That's a lot to unpack. The false dichotomy of "live the propaganda or be ugly and weird" is entirely too common. Skeptical about Climate Change? You must want the world to burn. Don't use the correct pronouns? You must want transgendered people to commit suicide. Color blind society? You must want blacks to fail and fail hard. Nuance is entirely missing from such dichotomies. Very few humans can be described in such simplistic terms.
I kinda resonate with these examples. This is different, but when I was super liberal, I had a lot of republican friends and I'd just joke and say, "My parents went to Berkeley in the 60's: I'm lucky my name isn't Tree, but really all I want to do is force abortions on teenagers and pay lazy people to not work." It's just for fun and a way to say, I am your friend and can laugh at myself too....but sometimes people make leaps based on bias or maybe just, well, nothing.
I'm a conservative from the Bay Area who now lives in NC. I was introduced to my cousin's friend while visiting in Petaluma and he, not knowing I was a SF native, asked if everyone in NC was a "red-neck Nazi". My liberal cousin was horrified. I just laughed and told him that some of us were infiltrators from the "Left Coast" pretending to blend in but I stopped at wearing a sheet! After a few weeks of knowing each other he found we had more in common than he expected.
That's so funny. I'm from the Bay Area, too (now in Greenville, SC). I recently told someone that and he replied, "Oh, you're one of *those*." in a very friendly, fun, snarky way, and I replied, "Uh...no, I'm not." also in a very friendly way and we had a laugh about it. I don't have a political home anymore so I'm very open to what people have to say and what they believe...and then I just vote liberterian :).
Not having a "political home" has been a real shift for me over the past several years. I identify more as a libertarian but decided to leave the GOP and am now registered as "undeclared". It allows me to choose who I want to mess with in the primaries and then vote for in the general election, although I've always done that. I do love being from CA and then living in the South as it does confuse everyone. I'm not a typical conservative and that does come from having good parents and being raised in CA and good schooling, a little bit of private along with public all in CA. I really miss CA and always wanted to go home, but know now that God was getting me out just in time because I couldn't live there now. I don't know how my sister does, and almost all the conservatives my age have left for other states. I do love visiting, but a few weeks at my cousin's is enough then I need to come back to NC so I can be myself again and not fight to keep my mouth shut!
You are strong!! I don’t think I would be able to stomach either of those events. Great write up and observations. Have they discovered another planet where we can live? 😭😭
Heather. Heying. This post was so good I had to unpause my subscription to commend you. I want a T-shirt saying:
“throwing everything into the blender and hitting liquefy, just because you can, is both juvenile and dangerous.”
As for drag, it’s heartbreaking to me that GenZ young women regard blatantly ugly and misogynistic performances as “just meant to be fun” entertainment.
NPR’s Terry Gross once interviewed RuPaul years ago revealing him to be a condescending prick. Not a descriptor I use lightly. To him, the audience is a bunch of “rubes.”
Still, misunderstanding this “Book of Judges level” distortion of sexuality is spiritual blindness — way beyond the mere cognitive and emotional and social. Which is why the participants fail to grasp reality — as you so incisively observe.
As for Barbie, Greta started out as such a promising young filmmaker with Frances Ha and Ladybird. Your analysis (and one I read of her Little Women remake) gives me serious pause about her future.
Is it at all possible that she is trying (but failing) to make the point that — to the extent that men engaged in a zero sum sexual power struggle — it is a mistake for women to play the same game??
One of my daughters sort of sees the film communicating that — but maybe it’s because she’s been brought up that way. There is a lot of “girl power” in our household (of three female offspring). But none of it is to the exclusion of desiring a significant, permanent, mutual relationship with a man, as was the conventionally affirmed (healthy) aspiration, until recently.
I would love to discover that Gerwig is working at a deeper level than I have understood, that she is trying to subvert the very power struggles that she appears to be promoting. If so, though, why not allow for a world in which members of both sexes can have agency, and power? Instead, what we get is this: After Kendom falls and is returned to the Barbies, Ken asks Barbie if there can't be at least one male Justice on the Supreme Court. Barbie says no.
I find it very sad that in my own writing upon modern culture, the biggest destroyer of society ends up being feminist women rather than a more typical tyrant... Barbie saying no really feels like the biggest danger of the real cultural war of modernity.
"Still, misunderstanding this “Book of Judges level” distortion of sexuality is spiritual blindness — way beyond the mere cognitive and emotional and social. Which is why the participants fail to grasp reality — as you so incisively observe."
I am going to see Barbie this week with friends for the sole purpose of observing this social phenomenon. I want to form my own opinion, but I must say your article is among the best I’ve read. I and my movie going friends are 66 years old and we grew up with Barbie, but we’re over it before all the career Barbies came out. We will not be wearing pink, but like you, will be on an anthropology outing.
We went to see Oppenheimer, and the Barbie crowd was lovely to watch. They were beautifully dressed, happy, giggly, and the kids were pumped. But the moms and grandmas were the mostest. The pink outfits, lovely hair, high heels, amazing makeup and sunglasses, it was a real treat to see. Everyone was having fun. I do not intend to see the movie, I was not a Barbie doll fan, in fact we used my girlfriend's Barbie and Ken dolls to play war with. We were ruthless as kids.
Thanks for this article. From my perspective, they are obviously blue pillers, it is interesting to see that they see themselves completely differently.
Also true. It's a new cultural move—or maybe it's a long-established one?—to sell your status quo orthodoxy as if it's edgy heterodoxy. Don't Look Up didn't play well among those who haven't already accepted a lot of uninvestigated conclusions from the #FollowTheScience crowd.
Brave or maybe lavish of you to spend your time attending these events. I've been to the local drag show a couple of times. Like the comedy venues around town, the drag show is supposed to be funny. My funny must be broken. I haven't found either worth a laugh.
Sunday I went to Oppenheimer. I was glad to see that the theater was near capacity. Barbie was playing in a larger theater in the multiplex, and it had to be full. There too was a pink blizzard. 40 year old moms and their 20 yer old daughters taking selfies of the happening. Even a few young men (not sure they deserve that label) were in pink hair and accessories.
I frequently fail to imagine how strange this world I live in is.
I thought Oppy was pretty good and worth a discussion over beer and dinner- yet the discussion is all about Barbie.
I tried to go to Oppenheimer yesterday, but couldn't fit it in...my brain was too full of trying to make sense of the two events I wrote about here. Hopefully soon.
I saw Barbie this weekend with my husband and our GenZ daughters. Here’s my reaction along with some thoughts from our family conversation.
From the outset, I think Barbie employed “humor” to sometimes mask a rather mean-spirited commentary. The 2001 A Space Odyssey opening homage – in which young girls bash the heads of baby dolls against rocks – was so terribly clever and amusing to “sophisticated” audience members, I’m sure. But I do wonder why Gerwig, the mother of a newborn, did not recognize that the violent scene was more disturbingly dark than funny.
The same is true for “discontinued pregnant Midge.” I will grant that the actual doll was an odd concept, nevertheless Barbie’s humor conveys to its young female audience an ambivalent attitude (at best) toward motherhood.
My husband said he was impressed with the film’s set design and was good-naturedly amused by the guitar-playing scene as well as the scene involving “mansplaining” investments and computers.
But, he said, the film presents “the same ‘rights’ conversation” he has “heard his whole life” – as "important" as that has been. He would have liked Gerwig’s film better if it had explored the issues of death that began Barbie’s crisis and purpose that mournfully closes the credits in song.
One daughter thought dad had raised valid ‘eternal’ issues. But for her, the movie was about the temporal need for woman to have dignity, safety and sisterhood. I later remarked that it’s men who actually experience more loneliness. I could have added depression and suicide.
To me, Gerwig’s/Baumbach’s portrayal of men in Barbie, is its main flaw, despite Gosling’s winning performance. The pretty pink surface of this film is littered with over-the-top stereotypes that aren’t as witty as the filmmakers intend: all men have power, fragile egos and no self-awareness. All men objectify women. (Is nerdy Allen our only other choice?) Men prefer weak, dependent women. When men are present women become defenseless and easily deceived. Pluh-leeze.
One daughter contended that the men were “standing in for what it feels like to be a woman in a man’s world.” Maybe, but I thought the overall message was convoluted. At a pivotal moment after Ken has taken over Barbie World, he asked her “what does it feel like” to be displaced. She responded by crying. But what was she exactly in tears over?
The plot did not indicate that Barbie realized the folly of a zero-sum power struggle between the sexes. Instead, she proposed a plan to take it all back and restore the Barbies’ control with men being far more marginalized than women in Western society today. No Supreme Court positions for you, my fine fellow.
After her victory, Barbie comforts a distraught, rejected and homeless Ken. Barbie’s sage advice to Ken is to find himself. So later he is seen wearing a fuzzy tie-dye shirt proclaiming: “I am Kenough.” Apparently, Ken just needed Oprah-style pop psychology to sort himself out. We’re supposed to be tickled pink that Ken embraced a dumb feminine stereotype. Seriously?
Another daughter felt the movie was about “not depending on an (opposite sex) relationship to define you.” But what if that message, repeatedly overstated, diminishes the truly profound mutuality and self-understanding that differentiated sexes offer each other? Yet Ken was designed by Mattel to be a mere masculine “accessory.” Maybe he should be upset at losing his purpose within Barbie World? Such is the dilemma of trying to be logical (much less subversive) with ludicrous “source” material.
Predictably, Barbie offers the same old Disney-fied “identity crisis solution” of individual self-actualization with a dash of girl-power solidarity. Has this tired formula delivered on its promises of personal fulfillment? Hardly, as we now witness the toxic results of extreme expressive individualism, even to the point of certain males actually commandeering “women’s spaces.” Let's just say, the real culprits in this case are not Ken dolls.
Ken’s journey also speaks to the incoherence of this film even within the limits of a ‘rights’ paradigm. It is Ken who learns (and then unlearns??) that in the Real World you have to know things and accomplish things, for instance, to be a doctor. That Ken is informed of this fact by a female doctor undermines the argument about women not having rights.
Just as bad, Gerwig throws in the fantasy that women routinely seek to do all the jobs traditionally taken on by men, such as construction work. Funny how’s there is no “equal rights” conversation around women in mining and sanitation jobs. But no matter, as Barbie World is actually one of pretending not achieving. Quite ironically those “career Barbies” never sold that well. Maybe stereotypical Barbie was just more fun?
So, with the ‘rights’ argument hard to make for Western women, the goalposts have moved toward the psychological. Barbie feels distinctly, if vaguely, threatened in the Real World. Strangely, Barbie feminism has a touch of that old radical feminist vibe which insisted that “all men are rapists” and women should live separately. At the same time, our "liberated" porn saturated world has in fact created serious problems for both sexes.
Meanwhile Gerwig under-develops the mother/daughter reconciliation narrative in Barbie. This potentially interesting storyline gets summarized into one BIG speech about “women’s cognitive dissonance.” However, the speech fails to consider that women themselves contributed to this dissonance. “Having it all” was a false aspiration made up by women, for women. And clearly, the mom’s marriage to the ideal Beta-Bro that she doesn't respect leaves her unsatisfied.
Still, if there’s any subversive message in this film, it comes at the very end. Barbie – seeking to discover her Real World identity – visits the gynecologist. Is Gerwig suggesting that womanhood is based in biology? Even better, is she suggesting that it is overdue for secular feminists to come to terms with it, as Helen Joyce argues? Probably not. But when you’re as beautiful as Margo Robbie you can get away even with cultural heresy, a power such women have always welded.
We saw Oppenheimer Sunday also. I'm glad we had the historical knowledge before going and I'd like to see it again as I found it a bit difficult to follow at first with the time skipping around. I tend to be a more linear thinking person. Once I knew who the people were and the structure of the movie I followed along better. I liked it and found it was fairly well balanced in its presentation of the subject. A discussion over beer and dinner would have been nice, much better than Barbie and perhaps more timely, or not?
Potent line..."Pushing social norms is standard human practice. But throwing everything into the blender and hitting liquefy, just because you can, is both juvenile and dangerous." This is a fascinating juxtaposition, to explore these two cultural creations. I wasn't sure I could stomach the Barbie movie, but maybe it's important from the sociological point of view. Thank you Heather for your inquiry here. It's looking just where we need to look, and making explicit those assumptions in desperate need of examination. And for normalizing the process of challenging our assumptions. Hooray!!
God, this is written so damn well, you really nailed it here. The juxtaposition is stellar. I am almost 57 and hung out with drag queens I knew from my job during my first year of college. I got to be the resident fag hag for a bit, and these guys let me see their backstage magic. Also, I often got free drinks from the bartender, and wasn’t getting hit on by men, and I could dance how I wanted! (I was an attractive, busty, blue-eyed blonde, so this was quite a relief). My father was a professor of sociology, and my nature was to analyze all of the varied social experiences I had. At the time I was sad that gays had to basically be involved with a sub culture bar scene in order to meet anyone, and gay marriage wasn’t legal, even though my sense was that encouraging commitment and an admission to the greater culture would be beneficial for not only the gays, but society. The drag shows were a riot, very theatrical, and there was intense effort to look pretty, but still just a caracature of womanhood. Not one of the men who did this seemed confused about their actual sex, it was play, and competition, and actually enjoyable to witness. I watched through the years as it became cruder and clown-like all while being more and more accepted in the mainstream...
Growing up in SF Bay Area I agree that drag shows were more confined to being theatrical, fun, and about men dressing as women and making an effort to look beautiful, so much so that you couldn't tell they weren't. A couple years ago on a visit to my cousin's we went to a drag show that was closing in SF and it wasn't like I remembered, more along the lines of what Heather described. I even think Asia was in the show. It was a bit more crude and sexualized, and as has been reported in the media, not anything I'd have kids watch (but drag never was for kids). I think the acceptance by mainstream is what is wanted culturally, but not the ideal.
To say the very least. It’s gross to subject kids to what’s up with it now, kids should have time to be kids before dealing with that kind of confusing crap…
I grew up with Barbie, and played with them for a while, then lo and behold I grew out of it. I gave it to friends. I had fun because I was a kid. I have no intention of seeing the Barbie movie. Oppenheimer on dvd maybe. I didn’t understand the hype for Barbie, avoided it and every time it comes on tv I hit mute. I have absolutely no interest in Barbie, drag, trans, or current culture. But funnily enough I am not alone.
Maybe the best attitude about sexual deviancy is "Love the sinner, hate the sin." But we can't get there. If you hate the sin, you are accused of hating the sinner.
I am not sure "hating the sin" is the right attitude. Sinning is a part of human nature. To hate sinfulness is to hate humanity openly. However, to say that sinning is greater than virtues and things of that nature, that is to hate everything everywhere. Sinning is only something to be hated in so far as the person prefers their sinful nature over others imo. And that is something someone has to witness, not judge beforehand imo.
This is a complicated theological discussion, but I agree with Arnold King. I can have impersonal love for the person and know that some of their behavior is a sin based on the Biblical protocols of God. Sinning is a part of human nature but hating it doesn't mean I hate humanity, it means I hate the sin that is in the world. I happen to know the sin can be separated from the person, so that means sin can be separated from humanity. That's why Jesus Christ was born to a virgin since the sin nature is passed down through man, and He lived a life without sin, died on the cross as a substitute for us bearing all the sins of humanity, then rose again. And if a person believes that He gave that gift to us we have eternal life with Him and God. No one sin is less than or greater than another, what matters in the end is whether one has believed that Christ died in our place to pay for our sins to satisfy the justice of God. It's quite simple. (John 3:16)
I have a very different interpretation. I fully believe Jesus died so that we CAN be sinners. The problem with society, and modernity too, is that error, sin, and "being wrong" have become tools to oppress people as it always has. Just worse now than before. For me, the reason Christ died on the cross was so that even the sinners and failures can redeem themselves and find true faith whereas before that time, faith was only deemed out to the "worthy and most righteous".
I like to differentiate sin into two categories. The first being animalistc sin. Sins we commit because we are living beings with self serving desires and needs. We can't ever escape this sort of sinning. It's hardwired into us, but we can ignore our greed and self serving fashions for the sake of others. We can make the lives of others better. The other sin is a deathly sin. The sort of sinning that allows people to watch others die, suffer, have their things taken from them and not be disturbed by it. Whether that be because "the sex is too good" or "It's not my job to be concerned about the well being of the criminals"(some ideological grouping).
I am big advocate for fully embracing our animalistic natures and sins. Sin strong and sin proud because that's what it means to be alive. Self denial and the sort doesn't make heroes. "Sinners make the best saints" being a great tag from the music video of "God's gonna cut you down" by Johnny Cash. To deny sin=to deny reality. We are all sinners. That's why God sent Jesus because there's no such thing as saving us from our sins. It's just who we are.
Case and point, my mom's side grandma had a massive gambling addiction. It was only slots and the sort, petty gambling, but she did manage to spend a year's worth of income on gambling and her response to being corrected was "hey, your father does investments. that's gambling too." LOL. She was a sinner. She didn't ever really own up to it, but she was. But she had 7 kids and an alcoholic husband who really struggled with himself. She deserved a little latitude to lighten herself up as do we all.
But the big points is, she had a dream before she died. My mom asked her about it when she said "I was in Heaven", "Who else was there Mom?". My Grandma's response, a very agitated and annoyed "just me and God" as if the obvious idea was "who else would be there?" She's also the lady that said "if you make it..." under her breath to her friend when she said "see you in heaven". God works in mysterious ways. She was a harsh, judgmental lady with her own addictions and yet she was utterly certain heaven was her destination. She had her convictions. she stuck with them and was faithful to them. Perhaps "being faithful and devoted" is all that heaven is really about? The sad reality is that "sinfulness that taints heaven" is all inside of us and it can turn even the best people into the most hateful people. To the point "heaven" looks a lot more like hell for everyone else. God has shown his appreciation for harsh and ruthless retribution has he not? Perhaps we should better understand the killers in our society because some of them have a point to be heard, even if they go about it the wrong way.
There's a lot to respond to and I will. I've been up helping someone help someone else who will lose his place to live by Friday so needs money, food, a computer, grief counseling - so we're trying to find some resources fast. It's 0230 here in NC and I still need to do some research. (My great grandfather gambled away his money made from ranching in Montana. They eventually lost the ranch. Grandpa moved with his mom and sister to Oakland, CA to get a job in the shipyards so he could support them after his dad died before the depression. my dad was born there. I was born in SF, the place I dearly loved. Now, not so much. What they've done to that area of CA is a sin!) I will be back as this is an important conversation to me.
My students told me the Barbie movie was about patriarchy. I laughed out loud rhetorically asking if women still feel oppressed? I'm sure the answer from my class would be a resounding YES 🤯
Well, at the very literal level, Ken goes to the real world and discovers patriarchy. At one level, that's super cringey. At another, though, the movie does an amusing job of this. He sees men having power in the real world the way the Barbies do in Barbieland, and assumes that being a man is sufficient for success. It's a parody of patriarchy, but a funny one. Later, he admits to Barbie that once he discovered that patriarchy wasn't actually about horses, he lost interest.
So your students are right that the Barbie movie was about patriarchy, insofar as Ken's entire character arc is about the discovery of, elation about, and ultimate disappointment in, patriarchy.
I should probably force myself to watch this movie. I have a suspicion my students saw the literal patriarchy and missed its parody. Should watch and ask them! Thank you, Heather, for a very interesting overview of the movie and the drag Queens show.
Oh, YES, women DO feel oppressed because they have no idea of what oppression means and are told they are oppressed. Many of my friends that I grew up with are in California and they all believe women are oppressed. We grew up in the 50s, 60s, 70s - throughout the feminist era, and you'd think they'd feel we'd won that 'battle', but they still believe men are misogynistic, overbearing, repressive, and do not believe women have the ability to function in business or outside the home.
Yeah, insecure men are the most sexist. I mean you could equate all sexism as a compensatory system for insecurity... Nothing like complaining about your demons only so they can be born anew uwu
lol, how did you not know that women are actively being oppressed? (Just don't tell anyone that women are the ones doing it the most...) The female competitive market has really shown people why the public landscape is a bitch to deal with. As Heather said, "Women who benefited from the woman's rights movement are now advocating for women to take less rights" or something akin to that...
I was enlightened early on in my childhood by a mother who wouldn't allow me to feel oppressed by anything (she named me Deborah after the only woman Warrior Judge in the Bible after all proving that even in the horrific time of the actual patriarchs not all women were oppressed). I have always loved history so know of so many women who had great influence on the policy, decisions, and outcomes of major historical events, including Esther, Cleopatra, Queens Elizabeth, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Harriet Tubman, Corrie Ten Boom - women like that who weren't mentally or emotionally oppressed even though people or governments or laws may have tried to oppress their bodies or circumstances.
People don't understand that being limited financially, or educationally, or by where you can go, or what you can say out loud, or what you can wear, doesn't have to oppress your soul or what you think inside your head. It's a long essay, so tell your class to think and study history because there is NO BOX to put women into, they just have to find the stories and realize that in almost every situation women have great influence as to how men think, act, behave. After we raise them, educate them, teach them how to think and behave. Women are the ones who train up those "misogynistic, patriarchal oppressors" so we have the power to raise honorable, ethical, moral, kind, protective, diplomatic, educated, responsible, even-tempered, sober young men.
I agree society is really throwing a wrench into positive co sex dynamics. And you might be able to raise a good kid, but it's damn hard to make a good kid out of a man. I often just try to help women. I often find correcting/changing men is literally impossible lol. You can get into a good fight with many, but rarely a good discussion.
I think in some grander archetypal way (masculinity over femininity, rationality over emotions) is true, but for almost ALL animals, women come first. The laws of attraction and romance are such that women dictate the pace. A lot of what women did to change the world was done covertly and I think for good reason. Society was a disastrous place for those in charge and not being the center of attention was a lot safer. Not that that didn't invite a lot of spaces to just overdo it to the extreme of "this is to control you, not to keep you safer".
And I do think having society bereft you of your bodily goods is a damage to the soul. It also ruins what people have inside of their heads. I've seen many charming and good women feel incapable of expressing their more dominant and assertive sides because of social hazards and functions (I like a girl with a good mouth and fight in her haha). The harsh part being the fact we are social creatures. It's very hard to remind people of that sometimes in this "factual and intellectually prudent" world. Humans beings are still expressive animals and I refuse to rely on "the facts" to determine right from wrong lol. And I certainly am going to favor a living thing over the static and objective. Mere Christianity at work.
You possess a strength I could never muster attending these shows! I, too, was given numerous Barbie dolls by unknowing family members, and would proceed to mash their hands and feet with my dad's hammer when no one was looking.
It's been disappointing to see the vapid hype surrounding Barbie because I've been a fan of previous Greta Gerwig films (Lady Bird is a fantastic coming of age film about an artsy misfit teenage girl who self-fashioned that name in her senior year of HS, the tension between her and her mother, and her socioeconomic class struggles). The trailer for anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNi_HC839Wo
I've also really enjoyed other performances of Margot Robbie, like her role as Tonya Harding in the mockumentary black comedy I, Tonya.
"Problem is, it sneaks in a whole lot of wrong, and people accepting wrong things because pop culture sold it to them with popcorn and a coke, is part of how we got to the very dark place we are in today."
And this has been going on for a very long time. I have been an unintentional cultural anthropologist, having some 40 years ago (after the birth of our first child) almost entirely stopped watching television and movies. Neil Postman and Marie Winn had convinced me that the problem with the video format was not so much in content as in how the medium changes our brains. Today, I'm all the more convinced about the brain changes, but have also been blown apart by the content. When you spend 30 years outside of modern culture, and through the magic of binge watching can be brought up to date in just a few weeks, "shock" is an inadequate word. This very dark place has been long in coming, through small but inexorable steps.
My rods and cones have still not forgiven me for enduring that movie. Your analysis here is wonderful, and helped me see it through a much more nuanced lens, rather than the reactionary lens I was left with heading home from the theater. One thing that really rubbed me the wrong way was the depiction of Pregnant Barbie. She was the obvious outcast, even more so than Weird Barbie, and her cancellation, or being "discontinued" as they euphemistically put it, stood out like a sore thumb to me. And that's saying something, considering how blinding the neon and pink were.
I was never much into Barbies as a kid, but I did have three, all likely received as gifts. Now here's the most cringe-worthy memory I have of them: As in the movie (my daughter saw it with friends), I had that one Barbie that got the ill-fated hair cut. I made her be the maid to the other two that I had the sense to keep in more box-fresh condition. How horrible is that?? My parents are (retired) elementary school teachers, so while we were not poor, I certainly did not grow up in an upper-crust kind of environment. I wonder where I even absorbed the ideas behind that?
Reactions to Barbie are coded in our DNA!!! My mother bought my sister and I Midge dolls because she thought Barbie was a bad example. We used to tease my mother that she got us Barbie’s ugly friend and that’s why we had teenage issues with beauty. We laugh about it. Nobody in our family was harmed in anyway, but it was a clear message even as a 7 year old when my Midge came for Christmas. My mother never said anything about her motives until 30 years later. She said she didn’t want us to think we’d ever had boobs as big as Barbie. Her whole thing was about the boobs. It still makes me laugh.
I doubt I'll watch the Barbie movie, I hated them as a young girl. They always ended up being passengers on a makeshift raft flowing down a creek. I was a "Tomboy" but this year I was told by someone that all that meant was that I was and still am just a really a trans person. Being a lesbian didn't help either in their mind. They proclaimed that THAT proved their point even more so, that a lesbian is really just a women who hasn't realized they are really meant to be a man. Trans in women's sports, pronouns, being excommunicated from my liberal college friends......I'm tired. I'm neither liberal or conservative (currently an apparent industrialist pig because I own and operate a manufacturing company), I have no party or courage to let my voice come out (could be because I live in Portland). I'm a scientist yet many don't want to hear my views of #followthescience even if I too was caught up in it during COVID. Help! Feels like I'm drowning in isms. Can't even be a feminist anymore, especially if I don't believe in the one-winner mentality. Keep it up Heather, thank you.
That's a lot to unpack. The false dichotomy of "live the propaganda or be ugly and weird" is entirely too common. Skeptical about Climate Change? You must want the world to burn. Don't use the correct pronouns? You must want transgendered people to commit suicide. Color blind society? You must want blacks to fail and fail hard. Nuance is entirely missing from such dichotomies. Very few humans can be described in such simplistic terms.
I kinda resonate with these examples. This is different, but when I was super liberal, I had a lot of republican friends and I'd just joke and say, "My parents went to Berkeley in the 60's: I'm lucky my name isn't Tree, but really all I want to do is force abortions on teenagers and pay lazy people to not work." It's just for fun and a way to say, I am your friend and can laugh at myself too....but sometimes people make leaps based on bias or maybe just, well, nothing.
I'm a conservative from the Bay Area who now lives in NC. I was introduced to my cousin's friend while visiting in Petaluma and he, not knowing I was a SF native, asked if everyone in NC was a "red-neck Nazi". My liberal cousin was horrified. I just laughed and told him that some of us were infiltrators from the "Left Coast" pretending to blend in but I stopped at wearing a sheet! After a few weeks of knowing each other he found we had more in common than he expected.
That's so funny. I'm from the Bay Area, too (now in Greenville, SC). I recently told someone that and he replied, "Oh, you're one of *those*." in a very friendly, fun, snarky way, and I replied, "Uh...no, I'm not." also in a very friendly way and we had a laugh about it. I don't have a political home anymore so I'm very open to what people have to say and what they believe...and then I just vote liberterian :).
Not having a "political home" has been a real shift for me over the past several years. I identify more as a libertarian but decided to leave the GOP and am now registered as "undeclared". It allows me to choose who I want to mess with in the primaries and then vote for in the general election, although I've always done that. I do love being from CA and then living in the South as it does confuse everyone. I'm not a typical conservative and that does come from having good parents and being raised in CA and good schooling, a little bit of private along with public all in CA. I really miss CA and always wanted to go home, but know now that God was getting me out just in time because I couldn't live there now. I don't know how my sister does, and almost all the conservatives my age have left for other states. I do love visiting, but a few weeks at my cousin's is enough then I need to come back to NC so I can be myself again and not fight to keep my mouth shut!
You are strong!! I don’t think I would be able to stomach either of those events. Great write up and observations. Have they discovered another planet where we can live? 😭😭
I think we need to find a way to encourage the drag and pink clad crowd to populate another planet. I rather like this one.
True! 🤣😂💓🌸💞💗💕
Heather. Heying. This post was so good I had to unpause my subscription to commend you. I want a T-shirt saying:
“throwing everything into the blender and hitting liquefy, just because you can, is both juvenile and dangerous.”
As for drag, it’s heartbreaking to me that GenZ young women regard blatantly ugly and misogynistic performances as “just meant to be fun” entertainment.
NPR’s Terry Gross once interviewed RuPaul years ago revealing him to be a condescending prick. Not a descriptor I use lightly. To him, the audience is a bunch of “rubes.”
Still, misunderstanding this “Book of Judges level” distortion of sexuality is spiritual blindness — way beyond the mere cognitive and emotional and social. Which is why the participants fail to grasp reality — as you so incisively observe.
As for Barbie, Greta started out as such a promising young filmmaker with Frances Ha and Ladybird. Your analysis (and one I read of her Little Women remake) gives me serious pause about her future.
Is it at all possible that she is trying (but failing) to make the point that — to the extent that men engaged in a zero sum sexual power struggle — it is a mistake for women to play the same game??
One of my daughters sort of sees the film communicating that — but maybe it’s because she’s been brought up that way. There is a lot of “girl power” in our household (of three female offspring). But none of it is to the exclusion of desiring a significant, permanent, mutual relationship with a man, as was the conventionally affirmed (healthy) aspiration, until recently.
I would love to discover that Gerwig is working at a deeper level than I have understood, that she is trying to subvert the very power struggles that she appears to be promoting. If so, though, why not allow for a world in which members of both sexes can have agency, and power? Instead, what we get is this: After Kendom falls and is returned to the Barbies, Ken asks Barbie if there can't be at least one male Justice on the Supreme Court. Barbie says no.
I find it very sad that in my own writing upon modern culture, the biggest destroyer of society ends up being feminist women rather than a more typical tyrant... Barbie saying no really feels like the biggest danger of the real cultural war of modernity.
Ugh.
"Still, misunderstanding this “Book of Judges level” distortion of sexuality is spiritual blindness — way beyond the mere cognitive and emotional and social. Which is why the participants fail to grasp reality — as you so incisively observe."
Amen.
I am going to see Barbie this week with friends for the sole purpose of observing this social phenomenon. I want to form my own opinion, but I must say your article is among the best I’ve read. I and my movie going friends are 66 years old and we grew up with Barbie, but we’re over it before all the career Barbies came out. We will not be wearing pink, but like you, will be on an anthropology outing.
We went to see Oppenheimer, and the Barbie crowd was lovely to watch. They were beautifully dressed, happy, giggly, and the kids were pumped. But the moms and grandmas were the mostest. The pink outfits, lovely hair, high heels, amazing makeup and sunglasses, it was a real treat to see. Everyone was having fun. I do not intend to see the movie, I was not a Barbie doll fan, in fact we used my girlfriend's Barbie and Ken dolls to play war with. We were ruthless as kids.
Thanks for this article. From my perspective, they are obviously blue pillers, it is interesting to see that they see themselves completely differently.
Precisely. There is something very important here, in understanding how what looks like a homogeneous crowd to us, a mob even, views itself.
That movie Don't look up - I think it's also a blue pill movie although it's positioned as a red pill movie
Also true. It's a new cultural move—or maybe it's a long-established one?—to sell your status quo orthodoxy as if it's edgy heterodoxy. Don't Look Up didn't play well among those who haven't already accepted a lot of uninvestigated conclusions from the #FollowTheScience crowd.
Brave or maybe lavish of you to spend your time attending these events. I've been to the local drag show a couple of times. Like the comedy venues around town, the drag show is supposed to be funny. My funny must be broken. I haven't found either worth a laugh.
Sunday I went to Oppenheimer. I was glad to see that the theater was near capacity. Barbie was playing in a larger theater in the multiplex, and it had to be full. There too was a pink blizzard. 40 year old moms and their 20 yer old daughters taking selfies of the happening. Even a few young men (not sure they deserve that label) were in pink hair and accessories.
I frequently fail to imagine how strange this world I live in is.
I thought Oppy was pretty good and worth a discussion over beer and dinner- yet the discussion is all about Barbie.
I tried to go to Oppenheimer yesterday, but couldn't fit it in...my brain was too full of trying to make sense of the two events I wrote about here. Hopefully soon.
I saw Barbie this weekend with my husband and our GenZ daughters. Here’s my reaction along with some thoughts from our family conversation.
From the outset, I think Barbie employed “humor” to sometimes mask a rather mean-spirited commentary. The 2001 A Space Odyssey opening homage – in which young girls bash the heads of baby dolls against rocks – was so terribly clever and amusing to “sophisticated” audience members, I’m sure. But I do wonder why Gerwig, the mother of a newborn, did not recognize that the violent scene was more disturbingly dark than funny.
The same is true for “discontinued pregnant Midge.” I will grant that the actual doll was an odd concept, nevertheless Barbie’s humor conveys to its young female audience an ambivalent attitude (at best) toward motherhood.
My husband said he was impressed with the film’s set design and was good-naturedly amused by the guitar-playing scene as well as the scene involving “mansplaining” investments and computers.
But, he said, the film presents “the same ‘rights’ conversation” he has “heard his whole life” – as "important" as that has been. He would have liked Gerwig’s film better if it had explored the issues of death that began Barbie’s crisis and purpose that mournfully closes the credits in song.
One daughter thought dad had raised valid ‘eternal’ issues. But for her, the movie was about the temporal need for woman to have dignity, safety and sisterhood. I later remarked that it’s men who actually experience more loneliness. I could have added depression and suicide.
To me, Gerwig’s/Baumbach’s portrayal of men in Barbie, is its main flaw, despite Gosling’s winning performance. The pretty pink surface of this film is littered with over-the-top stereotypes that aren’t as witty as the filmmakers intend: all men have power, fragile egos and no self-awareness. All men objectify women. (Is nerdy Allen our only other choice?) Men prefer weak, dependent women. When men are present women become defenseless and easily deceived. Pluh-leeze.
One daughter contended that the men were “standing in for what it feels like to be a woman in a man’s world.” Maybe, but I thought the overall message was convoluted. At a pivotal moment after Ken has taken over Barbie World, he asked her “what does it feel like” to be displaced. She responded by crying. But what was she exactly in tears over?
The plot did not indicate that Barbie realized the folly of a zero-sum power struggle between the sexes. Instead, she proposed a plan to take it all back and restore the Barbies’ control with men being far more marginalized than women in Western society today. No Supreme Court positions for you, my fine fellow.
After her victory, Barbie comforts a distraught, rejected and homeless Ken. Barbie’s sage advice to Ken is to find himself. So later he is seen wearing a fuzzy tie-dye shirt proclaiming: “I am Kenough.” Apparently, Ken just needed Oprah-style pop psychology to sort himself out. We’re supposed to be tickled pink that Ken embraced a dumb feminine stereotype. Seriously?
Another daughter felt the movie was about “not depending on an (opposite sex) relationship to define you.” But what if that message, repeatedly overstated, diminishes the truly profound mutuality and self-understanding that differentiated sexes offer each other? Yet Ken was designed by Mattel to be a mere masculine “accessory.” Maybe he should be upset at losing his purpose within Barbie World? Such is the dilemma of trying to be logical (much less subversive) with ludicrous “source” material.
Predictably, Barbie offers the same old Disney-fied “identity crisis solution” of individual self-actualization with a dash of girl-power solidarity. Has this tired formula delivered on its promises of personal fulfillment? Hardly, as we now witness the toxic results of extreme expressive individualism, even to the point of certain males actually commandeering “women’s spaces.” Let's just say, the real culprits in this case are not Ken dolls.
Ken’s journey also speaks to the incoherence of this film even within the limits of a ‘rights’ paradigm. It is Ken who learns (and then unlearns??) that in the Real World you have to know things and accomplish things, for instance, to be a doctor. That Ken is informed of this fact by a female doctor undermines the argument about women not having rights.
Just as bad, Gerwig throws in the fantasy that women routinely seek to do all the jobs traditionally taken on by men, such as construction work. Funny how’s there is no “equal rights” conversation around women in mining and sanitation jobs. But no matter, as Barbie World is actually one of pretending not achieving. Quite ironically those “career Barbies” never sold that well. Maybe stereotypical Barbie was just more fun?
So, with the ‘rights’ argument hard to make for Western women, the goalposts have moved toward the psychological. Barbie feels distinctly, if vaguely, threatened in the Real World. Strangely, Barbie feminism has a touch of that old radical feminist vibe which insisted that “all men are rapists” and women should live separately. At the same time, our "liberated" porn saturated world has in fact created serious problems for both sexes.
Meanwhile Gerwig under-develops the mother/daughter reconciliation narrative in Barbie. This potentially interesting storyline gets summarized into one BIG speech about “women’s cognitive dissonance.” However, the speech fails to consider that women themselves contributed to this dissonance. “Having it all” was a false aspiration made up by women, for women. And clearly, the mom’s marriage to the ideal Beta-Bro that she doesn't respect leaves her unsatisfied.
Still, if there’s any subversive message in this film, it comes at the very end. Barbie – seeking to discover her Real World identity – visits the gynecologist. Is Gerwig suggesting that womanhood is based in biology? Even better, is she suggesting that it is overdue for secular feminists to come to terms with it, as Helen Joyce argues? Probably not. But when you’re as beautiful as Margo Robbie you can get away even with cultural heresy, a power such women have always welded.
This world is stranger than strange! You’re not the only one who feels this way as I’m sure you know.
We saw Oppenheimer Sunday also. I'm glad we had the historical knowledge before going and I'd like to see it again as I found it a bit difficult to follow at first with the time skipping around. I tend to be a more linear thinking person. Once I knew who the people were and the structure of the movie I followed along better. I liked it and found it was fairly well balanced in its presentation of the subject. A discussion over beer and dinner would have been nice, much better than Barbie and perhaps more timely, or not?
Potent line..."Pushing social norms is standard human practice. But throwing everything into the blender and hitting liquefy, just because you can, is both juvenile and dangerous." This is a fascinating juxtaposition, to explore these two cultural creations. I wasn't sure I could stomach the Barbie movie, but maybe it's important from the sociological point of view. Thank you Heather for your inquiry here. It's looking just where we need to look, and making explicit those assumptions in desperate need of examination. And for normalizing the process of challenging our assumptions. Hooray!!
God, this is written so damn well, you really nailed it here. The juxtaposition is stellar. I am almost 57 and hung out with drag queens I knew from my job during my first year of college. I got to be the resident fag hag for a bit, and these guys let me see their backstage magic. Also, I often got free drinks from the bartender, and wasn’t getting hit on by men, and I could dance how I wanted! (I was an attractive, busty, blue-eyed blonde, so this was quite a relief). My father was a professor of sociology, and my nature was to analyze all of the varied social experiences I had. At the time I was sad that gays had to basically be involved with a sub culture bar scene in order to meet anyone, and gay marriage wasn’t legal, even though my sense was that encouraging commitment and an admission to the greater culture would be beneficial for not only the gays, but society. The drag shows were a riot, very theatrical, and there was intense effort to look pretty, but still just a caracature of womanhood. Not one of the men who did this seemed confused about their actual sex, it was play, and competition, and actually enjoyable to witness. I watched through the years as it became cruder and clown-like all while being more and more accepted in the mainstream...
Growing up in SF Bay Area I agree that drag shows were more confined to being theatrical, fun, and about men dressing as women and making an effort to look beautiful, so much so that you couldn't tell they weren't. A couple years ago on a visit to my cousin's we went to a drag show that was closing in SF and it wasn't like I remembered, more along the lines of what Heather described. I even think Asia was in the show. It was a bit more crude and sexualized, and as has been reported in the media, not anything I'd have kids watch (but drag never was for kids). I think the acceptance by mainstream is what is wanted culturally, but not the ideal.
To say the very least. It’s gross to subject kids to what’s up with it now, kids should have time to be kids before dealing with that kind of confusing crap…
I grew up with Barbie, and played with them for a while, then lo and behold I grew out of it. I gave it to friends. I had fun because I was a kid. I have no intention of seeing the Barbie movie. Oppenheimer on dvd maybe. I didn’t understand the hype for Barbie, avoided it and every time it comes on tv I hit mute. I have absolutely no interest in Barbie, drag, trans, or current culture. But funnily enough I am not alone.
I didn't even know there was a Barbie movie until I just read Dr. Heying's essay: which was riveting (as always!).
Maybe the best attitude about sexual deviancy is "Love the sinner, hate the sin." But we can't get there. If you hate the sin, you are accused of hating the sinner.
I am not sure "hating the sin" is the right attitude. Sinning is a part of human nature. To hate sinfulness is to hate humanity openly. However, to say that sinning is greater than virtues and things of that nature, that is to hate everything everywhere. Sinning is only something to be hated in so far as the person prefers their sinful nature over others imo. And that is something someone has to witness, not judge beforehand imo.
This is a complicated theological discussion, but I agree with Arnold King. I can have impersonal love for the person and know that some of their behavior is a sin based on the Biblical protocols of God. Sinning is a part of human nature but hating it doesn't mean I hate humanity, it means I hate the sin that is in the world. I happen to know the sin can be separated from the person, so that means sin can be separated from humanity. That's why Jesus Christ was born to a virgin since the sin nature is passed down through man, and He lived a life without sin, died on the cross as a substitute for us bearing all the sins of humanity, then rose again. And if a person believes that He gave that gift to us we have eternal life with Him and God. No one sin is less than or greater than another, what matters in the end is whether one has believed that Christ died in our place to pay for our sins to satisfy the justice of God. It's quite simple. (John 3:16)
I have a very different interpretation. I fully believe Jesus died so that we CAN be sinners. The problem with society, and modernity too, is that error, sin, and "being wrong" have become tools to oppress people as it always has. Just worse now than before. For me, the reason Christ died on the cross was so that even the sinners and failures can redeem themselves and find true faith whereas before that time, faith was only deemed out to the "worthy and most righteous".
I like to differentiate sin into two categories. The first being animalistc sin. Sins we commit because we are living beings with self serving desires and needs. We can't ever escape this sort of sinning. It's hardwired into us, but we can ignore our greed and self serving fashions for the sake of others. We can make the lives of others better. The other sin is a deathly sin. The sort of sinning that allows people to watch others die, suffer, have their things taken from them and not be disturbed by it. Whether that be because "the sex is too good" or "It's not my job to be concerned about the well being of the criminals"(some ideological grouping).
I am big advocate for fully embracing our animalistic natures and sins. Sin strong and sin proud because that's what it means to be alive. Self denial and the sort doesn't make heroes. "Sinners make the best saints" being a great tag from the music video of "God's gonna cut you down" by Johnny Cash. To deny sin=to deny reality. We are all sinners. That's why God sent Jesus because there's no such thing as saving us from our sins. It's just who we are.
Case and point, my mom's side grandma had a massive gambling addiction. It was only slots and the sort, petty gambling, but she did manage to spend a year's worth of income on gambling and her response to being corrected was "hey, your father does investments. that's gambling too." LOL. She was a sinner. She didn't ever really own up to it, but she was. But she had 7 kids and an alcoholic husband who really struggled with himself. She deserved a little latitude to lighten herself up as do we all.
But the big points is, she had a dream before she died. My mom asked her about it when she said "I was in Heaven", "Who else was there Mom?". My Grandma's response, a very agitated and annoyed "just me and God" as if the obvious idea was "who else would be there?" She's also the lady that said "if you make it..." under her breath to her friend when she said "see you in heaven". God works in mysterious ways. She was a harsh, judgmental lady with her own addictions and yet she was utterly certain heaven was her destination. She had her convictions. she stuck with them and was faithful to them. Perhaps "being faithful and devoted" is all that heaven is really about? The sad reality is that "sinfulness that taints heaven" is all inside of us and it can turn even the best people into the most hateful people. To the point "heaven" looks a lot more like hell for everyone else. God has shown his appreciation for harsh and ruthless retribution has he not? Perhaps we should better understand the killers in our society because some of them have a point to be heard, even if they go about it the wrong way.
There's a lot to respond to and I will. I've been up helping someone help someone else who will lose his place to live by Friday so needs money, food, a computer, grief counseling - so we're trying to find some resources fast. It's 0230 here in NC and I still need to do some research. (My great grandfather gambled away his money made from ranching in Montana. They eventually lost the ranch. Grandpa moved with his mom and sister to Oakland, CA to get a job in the shipyards so he could support them after his dad died before the depression. my dad was born there. I was born in SF, the place I dearly loved. Now, not so much. What they've done to that area of CA is a sin!) I will be back as this is an important conversation to me.
sounds good.
My students told me the Barbie movie was about patriarchy. I laughed out loud rhetorically asking if women still feel oppressed? I'm sure the answer from my class would be a resounding YES 🤯
Well, at the very literal level, Ken goes to the real world and discovers patriarchy. At one level, that's super cringey. At another, though, the movie does an amusing job of this. He sees men having power in the real world the way the Barbies do in Barbieland, and assumes that being a man is sufficient for success. It's a parody of patriarchy, but a funny one. Later, he admits to Barbie that once he discovered that patriarchy wasn't actually about horses, he lost interest.
So your students are right that the Barbie movie was about patriarchy, insofar as Ken's entire character arc is about the discovery of, elation about, and ultimate disappointment in, patriarchy.
I should probably force myself to watch this movie. I have a suspicion my students saw the literal patriarchy and missed its parody. Should watch and ask them! Thank you, Heather, for a very interesting overview of the movie and the drag Queens show.
Oh, YES, women DO feel oppressed because they have no idea of what oppression means and are told they are oppressed. Many of my friends that I grew up with are in California and they all believe women are oppressed. We grew up in the 50s, 60s, 70s - throughout the feminist era, and you'd think they'd feel we'd won that 'battle', but they still believe men are misogynistic, overbearing, repressive, and do not believe women have the ability to function in business or outside the home.
Where do they find these men? Most men I meet are emasculated. Sometimes it actually makes them worse.
Yeah, insecure men are the most sexist. I mean you could equate all sexism as a compensatory system for insecurity... Nothing like complaining about your demons only so they can be born anew uwu
lol, how did you not know that women are actively being oppressed? (Just don't tell anyone that women are the ones doing it the most...) The female competitive market has really shown people why the public landscape is a bitch to deal with. As Heather said, "Women who benefited from the woman's rights movement are now advocating for women to take less rights" or something akin to that...
I was enlightened early on in my childhood by a mother who wouldn't allow me to feel oppressed by anything (she named me Deborah after the only woman Warrior Judge in the Bible after all proving that even in the horrific time of the actual patriarchs not all women were oppressed). I have always loved history so know of so many women who had great influence on the policy, decisions, and outcomes of major historical events, including Esther, Cleopatra, Queens Elizabeth, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Harriet Tubman, Corrie Ten Boom - women like that who weren't mentally or emotionally oppressed even though people or governments or laws may have tried to oppress their bodies or circumstances.
People don't understand that being limited financially, or educationally, or by where you can go, or what you can say out loud, or what you can wear, doesn't have to oppress your soul or what you think inside your head. It's a long essay, so tell your class to think and study history because there is NO BOX to put women into, they just have to find the stories and realize that in almost every situation women have great influence as to how men think, act, behave. After we raise them, educate them, teach them how to think and behave. Women are the ones who train up those "misogynistic, patriarchal oppressors" so we have the power to raise honorable, ethical, moral, kind, protective, diplomatic, educated, responsible, even-tempered, sober young men.
I agree society is really throwing a wrench into positive co sex dynamics. And you might be able to raise a good kid, but it's damn hard to make a good kid out of a man. I often just try to help women. I often find correcting/changing men is literally impossible lol. You can get into a good fight with many, but rarely a good discussion.
I think in some grander archetypal way (masculinity over femininity, rationality over emotions) is true, but for almost ALL animals, women come first. The laws of attraction and romance are such that women dictate the pace. A lot of what women did to change the world was done covertly and I think for good reason. Society was a disastrous place for those in charge and not being the center of attention was a lot safer. Not that that didn't invite a lot of spaces to just overdo it to the extreme of "this is to control you, not to keep you safer".
And I do think having society bereft you of your bodily goods is a damage to the soul. It also ruins what people have inside of their heads. I've seen many charming and good women feel incapable of expressing their more dominant and assertive sides because of social hazards and functions (I like a girl with a good mouth and fight in her haha). The harsh part being the fact we are social creatures. It's very hard to remind people of that sometimes in this "factual and intellectually prudent" world. Humans beings are still expressive animals and I refuse to rely on "the facts" to determine right from wrong lol. And I certainly am going to favor a living thing over the static and objective. Mere Christianity at work.
You possess a strength I could never muster attending these shows! I, too, was given numerous Barbie dolls by unknowing family members, and would proceed to mash their hands and feet with my dad's hammer when no one was looking.
It's been disappointing to see the vapid hype surrounding Barbie because I've been a fan of previous Greta Gerwig films (Lady Bird is a fantastic coming of age film about an artsy misfit teenage girl who self-fashioned that name in her senior year of HS, the tension between her and her mother, and her socioeconomic class struggles). The trailer for anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNi_HC839Wo
I've also really enjoyed other performances of Margot Robbie, like her role as Tonya Harding in the mockumentary black comedy I, Tonya.
"Problem is, it sneaks in a whole lot of wrong, and people accepting wrong things because pop culture sold it to them with popcorn and a coke, is part of how we got to the very dark place we are in today."
And this has been going on for a very long time. I have been an unintentional cultural anthropologist, having some 40 years ago (after the birth of our first child) almost entirely stopped watching television and movies. Neil Postman and Marie Winn had convinced me that the problem with the video format was not so much in content as in how the medium changes our brains. Today, I'm all the more convinced about the brain changes, but have also been blown apart by the content. When you spend 30 years outside of modern culture, and through the magic of binge watching can be brought up to date in just a few weeks, "shock" is an inadequate word. This very dark place has been long in coming, through small but inexorable steps.
My rods and cones have still not forgiven me for enduring that movie. Your analysis here is wonderful, and helped me see it through a much more nuanced lens, rather than the reactionary lens I was left with heading home from the theater. One thing that really rubbed me the wrong way was the depiction of Pregnant Barbie. She was the obvious outcast, even more so than Weird Barbie, and her cancellation, or being "discontinued" as they euphemistically put it, stood out like a sore thumb to me. And that's saying something, considering how blinding the neon and pink were.
I was never much into Barbies as a kid, but I did have three, all likely received as gifts. Now here's the most cringe-worthy memory I have of them: As in the movie (my daughter saw it with friends), I had that one Barbie that got the ill-fated hair cut. I made her be the maid to the other two that I had the sense to keep in more box-fresh condition. How horrible is that?? My parents are (retired) elementary school teachers, so while we were not poor, I certainly did not grow up in an upper-crust kind of environment. I wonder where I even absorbed the ideas behind that?
Reactions to Barbie are coded in our DNA!!! My mother bought my sister and I Midge dolls because she thought Barbie was a bad example. We used to tease my mother that she got us Barbie’s ugly friend and that’s why we had teenage issues with beauty. We laugh about it. Nobody in our family was harmed in anyway, but it was a clear message even as a 7 year old when my Midge came for Christmas. My mother never said anything about her motives until 30 years later. She said she didn’t want us to think we’d ever had boobs as big as Barbie. Her whole thing was about the boobs. It still makes me laugh.
I doubt I'll watch the Barbie movie, I hated them as a young girl. They always ended up being passengers on a makeshift raft flowing down a creek. I was a "Tomboy" but this year I was told by someone that all that meant was that I was and still am just a really a trans person. Being a lesbian didn't help either in their mind. They proclaimed that THAT proved their point even more so, that a lesbian is really just a women who hasn't realized they are really meant to be a man. Trans in women's sports, pronouns, being excommunicated from my liberal college friends......I'm tired. I'm neither liberal or conservative (currently an apparent industrialist pig because I own and operate a manufacturing company), I have no party or courage to let my voice come out (could be because I live in Portland). I'm a scientist yet many don't want to hear my views of #followthescience even if I too was caught up in it during COVID. Help! Feels like I'm drowning in isms. Can't even be a feminist anymore, especially if I don't believe in the one-winner mentality. Keep it up Heather, thank you.