notion of there being some kind of collective hive-mind, because Gloria’s fear of morality is obviously not shared by every Barbie-aware person on Earth. So, Ken is an idea in Gloria’s head. The Mojo Dojo stuff is coming from her, albeit maybe in some kind of fugue state or something. And for that fantasy then to leave her mind and “infect” reality, that implies the two options outlined earlier: either Gloria participated in the creation of a new product line, or she’s having delusions of some kind.
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Jul 31, 2023 20:00
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Jay-V posted:If this is only Gloria's Barbieland, why is only one Barbie experiencing intrusive thoughts of death? Unlike most of the other idea-dolls in Barbieland, Gloria’s idea of S-Barbie is based on her personal doll that she actually owned and played with over the years. This is also why S-Barbie is the protagonist of the film. “And why would there be a path to and from the Real World?” Plenty of films have secret paths and tunnels to fantasy worlds - Narnia, OZ, Aquaman, whatever. What’s relatively unique about Barbie Movie is that Gloria brings her daughter along, into the fantasy. So it’s actually not wrong to say that the movie is about mother and teen daughter reconnecting and working through their issues via some kind of role-play. Rarity posted:Gloria's speech isn't good cause it's fresh, it's good because it's in a mainstream $1 billion blockbuster In Rogue One, the protagonist kills so many space-Nazis.
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Jul 31, 2023 22:34
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Simply Simon posted:Loved the speech in Rogue One where they went "I kill Imperials because they are space nazis, and nazis are a real problem in the real world where they too should be exterminated, but the system protects them for profit reasons". Bit simplistic but heartwarming The characters in Rogue One are killing Nazis fr. Like, they’re not pretending. Y’all ever seen the Hunger Games movies?
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Aug 1, 2023 00:58
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Lobster Henry posted:So, wait, what are you arguing exactly? A character in a 2016 fires a laser beam at some heavily abstracted cartoon space nazis in a fantasy setting / therefore it isn’t interesting or worthwhile if a speech in a 2023 blockbuster resonates because it speaks directly to the daily lives experience and frustrations of women in the US and beyond? It's pointing out the weirdness of the claims. First it's claimed that it's shocking or unusual for blockbuster movies to have progressive messaging, or even just to "speak to women". When it's pointed out that it's not unusual, and that some blockbusters are even more progressive, counterexamples are dismissed as, like, "a heavily abstracted cartoon" - as if The Barbie Movie is not? Star Wars isn't very abstract at all. It's just a science fiction movie where, in the case of Rogue One, the lead character is an insurgent fighting an imperial power that's extracting resources from a holy land. Likewise, Hunger Games is this kind of female Joker story where a famous woman struggling with mental illness (PTSD in her case) unwittingly becomes the figurehead of a revolution. This is not to say that The Barbie Movie is badly-made or anything, but it's ideologically sus - and the way to redeem it is to look at it as a character study of Gloria (who, in the meta-advertisement aspect of the plot, is presented as Mattel's ideal customer). As a film about Gloria's politics, Barbie Movie's fun and really illustrative.
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Aug 1, 2023 16:01
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Arsenic Lupin posted:It's not unusual for blockbusters to have "progressive" (whatever that means) views, but for a blockbuster to have in-your-face feminism? I don't remember the last time that happened. You may be able to cite a speech here, a speech there, but when was a blockbuster completely focused on the patriarchy and what it means and oh, yeah, good gags? Ok, so how are you defining terms like "feminism" and "patriarchy"? There are self-proclaimed feminists who are hardcore reactionaries (e.g. Rowling), and The Barbie Movie talks a lot about patriarchy, without much along the lines of anticapitalism. It's a blind spot. Even Sasha (at the start of the film, before her arc) adds a qualifier: complaining about sexualized capitalism. That's ambiguous, because "sexualized capitalism" can mean a capitalism supplemented by sexist ideology (e.g. where notions of sexual difference are used to naturalize inequality) and/or just the selling of sex (sexual imagery in advertising, etc.). Given the context, it seems that Sasha means the latter, but we'll never really know because the things she's expositing about aren't actually illustrated at all. It's exactly like how, through a Marxist lens, all workers are exploited under capitalism but the word "exploitation" is used more casually across the political spectrum to refer to some kind of specific moral degradation (e.g. a view that, unlike "normal women", women working in the porn industry are being exploited because they're made to do sex things). There's a big difference! In any case, removing the "sexualization" part and just calling Barbie a "symbol of capitalism" would remove a lot of that ambiguity. It would also, consequently, be far too directly anticapitalist for a Hollywood film. That's the kind of thing you can point out to do a critique of its ideology. Why is the focus exclusively on the idea-of-a-doll and not the actual process of making and selling the plastic toys? Actual plastic Barbie dolls are rarely onscreen in this film. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Aug 1, 2023 |
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Aug 1, 2023 19:13
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Hollismason posted:Barbies the first blockbuster movie where patriarchy is specifically the main enemy Unless that's a "Black Panther is the first ever black superhero movie" joke, this is an absolutely blinkered view. Fuckin' Titanic, man! Frozen! Jurassic Park, even! Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens has a sexist villain. Like, this only makes sense if you're counting movies where a character turns to the camera and directly identifies the abstract concept of patriarchy as the villain.
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Aug 1, 2023 19:43
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CapnAndy posted:Even the asylum level of reality is sexier than it should be. Uh, in what way is it sexy?
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Aug 1, 2023 21:10
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CapnAndy posted:Sorry, the fake asylum, where they're all dancer/escorts. Not the real one. But that goes back to what I just wrote earlier, about the conflation of exploitation as moral degradation and exploitation of workers under capitalism. Not to derail this too far, but Sucker Punch does have the same Matrix-like structure as Barbie, the Lacanian triad of Symbolic/Imaginary/Real. In the Barbie Movie, this aligns with the everyday symbolic reality of "the real world" (aka the matrix), the fantasy world of Barbieland, and the Real-reality of Mattel's entirely-offscreen overseas factories (with brutal working conditions, etc.). Illustrating this same logic, Sucker Punch is primarily about sex work, because that's the symbolic reality - the matrix - that the characters inhabit in their everyday lives, while the asylum is the underlying nightmare of brutal slavery and whatnot. Anyways, the problem of sex work isn't the sex part. It's everything around that, which creates these massive power imbalances that result in workers being endangered, underpaid, etc. It's like saying the problem of Nestle selling bottled water is the water part. Stop drinking water!
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Aug 1, 2023 21:46
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ungulateman posted:also while you can debate whether smg really is a highly advanced chatbot that does not actually exist, they have said they don't identify themselves as male More importantly, "mansplaining" is just a term for acting condescending to women due to a sexist assumption that they're less intelligent/knowledgeable or whatever. It doesn't cover every situation where someone explains something to someone else. Like, in the case of Barbie Movie, various people ITT actually have displayed confusion about the film's plot, politics, themes, historical context, etc. For the most part, I don't know which of these folks identify as women, but claims like that Barbie is the first ever film where the baddies are patriarchal are just blatantly factually incorrect - even when we add various qualifiers ("first ever such film to make a billion dollars", etc.). Again, none of this is to say it's a bad movie! It's really well-edited, for example.
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Aug 2, 2023 05:24
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Computer Serf posted:Barbie is very direct, unobstructed and forced audiences to hear the message instead of needing to decipher some archetypal analytics. Most people see a movie and don’t really think that deeply This stance that Barbie Movie is, like, beneath analysis - that's a very dangerous approach to an otherwise-innocuous film. Pointing out that the film's overwhelmingly fixated on culture as opposed to socioeconomics is very basic, surface-level stuff. It's not complex at all. The belief that stupid audiences will just be unthinkingly affected and changed for the better, that's making recourse to "depth".
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Aug 2, 2023 05:37
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Wolfsheim posted:Characters give relatable speeches about feminism or mansplaining, but you're not really supposed to do anything with that information, in the same way you're not really supposed to do anything with the information that Ricky Bobby likes the infant version of Jesus the best in Talledega Nights other than chuckle at the absurdity. Its just in service of a funny gag. You’ve come to a sort of backwards conclusion here. The joke with Ricky Bobby preferring the infant Jesus is that he’s rejecting the adult Jesus did all that intensely political stuff. And, you know, that’s in the context of Ricky Bobby being basically this parodic avatar of American conservative culture. Even if some gags in Barbie were created thoughtlessly/randomly (which is highly unlikely), nothing in the film is ‘just’ random because it’s automatically part of the structure of the narrative. So, as pointed out earlier, Gloria’s Tumblr speech is literally directed inward, at herself - the audience is made up of fantasy characters in her head. The point of the scene is Gloria’s realization that the childhood Barbie fantasy that had enormous influence over her life was inadequate, and so she is now updating the fantasy to let her function more effectively as a worker, as a mother, etc.. So, while there is that therapeutic effect and she’s no longer suffering as much anxiety - which is aight - it also means Gloria is no longer dissatisfied with her assigned roles and is able to resume her place in the system. Likewise, there’s no contradiction between Ferrel being mildly against Kendom and his profit motive. He’s just a liberal! The basic plot of the film is that the empowerment fantasy Ferrel was selling to girls is (to Gloria) “too perfect”: Barbies never face obstacles or conflict in Barbieland, and that leaves Barbie kids mentally unprepared for adulthood. Then, the ultimate ‘solution’ is Gloria’s proposal that they might start selling Ordinary Barbies, who face minor inconveniences. “My shirt doesn’t quite fit properly” Barbie, or whatever.
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Aug 3, 2023 20:10
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Cojawfee posted:The Barbies specifically orchestrate voter suppression campaign to distract the Kens from voting so they can take back control. But it's fine, because the Barbies are nicer dictators I guess. Diegetically it’s ‘fine’ because it’s just Gloria’s private fantasy of dominance. That’s kind-of the trick the movie pulls with Barbieland: it has no actual relation to reality except as a mechanism for Gloria to cope with her boring life or whatever. So, because Ken represents Gloria’s attitudes towards men, ‘his’ personal growth is consequently actually Gloria’s.
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Aug 3, 2023 22:32
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Extra row of tits posted:Exactly how much of a incel do you need to be to actually believe the Barbies ran some dictator style super plan to keep the men down in a comedy move about idealised toys for girls and the boy dolls are painfully obvious exaggerated stereotypes? Don’t cede “understanding the plot of a film” to the incels.
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Aug 4, 2023 20:45
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If 70mm film is imagined as ‘masculine’ - and the implicit ‘feminine’ counterpoint is, like, a cellphone video in portrait orientation - then it should be immediately obvious that we’re actually talking about the vagaries of class. Dino Damage. I called it.
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Aug 5, 2023 21:37
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Breetai posted:Not getting that Starship Troopers is satirical is the product of either being young enough that you haven't developed the capacity to examine the media you consume at all, or of being very stupid. Not getting that Troopers is satirical is moronic, but not getting that it’s satirical of liberalism is extremely common. The target of the film is not the blithering idiocy of the jingoists, but those with moral concerns who nonetheless go along with it because they can’t conceive of anything better. Less an Act Of Valor and more a Zero Dark Thirty. AvesPKS posted:Aren't these readings all too textual anyway? Isn't this movie actually an allegory for the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968? This is CD, right? Subtext isn’t an actual thing; it is always relative. It is both to Barbie’s credit and its eternal demerit that it tells you exactly what everything represents at all times, and there is nothing else going on.
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Aug 13, 2023 06:59
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Albatrossy_Rodent posted:There's a degree to which I find myself annoyed by the "it's all in Gloria's head" interpretations, the movie's only fun if these things are in some sense literally physically happening. That's not catching the multiple different things going on here. The movie's events are literally physically happening, as the whole thing's framed as a corporate meta-advertisement starring various big-name celebs as "themselves". Gloria doesn't actually exist; America Ferrera is just an actress being paid to work for WB as part of some curious licensing agreement with Mattel corp., and so-on. In the diegesis of the ad, though, Margot Robbie plays a character who is literally the physical embodiment of the idea of a plastic doll, who travels into reality via magical powers and whatnot. Barbie is some kind of angelic being, but she can obviously do things like 'talk to people' and 'steal clothes'. She can be arrested and put in jail, etc. However, that is a fantasy narrative. When you examine what the magic is and how the magical powers actually 'work' (or don't work), the most sensible conclusion that this Barbie fantasy is a shared dream/fiction. Gloria reconnects with her daughter and explores "womanhood" through their renewed interest in doll-centric roleplay. All three of these things are happening simultaneously: the film is a Mattel advertisement that presents the fictional character Gloria as the new face of the Barbie brand - the "ordinary woman" author of a "dark", "weird" imaginative scenario. That's a rather strong (and fairly straightforward) interpretation of the film. Another, albeit weaker, approach is to take the fantasy scenario and read it as science fiction. Under this approach, Barbieland is subject to physical laws and we can speculate as to how the mermaid ecosystem works when the water is a solidified mass of petrochemicals, etc. What's the mechanism that allows Barbie to hover? You can do this sort of thing, but it just isn't very interesting. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 07:26 on Aug 14, 2023 |
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Aug 14, 2023 07:21
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Simply Simon posted:Why would you not read the fantasy scenario as, you know, fantasy? I do. But, then, the immediate and obvious question is whose fantasy we're talking about.
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Aug 14, 2023 17:49
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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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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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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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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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Ghost Leviathan posted: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. That’s only if we deal in vague terms that could apply to just about any narrative involving identity and gender (which is to say: all of them). Barbie becoming human with the help of her creator is very arguably gender-affirming care because, sure, she becomes ‘the woman she wants to be’. But (iirc) the creator doesn’t actually do anything, basically just saying that the power was within her all along or whatever. An inner journey of self-actualisation. Either way, there’s a big difference between gender affirmation as a general concept and “a trans narrative” in particular. The declaration “I am a real woman!” can mean a lot of different things, depending on context - like who’s speaking it. If Barbie is just a white cis woman, after all, the joke has less bite than the one in Spaceballs where the ‘Druish’ princess is shamed for getting rhinoplasty. So, to go more specific: all the Barbies in Barbieland already identify as women at the start of the film, and that never changes. Also, as we’re shown with the character of Doctor Barbie (who is played by a trans actress) the film even takes the phrase “trans women are women” to an apolitical extreme by saying trans people don’t exist in Barbieland. All political distinctions are erased, and Hari Nef is effectively just playing a cis woman too. And, as noted before, that’s a logic akin to ‘racial colourblindness’ - which is not good. A genericized message that can be applied to pretty much everybody inherently benefits those in power more. (See: the ‘multicultural’ libertarian conspiracy theorism of the first Matrix movie, and how it was effortlessly appropriated by white supremacists.) I understand the impulse to appropriate the popular movie and spin it as a progressive text, but it needs to be done very carefully. The concept in the film is more plainly Barbie’s ‘growing up’ as a concept and growing beyond traditional Mattel censorship, which is all very much in keeping with the overall meta-advertisement / ‘redefining the Barbie brand for girls’ story. Barbie getting a vagina doesn’t challenge or subvert that. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Aug 22, 2023 |
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Aug 22, 2023 04:42
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KVeezy3 posted:I think that there’s enough to say the film isn’t gender-essentialist, but not really trans-affirmative, like the distinction that exists between feminist camps. In contrast to a post-structuralist approach that denies body limitations, a trans-affirmative work is necessarily more materialist in contending with the person’s subjective experience of the body within a socio-political body. Yeah; you got a movie like WALL-E (a fuckin’ Disney-Pixar joint, even!) that blasts Barbie out of the water with its many gender gags, since it’s all grounded in the robots’ embodiment.
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Aug 23, 2023 20:05
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Heh, blasts. Because the girl robot has a blaster cannon and uses it liberally. The fun of Wall-E is that the robots are radically indifferent to their assigned gender roles. Why isn't it that Wall-E is 'the girl robot'? Or what if the very attempt to classify them that way is kinda ridiculous?
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Aug 24, 2023 07:04
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