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On the one hand, my expectations were greatly surpassed, and I really enjoyed myself. I knew it’d be fun and cute, but it’s also fundamentally humanist by way of its feminism and it’s constantly self-aware and no one is safe. The segment where Ruth Handler shows up and starts casually talking about the problems with tax evasion that got her canned from Mattel cracked me up. Everyone is committed 110% to the Barbie Bit and it’s fantastic. On the other hand, it’s just fundamentally limited by being a movie about a product that would very much like to focus on individual change and What Barbie Means to Women rather than anything structural, which might have meant starting to ask questions about what people are supposed to do to create structural change after being empowered, and questioning whether or not we should really be buying enormous amounts of plastic anyway. A straw girl shows up to represent A Very Basic Case Against Barbie where she calls Barbie a fascist and that’s about as far as its critique goes on a structural level for Barbie herself. Both the product and the movie about the product can only go so deep in the change they make, and pointing out that patriarchy is a problem was only ever going to go so far. Still, it feel to me like it communicates something new and meaningful just by condensing and amplifying basic feminist principles into a set of solid, commonly understood set of cultural facts. The movie also wants to make the not entirely invalid point that at the end of the day, Barbie is a kind of imaginary canvas for humans, and expecting more from a canvas is kind of a crapshoot. And it’s simple but I think there’s something really cool about there being no powerful, smart, important men in the film, or any men at all on screen for the first 7? minutes or so. Go see it! 
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Jul 21, 2023 19:52
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 04:41 |
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For those who want the full contextual story of the creation of this movie, I think this piece in the New York Times Magazine has the biggest picture to date. It correctly lauds the movie for being genuinely awesome while getting into the nitty-gritty of how it fits into Mattel, Inc.'s (smart) strategy to stop being a toy company and, like Disney, start being an IP/Experiences company. (Disneyland is profitable. Disney+ is not.) Also Margot Robbie and her team deserve every penny for basically creating this film so she could kick rear end in it. Link through the paywall: quote:How does a company go from dispensing cease-and-desist letters to gamely lampooning itself?
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Jul 22, 2023 02:17
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theblackw0lf posted:Saw this quote from one of my favorite feminist writers Liz Plank (who’s book For The Love of Men is fantastic). She really liked the movie but this was her major criticism. Curious what people think I think this is absolutely a valid critique. Just how valid one considers it, though, is likely going to depend on just how satirical you think Gerwig and the film’s point of view is. Take the example Plank gives of the Kens being told they could pursue a lower court role. In the movie, that’s followed by the line (paraphrasing) that the Kens will someday be as equal in Barbieland as women are in the real world. Wink wink. I thought that joke in particular highlights that the film’s viewpoint is less interested in saying, “In our feminist fantasy, misandry rather than misogyny is the order of the day, bwahaha” and more “Turnabout is fair play, if you’re mad about a power imbalance when it’s applied to men, then fight against it when it’s applied to women too.” Basically, I thought Barbieland was less a misandrist power fantasy and more a Rawlsian example that’s meant to point out that misandry is bad. You’re supposed to sympathize with poor Ken! (We never do find out where they go at night!!  )Barbieland is also repeatedly portrayed as a childish, absurdist Truman Show-like fantasy where nothing human exists (the only way Barbie The Ideal Woman even could exist), rather than something to aspire to for the Real World. If you believe the film is at least partially satirizing Barbieland itself, it’s easier to not think it’s playing its misandry too straight that it’s suggesting Barbieland is actually feminism’s end-goal. That said…it might have been nice to have a somewhat more fleshed out fate for the Kens as a whole, and someone should definitely ask Gerwig why she didn’t take a different path for the Kens and men in general in Barbieland. But I liked the kind of dark note it ended on for them, rather than an even *more* puppies and rainbows, Barbieland-Where-The-Genders-Are-Equal-At-Last ending. At the end of the day, Ken is never not going to be a purely superfluous part of Barbie’s existence. The Barbies’ anti-Ken tone isn’t going away overnight, and neither is misogyny IRL. That’s exactly why both Ken and Barbie need to find their own existence and meaning in the first place. 
Combed Thunderclap fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Jul 22, 2023 |
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Jul 22, 2023 21:37
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Mat Cauthon posted:Am I missing something? Very much not a gender scholar or whatever so interested in other more informed takes. Just kind of baffled by the "the Barbie movie is bad for feminism because it treats matriarchy as patriarchy flipped upside down" angle of critique. I think the concern is that people might interpret the depiction as being anti-men in a way that gives them the wrong idea about feminism. That’s something worth thinking through, as you’ve done here, but it’s really less artistic critique and more political communication strategy. To which I think all I personally can say is: based on the movie, I’m pretty sure the people who would go see the Barbie movie and make that interpretation were never going to be persuadable that feminism or gender equality are good anyway.
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Jul 23, 2023 16:23
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Albatrossy_Rodent posted:There's a bit of thematic inconsistency with the Mattel guys; a lot of the movie is explicitly about the nuances and uncomfortableness of being human but Will Ferrell is more a cartoon than anyone in Barbieland. 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). Fun fact I learned after the movie: Ruth Handler isn’t just the creator of Barbie, she’s one of the three co-founders of Mattel. The other two are her husband and his business partner, and Mattel is named after the combination of their names. Ruth was, of course, somehow left out of the corporate name-making process.
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Jul 27, 2023 02:00
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dodgeblan posted:I wonder if you weren't someone who has encountered the same speech a thousand times verbatim would it be effective? Does that person exist? I'm not exaggerating when I say that I've said "have you seen the new Barbie movie" to three different people IRL so far, and all of them, unprompted, almost immediately brought up the monologue and how much they loved it. It might not be particularly groundbreaking (like the rest of the movie) but it's ultimately the philosophical cathartic climax of the movie, so that does make sense to me.
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Jul 31, 2023 21:33
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I don’t think anyone in this thread was ever trying to rank feminist films or say one was more feminist than the other. All those mentioned are undeniably important parts of feminist film canon. Computer Serf posted:Barbie is very direct, unobstructed and forced audiences to hear the message instead of needing to decipher some archetypal analytics. It’s funny that you say this because I think it’s also true that Barbie the film chose to tap in to some big archetypal energies to very deliberately and pointedly try to make universal statements about womanhood in a way movies about actual people at single points in time cannot. (Not to deny their power in creating meaningful symbols of women warriorhood that can make broad statements about female power and gender equality through their messaging.) Barbie could have just been a movie featuring a Barbie. Interviews with those who have tried to take a crack at it in the past like Amy Schumer make clear Mattel very much wanted a movie about A Barbie who invents high heels or some poo poo. Instead we got The Barbie As The Concept of The Ideal Woman - The Movie, complete with a classic Maiden (Sasha)/Mother (Gloria)/Crone (Ruth) trifecta showing up, Barbie herself being born Athena-like into a literally depicted Ur-Girl Consciousness, and a classic The Goddess Returns To Her Man-Destroyed Queendom narrative that others in this thread have already noted bears a powerful resemblance to myths of Inanna. Which is exactly how and why it can set a stage to powerfully make universal pronouncements that Feminism and Womanhood Rocks and Life As A Woman In An Unequal World Sucks But Is Real At Least in a way that the other films mentioned can’t quite say in quite the same way. Over and over again, from Barbie bumping into an elderly woman at a bus stop to the elaborate montage sequence of young girls playing and having fun over an emotional song, deliberate choices were made to depict women at every stage of life as beautiful and important precisely to highlight the beauty and importance of women’s life experience at every stage of life. These are statements that are harder to make as directly and loudly in stories about an event where ideas are discussed rather than about an idea who events occur to. I think that’s where the Barbie movie uniquely excels compared to those films mentioned. Combed Thunderclap fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 2, 2023 05:28
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 04:41 |
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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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