finally watched the barbie movie. guys it's literally just an advertisement. yall hyped up an advertisement. y'all hyped up a 2-hour russian nesting doll of advertisements with surface level feminism that doesn't actually accomplish anything. this is literally just a giant, "edgy-but-self-aware" advertisement. it says alllll the right things, all of the politically correct things, but at the end of the day IT! IS! STILL! AN! AD!!! mattel does NOT care about ur asses and the literal BILLION dollars they made off of this movie only proves that.

PEOPLE DONT REALISE THEY WANT COMMUNUSM (BARBIE REFERENCE)

In the movie the males took control over the goverment (which is in this case the working class) for their advantage, oppressing and controlling what the females wanted

basically in this example the capitalists are the males and the working class are the females.

IN THE REAL WORLD CAPITALISTS TOOK OVER THE WORKING CLASS FOR THEIR ADVANTAGE OPPRESSING AND CONTROLLING WHAT THE WORKING CLASS WANTS

In the barbie movie, the females realized they had all the power and that's how they freed Barbie-land

See???? In Marxist Ideology, its about the working class realizing they have all the power they should free themselves from the capit sts

“The Barbie Movie is anti-men!”

No. The Barbie movie was just not made for u s. I honestly didn’t find the movie all that relatable outside of Allan but it’s still a GOOD movie! I wasn’t bored during it, it was funny, the music was good, it’s thematically a great movie. I was just not the target audience and that’s okay!! Seeing my 49 year old mother crying at the end of the movie was all I needed for the movie to make me happy, knowing that it touched my mother in a way that other movies don’t often do. And that’s okay :)

Barbie is a movie for anyone who has lived the female experience, especially older women like my own mother who grew up playing with Barbie. That doesn’t mean that you can’t relate to it just. As a human being, and I have lived a female experience briefly in my life but I didn’t relate to the movie. And that’s okay! If you relate to this movie fucking awesome!!! I’m so glad that there’s a movie that means a lot to you :) /gen

I’m just beefing with the other men on the internet who didn’t relate to it like me, yet they insist it’s a bad or “anti-men” movie when it’s clearly not???

Also shoutout to Allan he was literally made in a lab for the transgenders

Only critique? I wish it was more anti capitalist and anarchist but that was never really the point so I get it I will wallow in my corner praying for a progressive movie to arrive that fulfills my genderfuck anarchy goals. ( Idk maybe I’ll write something to fulfill my own dreams ❤️❤️ )

The Barbie Movie is confused -- and it is confused on purpose, because it can't actually acknowledge the role that capitalism and white supremacy play in the patriarchal system that it wants to give itself credit for acknowledging. And so the film introduces patriarchy as a force with no agent or system behind it.

Ken, an oafish goof is able to find the concept of patriarchy and transmit it to the entirety of his society simply by learning about it and speaking about it to his fellow Kens. There is no use of force, no political organizing (notably, the Kens try to take over the political system after they have already taken hold of the culture), no real persuasion even -- simply by hearing about patriarchy the women in Barbieworld somehow become brainwashed by it.

This means we never have to really see the Kens as genuine antagonists, we can still laugh at their bizarrely crammed-together multiple dance numbers and forgive them when they, like the women, are freed of the patriarchy simply by women speaking about the fact that sexism exists. Both the origins of patriarchy and the solution to it is as simple as an individual person telling their story.

The CEOs that run Mattel in the Real World in the film are similarly cartoonish and devoid of real agency. They're even portrayed as generically interested in the idea of Barbie being inspiring to girls. The movie can't even acknowledge their profit motive, and it can't make any of the men running the company look too powerful or even too morally suspect -- but the film does still want to have Barbie encounter sexism in the real world and grapple with the harm "she" (the consumer product, and not the social forces and human beings that created her) has supposedly done.

In the Barbie Movie, patriarchy is a genie in a bottle, and no one is to blame - except maybe Barbie herself, since the movie spends a significant amount of time discussing how she is responsible for giving women unrealistic beauty standards.

And so Barbie is depicted as both sexism's victim and sexism's fault. She's dropped into a patriarchal world that the film acknowledges has a menacing, condescending quality -- but the film can't even have an underlying working theory of where this danger comes from, and who had the power to create this patriarchy in the first place, because that would require being critical of Mattel and capitalism.

And in the film, ultimately the real world with all its flaws and losses and injustices is still preferable to Barbieworld, because you get to have such depth of feeling and experience and you get a vagina, so how bad could really be? And hey, when you think about it, the Barbieworld is just an inversion of the real world, isn't it? A world with women in power is just reverse sexist, so it was justifiable for the Kens to want to take over, and what does it say that all things being equal Barbie still would prefer to leave behind her matriarchy and join the patriarchal capitalist world? That's the real world. Real world is struggle and sexism and loss and pain and capitalism and death and we must accept all of it but it's worth it..

It's not that I'm surprised the film's a clarion call for personal choice white feminism and consumer capitalism. I just expected the call to be a little more seductive or in any way coherent. I wanted to have frothy fun, and instead I was more horrified by the transparency of its manipulation than I was by even the most unsettling moments in Oppenheimer.

if i can be sincere and ramble for one moment, before the inevitable Barbenheimer backlash begins (it's coming, it might already be here, that's just how the internet works):

Last weekend was so fun. I'm at the movie theater pretty much every weekend because I love seeing movies on the big screen but the atmosphere last weekend was so palpably different and exciting and joyous and even if you were to take a cynical view of the entire experience ("it's just a capitalist toy commercial" etc.) it still doesn't really change the fact that people were just having fun. they were cheering, they were joking - half of my Oppenheimer audience were wearing pink but taking the movie very seriously. people were dressed up as Weird Barbie, Goth Barbie, there was a guy wearing a suit with a pink fedora and a pink tie - people were soberly discussing feminism and nuclear disarmament in the bathroom - it was all so strange and thrilling and lovely. it just felt like it was bringing everyone together in a way that was really wholesome - these days it's rare to see people come together like this in a positive way - people are so at odds with one another in every facet of modern life, and sometimes it feels like the only time we're all together on anything anymore is when we have to team up to tear something down (usually justifiably so) - and i don't really mean for this to sound too self-important or whatever, i know they're just movies - but... it's just nice to know we're still capable of all just having fun together? i know that's a corny sentiment, but, what can i say, i must speak my truth.

i had friends and co-workers who are not normally movie buffs texting me and talking to me at the office like - "brynn! did you see barbie?! did you see oppenheimer?! let's talk about it!" my head was spinning! my heart was happy!

it just sucks that it's coming right at the moment where hollywood seems to be on a very serious self-destructive path - i want them to learn that "event" movies do not necessarily need to mean marvel movies or reboots of fading franchises concepted and written by computer algorithms - you could argue that both of these movies are tied to existing IP: barbie the toy and christopher nolan movies are well known properties in and of themselves - but they're still wholly original movies with a lot on their minds and a lot to say - and regardless of whether you love or hate either film (i personally thought both were great but i've seen criticism of both that are totally valid!), the conversation around them has been really thoughtful and interesting (right-wing trolls excepted, obviously), which is not something you can really say about Fast X or Jurassic World or Quantumania or whatever.

anyway. movies are great! movies can be important! writers and actors deserve to be paid for all the love and effort they pour into these things! and i'm glad we all got to share this together. 💖

It’s so crazy people who attack 13 era Who from the left because they are all pro feminism till it comes to the way they speak about 13, they are all pro diversity until it comes to the cast and the struggles Chibs give the characters in 13 era Who, they are pro lgbtqia+ until it comes to Thasmin and any side characters in 13 era who.

They are all anti capitalist while supporting one of the biggest capitalist TV shows of all time, with the only other TV show probably being Star Trek. Obviously there’s movies but let’s be real few TV shows have produced as much consumer waste as Doctor Who when it comes to merchandising, capitalism is one of the reasons the show still exists today because it makes money back. And the over consumption with figures, let alone of random side characters from episodes or the 1500 Daleks variants most people probably don’t want, care about or need is insane, the show has created its own environmental hazards. So screaming at a man he’s an evil pro capitalist because one of his writers wrote a speech you couldn’t understand when you supported a TV show that produced more plastic that ended up in land fill than almost any other show is a bit rich. NMDs are shit but at least they have some consistency in their fucked up views. You can, dislike like certain aspects of the era but so many attacking it from the left come across just as unhinged in their hate they can’t even celebrate any of the steps forward and their rhetoric is no better than the NMDs. I get the point is to make themselves seem more virtuous than people who like the era but they are the only people who are thinking being horrible to that extent makes anyone virtuous.

*holds out a mic like a reporter* what’s your opinion on the current state of the mcu?

my opinion is that it should have died a long time ago and that everything they do is just abusing the corpse of a frankensteined thing that should have been left and buried a long time ago.

now, i am not that much up to date. i have stopped engaging with mcu after endgame, with the exception of watching the forst season of loki and wakanda forever and i think the eternals, which is good if its taken out of the wider context. my opinion is that the mcu is empty and soulless and a perfect indoctrination into individualist capitalism, warmongering patriarchy and the greedy capital-driven urge of mega corporations and billionaires to replace any sort of humanity with artificially, computer made caricatures of something that once moght have been called art.

i remember that article that tom hiddleston wrote as a response to i believe scorcese sometime way back in 2012, defending superhero movies. i am too lazy to find any refetences so whoever reads this can do their own research and correct me if im wrong anywhere, but i do believe he gave sir christopher reeve as an example. he wrote about the thruths that superheroes explore, how there is not one, but many. how it is the mundanity and the pure humanity that gets amplified and therefore explored and understood through the characters of superheroes, and it all brings us closer to the human experience. that article has stuck with me through all the years ive spent watching these movies and believing in the message - we are all superheroes in our own way. we all make choices, no matter on how much of a micro scale, to do the right thing. to protect, to shield, to fight against injustice. art is, after all, inherently political.

there is none of that in the mcu. ive seen it being chipped away piece by piece over the years, seen the ethical and moral dilemmas we all face in day to day life brought on the big screen to make us understand that there is always a choice, no matter how tough that choice may be, and that every single one of us is capable of both the biggest heroism and the most depraved atrocities, because we are, in essence only human; i have seen all that be replaced with american capitalist war and conquering propaganda, girlboss empty feminism and whatever the fuck those shit "christians" are now pandering and paddling as "family values".

the only god disney worships is obscene amount of money. the only value they respect is how little they can pay and how much they can exploit to get highest monetary value for their shitty cgi-ed recycled propaganda movies. they have turned every character into a twisted version of themselves, assigned value to only those characters who help them propagate their imperialistic capitalist world order, and are fine to spit out dozens of same content (because by now, it is content, devoid of any artistic ideation) and stomp on all that superheroes used to stand for and all that they used to teach us. they also do it in a most insidious way, giving token "other" characters, be it by their race or faith or sexual orientation or gender, while counting on the systematic lowering of critical thinking skills in people to ensure people are dazzled by the shallow representation and never look further away from the rainbow cgi and explosions to understand that mcu has become just another cog in the us imperialist war machine.

i lied. i looked up tom hiddleston's article because i think a shakespearean actor classically trained who quotes tolstoy for fun might have written a better punchline than i could write, in my despondent, disappointed and despairing state of seeing something i've loved with my whole heart be ruined ny human grief. i was right.

"Maybe playing superheroes isn't such an ignoble undertaking after all. "I still believe in heroes," says Samuel L Jackson's Nick Fury in Avengers Assemble. So do I, sir. So do I."

except. except i believe in real life superheroes. in the people protesting against the genocide in gaza. in the people on the ground risking their lives to tell us in the west, about sudan and palestine and uyghur muslims and armenia and congo, in a bid that we might turn our heads and watch the actual real life crises caused by the very imperialists who use these superhero movies to try and save their status quo of opression. i believe in a man who chose self-immolation over being party to the atrocity that is the us military. i believe in my friends in germany who go out every weekend and fight against the rising nazi regime. i believe in every person that has spoken out against the atrocities in the world, every person that has donated and educated and debated and wrote to the representatives and protested. and they still do it, and will continue to do it. these people are the real superheroes to me, and guess what? they are just humans. and those people comitting atrocities right now? they are just humans too.

this is what the superhero comics and movies that i used to watch taught me. that humans are those who have the capacity for the biggest heroism and most despicable atrocities both. we just have to choose. and that is not something that anyone will be able to learn from the mcu anymore.

ohhh you think the barbie movie is just a giant commercial. you think it has little to no important commentary and should be written off along with *checks notes* every other project to ever come out made by women that centers women that isn’t an absolutely perfect depiction of intersectional anti capitalist feminism. should we throw a party. should we invite ben shapiro

hi! :D i love your blog, so i wanted to ask, why do you think the barbie movie was bleak? i love hearing people's opinions on the film, and i thought that was an interesting adjective to describe it. you don't have to answer if you don't want to, ofc! hope you have a nice day!!! <3

oh you’re so sweet, thanks so much! ❣️ honestly i don’t know how intelligible this will be considering i spent a few days after watching the movie hashing out my thoughts with various friends and have mostly said my piece privately, but i thought it was bleak because it just… was…

like i did have fun because it is spectacularly produced & i guess in some ways it’s like oh, well it’s literally the BARBIE movie, what did you expect, but in other ways i was just like. oh my God, the faux criticism of barbie as a product, mattel as a company, and capitalism as a concept this film presents… i couldn’t stomach it! like how much of this are we supposed to believe is greta gerwig’s genuine artistic vision & how much of it is mattel indulgently financing a tongue-in-cheek critique of its own contributions to consumerism knowing it will only generate MORE of the same? i found myself reminded of a particular excerpt from chapter two of mark fisher’s capitalist realism: is there no alternative?, where he writes:

“…anti-capitalism is widely disseminated in capitalism. Time after time, the villain in Hollywood films will turn out to be the ‘evil corporation’. Far from undermining capitalist realism, this gestural anti-capitalism actually reinforces it… We’re left in no doubt that consumer capitalism and corporations… is responsible for this depredation… The film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity. The role of capitalist ideology is not to make an explicit case for something in the way that propaganda does, but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief… So long as we believe (in our hearts) that capitalism is bad, we are free to continue to participate in capitalist exchange.”

i was so reminded of this passage while watching the film that the first thing i did upon leaving the theater was go through my copy to locate it.

there were also a number of scenes i found, ironically, to convey rather insidious anti-feminist messaging despite the movie’s reputation as (and attempts to live up to the title of) a feminist flick, but i won’t go into those in detail because i’m sure there are people reading this who want to see this film & haven’t yet. in the same vein, i found it to be massively spineless/inauthentic/confused? in the stances it takes because, in an effort to appeal to an audience so broad as to include Basically everyone on the planet, it… doesn’t really commit to any of the stances it presents at all. a lot of the points it tried to make about womanhood, feminism, capitalism, motherhood, and the patriarchy either fell flat or were completely undone by the movie’s end, which is why i found it very funny that some people thought this movie was TOO feminist when i thought it was, frankly, toothlessly feminist.

the sets and costumes were beautiful, the acting was genuinely solid, i liked a lot of the referential pastiche-y moments that cropped up throughout it and i laughed lots at its cleverness because it WAS very witty, but when the credits began to roll i did think, um. maybe we’re in hell. i’m sure some people loved this movie, but sadly i really could not! also mattel now has a Toy cinematic universe planned which is um… great! and doesn’t make me feel a horrible sense of despair or anything

i saw that review on letterboxd of all the rhetorical questions for barbie and like… the more i think abt it, the more i’m certain that the review’s author fundamentally misunderstood the film. barbie land is not a utopia in the way that adults would think abt a utopia, like the author seems to imply… barbie land is canonically shaped by little girls playing with their dolls. that’s why we see a supreme court. thats why there are nobel prizes and authors and lawyers (also because that’s how the toys are marketed… would there be a mermaid in ur utopia??? there would be in mine!). that’s why barbie and ken don’t necessarily know what a boyfriend and girlfriend are “meant” to do (not to mention that the author’s assumption that sex is fundamental to a romantic relationship is problematic at best). that’s why barbie is indifferent to ken (i personally had the life size barbie and my sister had the barbie dream house—we had the working woman barbie game, i had the genie barbie gameboy game, we had countless barbie dolls; we didn’t own a single ken doll lol). barbie land is a world created by and for little girls as they play with their dolls (she says in a comment on the original post “don’t little girls play with their dolls in a sexual way?” and yeah, sure, some do. but i didn’t and i’m sure there are others who didn’t… just like there are some girls who completely mutilated their own dolls and made them into horrifying creatures)… that’s why stereotypical barbie starts having an existential crisis—because a grown woman begins to play with her doll again and starts reshaping barbie land… we, as the audience, are meant to understand this as an outlier to how barbie land is canonically created. the author also calls ken “crass” and “slovenly”… maybe after he builds the patriarchy in barbie land he becomes “crass” but i wouldn’t call him slovenly at any point in the film (i suppose this is just semantics tho).

also, please stop saying that barbie land is a reversal of the real world. it isn’t, even if that may have been the filmmakers intentions. again, barbie is indifferent to ken. she does not abuse him, she does not treat him like he exists to service her by cooking or cleaning or providing other favors for her… barbie does not oppress ken in the way that men oppress women in the real world (we have no idea if he owns property or where he lives and she doesn’t seem to particularly care—extremely different from the fact that women couldn’t have their own bank accounts or credit cards, get a mortgage on their own or divorce their husbands through no fault divorce until the second half of the 20th century in the us… within a lot of our mothers and grandmothers lifetimes!!!!) and it is a complete disservice to conflate or equate the two. we actually see barbie drawing clear boundaries around her time and space in regards to ken—this is not a reversal of misogyny as women and girls experience it in the real world, by any stretch of the imagination.

is the film perfect or revolutionary or radical? of course not. it was produced by major studios and corporations in hollywood. of course the barbie movie is a fucking commercial for barbie, like… to expect anything different is just extremely dumb on your part if u saw the trailer, saw the marketing, saw the interviews, bought a ticket, and sat ur ass in the theater, like be fuckin serious. but don’t do women and girls a disservice by discrediting the world and thoughts and ideas it could open up for them by seeing themselves be taken seriously on screen in a major summer blockbuster with stupid fucking questions because u want to feel superior to everyone else because YOU and ONLY YOU see through the capitalist marketing of lipstick pop girlboss feminism (especially when juxtaposed with the way the female characters are treated in oppenheimer, which we cannot help but compare to the barbie film with the viral marketing of barbenheimer).

I’m really annoyed by people calling the Barbie movie capitalist feminism and encouraging consumerism and unrealistic beauty standards. I was not one bit influenced to buy anything or wear makeup or wear elaborate clothing. If anything it poked fun at that? It encouraged EVERYONE, not just women to express their identities in the way they feel is best. It gave voice to so many of my feelings? I know material things aren’t inherently feminine or masculine and those concepts are social constructs. People are TOTALLY allowed to express their femininity because society has frowned down upon what is considered “feminine”. I spent my whole childhood and adolescence being and feeling shamed for my “feminine” (again, I KNOW it’s a construct) traits, so revisiting this at 21 was so beyond healing.

I also think it’s unfair to shame people for embracing “femininity” when things considered feminine are important to them. There are non capitalistic ways to get in touch with “femininity”, if anything it’s restructuring and finding an inner balance so we can think about gender in a healthier and more balanced manner. Women have been shamed long enough, don’t shame us for enjoying this, stop shaming women when we have been so heavily impacted by shitty standards, we’re not going to be perfectly socially conscious at all times. None of you are putting men down in this situation when they are the ones who benefit from the patriarchy the most. I 🩷 the Barbie Movie forever ! (TERFS are not welcome on this post!)

my actual review of the movie is basically: there are think pieces to be had criticizing this movie, OBVIOUSLY. it's a walking ad. it's capitalistic feminism. this movie will probably be hated among a lot of feminists because it is just so Clean. it's the kind of feminism majority of people can agree with, without any of the controversial stuff that hurts men's feelings. obviously! it's also insanely aware of itself in a way that feels really condescending and annoying at times, acting like it's above criticism because it acknowledges this stuff about itself. however, it is a fun watch, it's funny, the actors do really good. so i liked the movie, it was fun. i will also be whole heartedly agreeing with the haters of this movie.

I'm feeling that some ppl interpretate the [man hurt → fascist] like we can't hold men and patriarchy accountable for the process. like "oh if you didn't hurt him he wouldn't have descended into fascism in the first place". and i truly need these ppl to give a closer look into the processes and institutions.

bc it's not coincidental that these men go to fascism and conservative spaces and ideologies, it's not something that happens to happen. and i feel like a lot of ppl are blaming marginalized and oppressed groups for feeling enraged and not wanting to be around others that reproduce oppression in the first place, like everything wasn't a consequence of a system that constantly sustains individuality and those behaviors towards them (marginalized groups)

like, it's kinda obvious when you see the bigger picture. but on a smaller level, some responses to, for example, barbie and ken relationship in the recent movie, or snow and lucy gray. yeah it's funny "the boy was heartbroken and became a fascist" at first bc it's so absurd, but then when a bunch of ppl start to take that seriously i get... concerned.

the barbie movie had a clear premise, yes, and the mirroring of the real world to barbieland is there. no, kens shouldn't be invisible and maybe we shouldn't focus on a capitalist and liberal society in the first place, but ken relying on patriarchy isn't supposed to be taken on a simplistic way. if we take the mirroring aspect, the way ken take patriarchy is WAY different than the way women take counterculture movements, especially considering that feminism is about equality and not matriarchy. SO it's not to be taken on a superficial level, there's a reason why men go to patriarchy in the first place bc men does not grow in a women dominant world. the way women use feminism is not the same way ken used patriarchy. feminism should be a movement that also targets capitalism, and so yes (surprise) the approach on the movie was white and neoliberal.

although you can to use your access in information (internet) to go deeper into other ways to approach the topic, the hunger games one makes me much more concerned. because a lot was very clear. other things i think should've been more clear, like the way coriolanus despised lucy and sejanus very much in the book (we know why they didn't make that more obvious tho). but essentially i think there's more discussion to have in more complex ways in this story. bc it shows how one thing is connected to the other, how the stuff do not go alone.

the way he acted towards lucy and his subsequent response to her not complying to what he wanted makes it clear how he didn't descended into conservative ideology from nowhere. since the beginning he felt like the world owned him something, like he deserved more (and I'm not talking ab just his financial situation, although that is linked too). bc his father was a great army man, and they were from a dominant space before the districts dared to rebel, and so he had this thing being reaffirmed all the time - how he didn't had what he was supposed to have, this greatness. and ppl bully him for it, they make fun of him and that makes him feel more wronged. so when lucy gray does not accept what he wanted, when she realizes what their life would be and runs away, he goes to the thing that was there all along. it wasn't a new outside thing, it was present in his life since the beginning, it was there before him, and ppl would say that it's simply human nature so... why wouldn't he go along with it?

i think the barbie movie did a good job when they showed that barbie putting ken aside wasn't right and it came connected with her alienating herself from her existence. but the movie didn't show how everything is connected to the systems and the economic, social and cultural structures, the movie does not try to show how maintaining the system will continue to do harm, or how the hierarchy system it's the problem in itself. it goes so far into saying that "someday maybe the kens will have as much influence as women have in the real world" but does not provide the first step to dismantling the culture that has been fucking everything up since 16th century (at minimum) - again, very white and neoliberal.

but THG saga shows us how everything is linked. and so seeing ppl putting it on a simplistic way makes me very concerned and confused bc... IT'S THERE. and it's not subtext, it's not implied, IT'S THERE. OPEN AND EXPLICT AND WELL EXPLAINED IN 4 BOOKS/MOVIES.

anyway that was a big rant, thanks for coming to my tedtalk

Oh my god oh my god oH MY GOD

I was going to wait for the opportunity to rewatch Barbie so I could make sure my opinion was solidly based and not just vibes, but with all the nominations talk right now I am losing my god damn mind.

Barbie is a shit movie.

I've said before that I was extremely excited about the movie and genuinely enjoyed every single second of it but was absolutely completely and irrevocably disappointed with it. It was a bad movie for so many reasons, and I'm gonna start talking about it (despite it not being as fresh in my mind, unfortunately).

Barbie is an incoherent mess that has no idea what it actually wants to be;

50% of the movie is Barbie having an existential crisis, that turns into a quest, that turns into low self esteem issues, that turns into anti-capitalist and anti-establishment shenanigans, that turns into parental issues, that turn into feminist issues about societal expectations of womanhood, that turns into civil rights issues, that turns into absolutely nothing because not a single one of these issues is actually addressed in any sort of meaningful way, depends on handwaving solutions, if it bothers to give solutions at all, and is just a product low shelf bullshit feminism.

And then the other 50% of the movie is a meticulously crafted satirical metaphor for the treatment of women under the patriarchy, with intense emotional gravitas, unbelievably incredible acting, and a(n almost) perfect and complete narrative arc for the characters and the main conflict.

And yet, watching this shit show I am contantly asked by the narrative to take the first half of it seriously, but not the other half.

That's not how a movie works.

You cant make half a satire and half a hartfelt exploration of womanhood in post-modern society. It doesn't work like that. And the very simple fact is that only one of those narratives was actually well crafted and coherent, and it wasn't Barbie's. Don't even get me fucking started on that bullshit America Ferrera speach. I hate it. I hate so much. I was actively enraged while watching it. It was bullshit crowd pleasing half baked ramblings that literally had nothing to do with the godamn movie!!! The whole point, the whole Barbie storyline was about America's relationship with her daughter!!! What the fuck was that speach even about???!?!? At no point in the movie was the things she talked about an issue!!! I hate it. I hate. And I hate anyone who likes it. It's bad writing. It's bad storytelling. It's bad bad BADDD!!! The movie wanted it so much to be the emotional pinnacle, but it wasn't - I'm Kenough was. It's just so bad in so many ways that I can't even fully express here yet.

Look. There was a lot of potential in this movie, and so much love went into crafting it. But the bottom line is that this is a bad movie, created by a conglomerate for the sole purpose of selling products, while trying to be cool with kids and self critical without actually being critical (I can't even begin to form coherent thoughts on the mess that was in-movie Matel, so I just won't). This made the honest part of the movie a fucking mess, while leaving the metaphor close to a masterpiece, and yet I am expected to think otherwise for some reason unbeknownst to me.

This is a bad movie. Barbie is a bad character. Neither Greta Gerwig nor Margo Robbie deserve a nomination for this, no matter how talented they are, and they are.

Ryan Gosling is literally the only good thing about this movie. This was one of the greatest performances I have ever seen in my life. Award shows are absolutely pointless and stupid, but his is a worthy nomination nonetheless.

I really am sorry if you loved this movie. This is absolutely not about you. Like I said, I truly enjoyed watching it. I just don't think it has any merit beyond the Ken storyline.

The worst feminist defense of the barbie movie is that one post asking, "did you criticize marvel for being commercial? Did you criticize transformers?"

Because, YES. Not only am I personally a natural born hater of both those franchises, but entire careers have been formed and fed by criticizing those exact films for those exact reasons. "Marvel movies are just soulless, capitalist propaganda for toy companies, the Disney corporation, and the military industrial complex" is a cold and passé take at this point, at least in the circles criticizing the Barbie movie.

Secondly, though, why would you compare Barbie to these films? Why sell her short like this? What hurts about Marvel and Transformers films is that they are dedicated to a boring formula - one that priotitizes its marketability and a capitalist agenda before it prioritizes its worth as art. Based on the enthusiasm, weirdness, and excitement coming from Barbie's cast and crew, that probably is not the case here.

A much better comparison would be The Lego Movie: a toy commercial, a cash grab, but underneath that, an original idea and a great time. If you wouldn't criticize The Lego Movie for its commercialism, but you would criticize Barbie, that's more of a red flag to me. Unless Barbie turns out to be a shitty movie on it's own merits.

Finally, though, does anyone really want an "anticapitalist" Barbie movie? Do you really, genuinely want Mattel to try to make Barbie edgy and a comrade? Honestly, can you imagine how bad that would be? Barbie throws a doll in the garbage and looks directly into the camera as she says, "Life should be about experiences, not things." and the grumpy but kindly boss of a toy company agrees to pay his workers a million dollars a day. "I see now that our workers aren't playthings. I suppose we can compromise," he says, and they shake hands, and we also it's christmas time, and the real Mattel continues to do whatever evil shit Mattel does.

It would be awful. It would be every edgeless "edgy" girlbossified disney princess of the past decade that we all hate. Shut up about discourse, shut up about commercialism, shut up about feminism, you are wishing on a monkey's paw here.

blah blah blah nuances of awards and stuff but seriously ur gonna just say "the 1hr 50m ad for capitalist white feminism is the best movie of the year because people talked about it the most"