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finally saw this and I liked it but man, there's waaaaay too much ken in it. the final emotional conversation featuring barbie being like "well I guess I didn't really do much in this movie" probably should have been a cue.
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Aug 9, 2023 20:38
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 09:55 |
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the more i think about it the funnier (derogatory) the birkenstocks are to me. like it can't just be an ugly flip-flop or generic sensible sneaker, it must be an expensive, famous and allegedly "ugly" sandal (the kind of brand that gets major high-end fashion collaborations constantly because there's eternal money in "rediscovering" an "ugly" but well-established brand). self-discovery via consumerism. it breaks into the universe of the film generally and barbieland specifically in a very weird way because none of barbie's iconic outfits in the movie can actually be branded or anything (it's not a choice between a birkenstock and a manolo or something), because all of it has to be mattel IP first and foremost, and also maybe because it makes sense to hold off on tying yourself to any one fashion brand when you can do like 30 different collabs with the movie launch. also a key part of the winking "there will be just enough vaguely queer-related imagery and symbols for you to latch onto in this movie if you want to make that reading vaguely viable despite it not cohering very well with the movie and being fully deniable" approach the film takes, along with closer to fine i don't have any deeper more incisive point here, just congrats to whatever internal group at birkenstock got to accept the call from WB legal and take ownership of that deal. similarly congrats to the 2023 chevy trailblazer, a sensible car that a cool mom could use to do cool driving stunts (don't worry, she learned it from a boy) or drop her daughter off at school in Valentin fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Aug 13, 2023 |
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Aug 13, 2023 00:59
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past the signifiers I think the movie just sort of actively resists a queer reading; barbieland isn't comphet, it's explicitly and repeatedly declared as asexual (even if you want to read sexuality into it, it's girls' night every night!). america ferrara's dud of a husband basically exists so margot robbie can't be in the passenger seat in that last scene. even allan isn't gay so much as simply other. it's pretty wretchedly (miserably, pitifully) straight e: and of course, all that lays ahead in the movie's conception of heterosexuality is the stasis of motherhood (america ferrara doesn't even get like, a promotion). bleak! Valentin fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Aug 13, 2023 |
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Aug 13, 2023 20:39
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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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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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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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with or without the narration the intro gets sort of undercut by the movie itself anyways, as almost immediately the myriad possibilities barbie represented are all written off quickly as jokes for the dolls in which being president is the same as being an astronaut which is the same as being a mermaid (which is the same as, really, "beach"), while motherhood gets a pretty major chunk of the movie's runtime.
Valentin fucked around with this message at 08:59 on Aug 23, 2023 |
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Aug 23, 2023 08:57
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Xealot posted:I don’t think the film is transphobic, I just think it’s a film made by a white cis woman that isn’t interested in these questions beyond purely facile “representation.” There is a trans Barbie, but she was never important. I agree generally but a key point is that there isn't even a Trans Barbie. There's a trans woman playing a Barbie, but that fact is purely extratextual. Within the movie she is simply a Barbie (well, Doctor Barbie). There's not even a character who's textually queer, and the one you're supposed to read as gay-coded is literally named Weird Barbie. So we're left with a movie that tries to take on a vague aura of progressive support for LGBTQ issues but is textually about how barbie becomes a Real Woman, signified by her going to the gynecologist, and in which anyone who deviates even lightly from cis hetero norms (earring magic ken, weird barbie, Allan) ends the movie in barbieland, a place for people who are explicitly not real. The movie is so deeply devoted to normative approaches to gender it has to give America Ferrara a henpecked lib husband who appears in a cutaway gag, lest we read the slightest bit of anything at all into her interactions with Margot Robbie. It's just a profoundly stupid movie in certain ways, in the sense that it tries to tell you it is doing one thing even as it is obviously if accidentally doing something else. e: which is almost certainly because the film is fundamentally an act of selling out, so any time the script stumbles up against any interesting concepts it has to rapidly back away while proclaiming a belief in the liberatory power of Barbie. double e: also very hard to take the gynecologist thing as a light "oh she's excited to do something generally considered onerous!" gag when it comes on the heels of a movie that spends so much of its runtime on how real and important and valuable motherhood is and which in the final conversation between barbie and Ruth makes the whole thing explicitly about a Daughter who is Growing Up and Going Out Into The World and implicitly could have a daughter of her own some day and wow won't she really get how complex it all is then. Valentin fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Feb 12, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 22:12
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 09:55 |
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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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