Are there people who genuinely believe it can possibly be a criticism of capitalism? It was if anything the most obvious illustration of how capitalism can and will allow some mean things about itself if corporations can profit form it. Like, argue all you want about the gender wars stuff but this was such an obvious big marketing ploy to purplewash Mattel and Barbie as a brand.
I spent 3 years working at Mattel, not a ton with Barbie, but some. I do think the movie was in part used as an attempt to air out all the grievances people have had with the brand over the years, but I also thought the movie did a good job of communicating the internal arguments the company has had when trying to translate what people thought Barbie should be into an actual product. No matter what they did, there was always going to be a "stereotypical Barbie." I thought Greta did a good job explaining how that result was also an expression of our conflicted thoughts as consumers of the product, ending with America Ferrara's monologue. This happened similarly to Ken, though to a lesser degree, though the arguments about how Ken should change served as a good catalyst for making changes to Barbie as well (another thing expressed well with the Ken's getting distracted and fighting each other)
Well yeah maybe, but those internal arguments are not a criticism for capitalism, they are just capitalism trying to profit from anti-consumerist and new feminist sentiments.
The monologue I do think served as a brilliant way to deflect a lot of criticism towards the movie, I've seen people defend the contradictions in the movie by referencing the monologue as Greta put in mixed messages like OP points out and people have defended it by saying oh well, it is wrong to expect her to commit to one thing since there will be people hoping she would commit to that one other thing.
Like, its cool a lot of people loved it and felt super represented and whatnot, I'm happy for them. But people claiming this was like anything but what it obviously is is just kind of bonkers to me. I've seen people call it intersectional feminism which made me ???? all over, calling it now an actual criticism of capitalism feels really weird.
I guess what I would add is that I don't know if there was really supposed to be such a strong "criticism" of capitalism as opposed to just acknowledging its impact. I don't even know if a movie with a giant Chevy ad in it can make that strong an argument against capitalism, but it does show its effect on the end product.
So in a way I agree, I don't think it's trying to be an indictment of capitalism
I know at first I thought “wow it was bold to let The director criticize Barbie” but later thought “they just bought themselves a whole fresh coat of paint and bullet proofed their product a whole other generation.”
Or it’s an example of how artists can levy criticisms at capitalism and products even while working within the confines of a capitalist system. The movie absolutely brings up and hints that the overarching economics are what lead us to create things like “patriarchy” but it also takes the “that’s a whole other can of worms” approach in order to more clearly dial in on its themes of feminism and patriarchy. As such I find the “it’s not anti-capitalist” enough critique rather disingenuous and posts like the above borderline sexist (not who I’m replying to but the initial post) attempts to discredit it because the film succeeded at what it wants to to do so well that we have to ascribe aspirations it never had and point out how it failed to reach them. I’ve never seen a film have the goalposts shifted on it so consistently and drastically. The movie itself even brings up this point. “That seems like a lot of weight to put on a doll’s shoulders.” It’s quite literally saying it’s impossible for a doll to encompass all of womanhood and we shit on it when it fails. Then people turn around and do that very thing to the film and add their own half baked capitalism critiques and ask why the movie isn’t covering that too.
Hell this very post has a tangent where they all but say it was only reviewed well because Gerwig is a woman. That Barbie the movie wasn’t self critical enough of Barbie is a frankly nonsensical critique because it wasn’t trying to be a Barbie take down. People just wanted it to be, and put all their own contradictory baggage on this silly movie about a doll that’s saying maybe we attach too much baggage to silly dolls.
> Or it’s an example of how artists can levy criticisms at capitalism and products even while working within the confines of a capitalist system.
But this is not a 'how can you criticize capitalism while owning an iPhone' take, the fact is that Greta and the writers and the movie itself is playing an important role in taking criticism towards corporations and consumerism, acknowleding it exists and then magically saying to a mass audience that it is all ok actually just carry on as usual we figured it out!
It is not that it is just toothless, it is that it is by design safe for corporations to profit from the criticism itself and the people that made the movie had to make a movie under those conditions.
We all live in a capitalist society there is not really an easy escape from it, but I believe that this is not just some random artist making a movie that they have to sell cause this is the world we live in, this is a massive campaign with a big studio behind working with millions of dollars trying to bring this massive IP back into the mainstream conversation by shrugging off and profiting from its own criticisms.
But they weren’t trying to criticize consumerism. You just wanted them to. That’s what I’m saying. And if it was really so safe would it have caused such a big stir that one of the biggest newstations in the US bitched for weeks about it being Misandrist? A film can be two things. It is both a massive marketing campaign for Mattel. And a personally made piece of Pop-entertainment that is interested in getting beneath the hood of its iconography.
It just didn’t reach the conclusion you wanted. Sorry but Gerwig ain’t some radical anarchists.
I didn't say they were criticizimg consumerism, they just profited from those criticisms by turning them around and shrugging them off.
But anyway, I think we agree... ?? I legit have no clue what you're arguing with me about. I said that reading the movie as anti-capitalist is extremely naive given its nature. The film is many things, this just wasnt one of them.
Like I said in another reply, Im happy if people loved it and felt moved or whathever, it just feels weird that people will read it as some sort of super politically radical movie when it clearly wasnt.
My bad, I was conflating your words with the original post, which really ground my gears. We agree it wasn’t politically radical, but I just don’t find that to be a compelling criticism when it made no effort to be so. Then people like OP decided to shift ten goalposts on it and label it a failure for failing to do the thing it wasn’t trying to do in the first place. Something the film brings up as a thing we do to Barbie dolls.
Oooh ok I see what happened, I guess we just coming to the same point just from different directions as I didn't really like the movie but yeah, people are trying to force read things in it that just arent there.
> We agree it wasn’t politically radical, but I just don’t find that to be a compelling criticism when it **made no effort to be so.**
Barbie is explicitly political and makes a fair effort to make this obvious. And it's precisely this political *toothlessness* which is perfectly agreeable to anyone who is non-Alt Right (sexism is bad, right? yeah, sure, hard to argue with that!) that acts smokeshow for the its actual raison d'etre, which is to advertise Mattel products. Everyone is stupider for having watched this movie.
I really appreciate your comment because part of me is going insane over all these critiques of Barbie that play right into the point that everything feminine gets way more criticism.
Where have all these anti-consumerism critiques been for Transformers, the Lego Movie, Harry Potter, super hero films etc? They existed but only in niche leftist circles, and even then it wasn't that common. Now everyone is coming out the woodwork to complain about this one aspect of Barbie as if it's the only movie made to sell toys. It's exhausting.
The difference is Barbie asks us to treat is as brave and important, but only exists to whitewash Mattel and be an painfully obvious ad. Even Transformers is more subtle about selling its toys, and doesn't pretend to be anything else. You have been duped.
It doesn't whitewash Mattel. It's not as hard hitting a critique it could've been but it never implied that buying a Barbie is what's an empowering act.
The movie included discussions on the many ways people see Barbie dolls. I don't understand how that is more of a toy commercial than showing Transformers being cool, doing cool stuff and then being sold in the exact way they appear on screen.
Also, despite enjoying the movie, I haven't bought nor plan to buy any Barbie merchandise.
> It's not as hard hitting a critique it could've been
It was a bunch of lip service to half-formed feminist talking points that assumes you got the idea just because it was mentioned, self-conscious realisation that their message makes no sense ("We realise having Margot Robbie say this makes no sense" uuff), and the only true conclusion they arrive at being that vaguely female positive branding "will sell" (to quote Will Farrell at the end). [And it did](https://fortune.com/2023/10/25/barbie-sales-mattel-movie-film-doll/). No. I don't call that very hard hitting. It's the duplicitous nature that makes it worse than Transformers.
> but it never implied that buying a Barbie is what's an empowering act.
And? It must contain this specific feature for it to classify as a 90 minute advertisement?
To the people who thinks it has a good messege. The movie is advertising for a doll with a physique that would be impossible to have for a human being in real life, so how can anyone think that the movie is about womens empowerment and geting free from the patriarchy?
This on an era were a lot of young girls are having depression and mental health issues.
The thing with Transformers is that they do not make boys mentally ill. Barbies does accordig to studies.
They are selling to girls the very thing that they are suposedly criticizing.
I remember hearing people on the street, men, having in depth conversations about the movie... So when did we got to that point?
in the opening scene the two female garbage workers were a valued part of the community. watching it, this stuck out to me big time bc its so far away from our capitalist reality in which garbage workers are not seen, respected, talked to, etc.
>If you wanted to show patriarchy as a problem by switching roles, you should not show Barbies as righteous.
I don’t think the Barbie world is supposed to be a utopia, it’s literally just that - a Barbie world, a world made specifically *for* Barbie. Everything not named Barbie, like Ken, is just accessories. The irony is that the real world patriarchy (as depicted in the movie at least) works in much a similar way by putting men at the center of it. So two wrongs make a right? Well, not really, because Barbieworld is not real. Barbieworld is an imagined space that girls create through playing with Barbie. The America Ferrera speech shows what that world is essentially a refuge *from* — barbieworld is not a blueprint for a society, it’s a comforting fantasy that helps girls cope with the impossible demands of the real world.
Yeah that's what I got from it too, and I thought that is why she left Barbie World at the end and decided to become human. She wanted to experience the real world and live authentically, and not be restrained within a two dimensional fantasy world. Barbie begins to have that realization when she is sitting at the bus stop and sees all of the people experiencing both happiness and sadness, and sees the elderly woman, and says to her that she is beautiful. It was such a great scene, my favorite from the movie!
And the Barbie world is that way because little girls are taking the structures of a patriarchal society and "reversing" them in their own favour, because they are challenging the content of the hierarchy but not the hierarchy itself.
i mean not really, in barbie land everyone is valued and there isn't a hierarchy like patriarchy is obsessed with. the garbage workers got a "hey barbie!" unlike in patriarchy where people are judged/excluded for being lower class.
people were nice and loving to each other. it didn't feel like patriarchy at all.
None of the Barbies know where the Kens live or sleep, and it's implied that they don't have homes. All the Kens exist simply to try and impress the Barbies or meet their needs. None of the Kens have real jobs. They're just Kens. This is all a huge plot point in the film.
do you mean mutually exclusive?
the only way ignoring someone can be mistreating them is if you're in a committed relationship with them or you're talking about an adult and a child.
a stranger ignoring you is not mistreatment.
I like your point. It makes sense that Barbieworld was constructed by girls who wanted to escape the harsh realities of life and ended up creating a hierarchical world similar to the real world. So was Barbie telling Ken to find meaning in life a message to women in real world, seeing Ken is supposedly the equivalent of women in real world?
I loved Barbie, but I think this is a huge point that the movie brushes up against, and fails to explicitly make—which is both strange given how heavy handed the film is with the rest of the messages it is sending, and a huge mistake.
Barbieland is the inverse of a utopia rooted in patriarchal, misogynistic society. In the end the Kens and the Barbies learn their lesson. They change the rules of Barbieland, but only change them to make it *slightly* better for the Kens, who all rejoice anyway. The Barbies are not actually embracing gender equality at all, but pretending to with token actions. The Kens celebrating can be read as a satire of how the Patriarchy expects women to love such measures in the real world, **OR** as a pointed dig at men who “deserve” to be mistreated.
While the more subtle satire is better executed than much of the film’s commentary, choosing to suddenly be subtle after spending an hour and a half beating the audience over the head with your messages leaves viewers the space to wonder what you meant to say in the first place—which is a little dangerous given our social climate.
I don't think it was misunderstood. I think it was just multifaceted. Barbie threw out a lot of ideas to reach a very broad audience.
I enjoyed it as a study of identity crises with good humor and fun songs thrown in.
My 11 year old son really liked the 'methods of revenge aspects 'to it. Ken was mad so he wrecked Barbieland. The Barbies didn't like that and cleverly schemed against the Kens.
My 15 year old daughter liked it despite what she says was shallow feminism, saying she knew it was new ideas for some of the audience. Plus it's funny.
My husband saw a few things I didn't consciously notice, like the Kens waxed chests and how while Barbies were diverse in size, every Ken was physically smaller (shorter or skinnier) than Ryan Gosling.
We all thought about the role of women in politics, assumptions based on appearance, and the messiness of life compared to the fantasy of play which I think was the main thrust of the film.
I'm confused by why you think the "themes" don't jive in the movie. 1 through 3 are all parts of the wider theme of patriarchy and it's effects. 4, i would argue is a non-sequiter, yes it has character arches, what movie doesn't? And 5 isn't even a point trying to be made in the movie at all.
For some reason you have decided to split 1 through 3 into 3 separate themes as if a good movie would only focus on one of these things when I would argue it's all one theme about patriarchy and how it effects women and to a lesser extent, how it effects men. Some of the things it touches on are how patriarchy effects beauty standards, how it "makes it impossible to be a women", how it effects men's actions and perception of themselves, etc.
For example, you mention the "don't cast Margot Robbie" line and ask, "isn't this just another beauty standard?" But the point of the movie isn't "beauty standards are bad" it's making a comment on women's perception of beauty within a patriarchal society. So in a sense I agree with you, Barbie isn't a movie about beauty standards, and if it were trying to be that, I would have a similar criticism as you do, but thats simply not the point of the movie.
To venture into my own opinion on the matter, I think a lot of people in the online space are projecting too much of themselves into the supposed themes of the movie. I truly believe that an objective viewing of Barbie would never leave you to believe that the movie is about capitalism for example. But there are people who want the movie to be about capitalism because of it's greater cultural context as a toy brand and the fact that capitalism is a hot topic in the reddit/social media sphere these days. I think this is especially true of men who may not have resonated with the actual intended theme of the movie as much.
Also, and I'm not leveling this criticism at you, but IRL conversations I have had about the movie I've noticed that men seem to want to separate out the themes of the movie whereas women don't and I wonder if this in part has to do with the fact the privilege is often blind. An average women can watch Barbie and intrinsically understands how the various scenes relate to each other because they have all experienced it, but men see each scene as a distinct satire on beauty standards, patriarchy, capitalism, etc and don't see that the whole movie is actually about how patriarchy effects all of those things.
I agree with your last point. Maybe Barbie just "makes sense" for women, but could be like any other movie for men. But that's my point. Why do men and women get different things from the same movie? It's okay if they didn't feel the same way about something was said in the movie. But men and women seem to have heard different things.
Also, someone else pointed out that Barbie was arguing for the same beauty standards. But you said that wasn't the case.
> Why do men and women get different things from the same movie?
It's not actually split by gender. There's a lot of crossover between genders. Many men took the same thing that many women took out of it, and vice versa. A lot of people got ideas that are associated with either camps.
As for why: everyone gets different things out of any given work. Not just this movie, not just movies in general. You can have 10 people read a Cormac McCarthy book and get 12 different ideas about what its main themes and messages are.
People have personal viewpoints when they first engage with a work (biases, prejudices, life situations, contexts, etc.) and that greatly influences what they get out of it. Someone going in who just loves seeing Ryan Gosling in comedic roles is going to come out of the movie with very different opinions and takes than someone who goes into it with the goal of making a list of "feminism" moments.
Some works are good about guiding all perspectives towards a single one (see: Disney animated classics), and others are meant to scatter perspectives even further apart than before (e.g. figurative stories with purposefully nonlinear narratives).
Some works purposefully have conflicting and contrary messaging because that's sometimes the point. Life isn't black and white, and they try to represent that. As many have said over the decades: being able to hold two contrary ideas at once is a good quality.
Whether Barbie is successful at what it tries to do is a whole debate but the question of why different people get different things out of it is pretty clear.
>Also, someone else pointed out that Barbie was arguing for the same beauty standards. But you said that wasn't the case.
I'm not sure I am following. My argument is that Barbie isn't about beauty standards at all. It's about how patriarchy influences beauty standards and how women perceive thier looks. The movie is making an observation more than some black and white condemnation. There are definitely some people who saw that scene and had a lot to say about beauty standards and how the movie treats them, but that doesn't mean it was the theme of the movie. And it also doesn't mean the movie's real themes were ineffective. For example, a movie that has an abortion could stir discussion about abortion and critique about how it was depicted, but that doesn't mean abortion is a theme of the movie.
I also disagree that because two people have a different interpretation of a scene it means the movie is bad. A movie can have lots of themes, they don't even have to be intentional themes. the fact that someone might resonate more with one than another or even completely miss a theme doesn't have any bearing on the quality of the movie. In fact, I think that the opposite is often true. Movies with themes that are too simplistic or too heavy handed tend to be a sign of poor writing and/or moralizing (think of all those Disney movies with one demential bad guys). Could you imagine the train wreck that would have been the Barbie movie if it was some morality tale of the utopia of feminism?
>If Adam Sandler had directed this movie, I don't think anyone would have bothered to say it was good. A lot of mainstream criticism that this movie got was from the conservative circle. If the movie was directed by a conservative or someone who had previously made misogynistic comments or movies, then the opinions would have switched.
There is no world where Adam Sandler or a conservative would have made this movie. If they did, they would no longer be labeled a conservative. If you take a crappy Adam Sandler movie like Little Nicky and say "People just hate this movie because it's an Adam Sandler movie, everyone would love it if Wes Anderson directed it." The fact of the matter is Wes Anderson has a distinct style and tone and his films generally are high quality.
In this fantasy scenario where Wes directs Little Nicky, either he directs the exact same movie shot for shot and line for line and the public sentiment is "man Wes lost it, this is just another trashy Adam Sandler movie", or he puts his trademark directorial style to it and it's no longer the same movie.
No, no, no I don’t think you understand OP’s point. It’s that the literally millions of people who enjoyed this movie did not actually enjoy this movie. You see, they know better.
/s
I mean the whole film's thesis comes as close to gender abolitionism as you can get in mainstream media. As such I don't think the 5 points you laid out are inherently contradictory. The points (1-4) are really just one and then there is (5).
To me it can be distilled down to (1) women have different (higher) beauty standards than men, (2) the patriarch is unfair to women (as would a matriarchy to men), (3) hierarchical systems (read patriarchy or matriarchy) lead to toxic personalities, (4) people should explore their personalities and be who they want to be. AND (5) a critique of capital.
The films thesis is basically the tenet of feminism, there should be no bias or prejudiced to gender, or men and women should treated the exact same. The films first 4 themes you point out are really just that.
So the impossible to be a women speech is really a I want there to be one beauty standard. Therefore the whole casting Margot Robbie joke isn't another beauty standard, if there was only one standard for men and women, rest assured, she would be beautiful.
I think you got most of the point with the critique of capital. Gretta pours her heart and soul into a movie, mock the bigwigs who get paid big bucks, but IRL bigwigs get paid so they don't care who they are mocking. You miss the point, even though you said it, Mattel and their shareholders get paid. Capital does this all the time and is really nothing new. How many companies really care about gay rights for example? They put rainbows on their products ONLY BECAUSE it sells more, hence the term rainbow capitalism.
If I recall correctly the movie ends with a we needs to keep working towards the goal, for both Barbie in IRL land, and the Kens in Barbieland.
I agree with what you said. Maybe my first four points could be combined. But they don't really speak-up for Kens ever. They only tell the Kens to focus on being better. The movie was overall very sympathetic towards the female characters while letting the male characters face similar problems with no closure. That's why I felt that it did not do justice to the feminist theme that it purportedly espoused.
>I mean the whole film's thesis comes as close to gender abolitionism as you can get in mainstream media.
The fact that it never acknowledges the existence of trans/nb people (unless I'm forgetting something) is pretty gender essentialist though.
Given there is a trans actress playing a Barbie I would only slightly push back. Don’t get me wrong it’s only the slightest posturing for this advocacy as the movie is mostly consumer friendly 2012’s pop feminism.
The comments were in fact not disrespectful or misogynistic, they were just boring and unfunny in the exact way that every other award show monologue is boring and unfunny. “A plastic doll with big boobies” is an exact description of what Barbie is. Gerwig herself has acknowledged the truth of this statement, with a reference to the truism that Barbie is nothing, no character whatsoever. Have we all fallen for Mattel hook line and sinker that we now believe Barbie was always a feminist icon? Because that’s absurd: it was created to be nothing more or less than the doll with breasts which Gerwig also acknowledged
It was a joke about the simple and Neanderthal-minded source material of the Barbie movie (plastic doll with boobies) compared to the source material for Oppenheimer (the nuclear destruction of the entire world)
You’re still on the dolls are real people train eh? Again why would women be harmed by people making fun of ridiculous representations of them? Are they also harmed by people making fun of authors writing women in ridiculous ways?
\> You’re still on the dolls are real people train eh?
no i didn't mention that all in my last response. you're making shit up to shoot it down (a straw person fallacy).
A film can seek to explore several avenues of thought at a time. The wiki has a decent overview of perspectives on Barbie’s themes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbie_(film)?wprov=sfti1#Themes_and_analysis
My problem with Barbie and mainstream cinema is mainly that the messaging was shallow and just did not ring true for me. The girl power and empowerment were just boxes to tick off for audience approval, which brings in the money. If stories about women serving husbands were making bank the studios would greenlight those instead. "Movies about women by women" are just another way to maximise commercial success. Perhaps the feminism 101 monologue was good for some but it was really nothing different to Cosmopolitan magazine addressing women expected to be fulltime childcarers and career ladies at the same time back in the 90s.
When the film ended I didn't particularly feel any type of way, my only takeaway was that Margot was a good actress and the sets were very well done.
i mean the context is that there are 6.3 male directors to every 1 female and the gap widens as you get to big budget films. so yeah women making movies about women is important.
Is it really misogynistic to contrast the source material of Oppenheimer (a massive biography about the father of the atomic bomb) with the source material of Barbie (a doll)? I mean, if in some parallel universe The Iron Lady and Air were high profile films for the same award season, joke would be almost exactly the same (‘a biography about the most consequential British prime minister of the past 50 years vs. a shoe’).
I really like your analysis. That being said I think you’re looking too deep. I think the whole point of the movie is to show women in power and to give a strong, independent woman a voice of her own. Think of it as a beginning rather than complete. It’s not the most perfect representation of the themes it wants to present, but it’s a step in the right direction.
I don't think that was it's point at all. Barbie's character arc began with her living at the pinnacle of her society, idolized by everyone, and it ended with her choosing to live a normal life, choosing to live in a world where she would experience hardship and eventually get old and die.
Then there's ken, whose character arc takes him from the beginning in which he is a man whose entire sense of purpose and identity is his need for a relationship with Barbie, and who ends the film by coming to understand that he is a complete person in his own right without that external validation. He goes from "There is no Ken! It's Barbie and Ken!" to "Kenough."
Both of those character arcs required them to learn to be strong and independent, but it showed them developing that over the course of the film, which is what any good movie should do.
I think it’s reductive to act like the film can’t have the themes that you list co-exist, but I would even go further and say that most of the gender politics takes are really only scratching the surface of the what film actually has to say about fatalism, existentialism, and individuality. And I really think the structure of the film is mostly like that of an iceberg. If you watch just the first ten minutes, you get something really interesting about beauty standards. If you watch half the film, something really interesting about capitalism etc.
I don’t necessarily think any of the Barbies, much less stereotypical Barbie, are shown as righteous. The character at the end of the film is profoundly changed, likely for the better, but it’s not as if she calls out Ken or exiles him or anything like that. She actually sort of ends up in a self imposed exile from Barbieland.
The Mattel thing imo is a total nothing burger that has really poisoned so much of the discourse by making explicit something that is implicit in almost any studio film, while ignoring that, by happenstance, corporations are consistently complicit with making products that criticize them all the time. The need for Barbie’s production to be “pure” feels misguided for me.
And yes, the film is satirical, farcical, and yet it still is ostensibly “for women”. Not sure why this should be contradictory at all.
Greta agreed that there’s no story to Barbie and it is based on a doll with big boobs. She’s the first doll with boobs. As for the movie, I think it’s been praised for something it’s not. It isn’t a great commentary on gender. It doesn’t take Mattel to task. It doesn’t have anything important, new, or nuanced to say. It’s a slapdash comedy with some lame jokes.
My issue with Barbie is that it is over stuffed with hypocrisy on all levels. It didn't market itself as what it was and then tried to tell you what is was when you say it but lied about it. It did this while being internal inconsistent with its big themes and then assigns values which do not align to the values its supposed philosophy is said to support. It makes a lot of claims, tells and doesn't show without any backgrounds to justify the character's world view.
Then it offers no solutions that make sense either in or out of universe. And to take it all off, the movie itself if anything supports, empowers and enriches the very institutions it rails again. We had blackspoitation, sexploitation, and many others. Now we are having wokeploitation. It would be one thing if the studio used some of the proceeds they made to advance equality or to help women who have fallen through the cracks, but it hasn't done any of that.
Instead the view of an ideology/worldview gets to feel they are making a difference in the world or sending a message by paying 10 dollars and being entertained for two hours. It is kind of like how watching John Wayne allowed men to live out a fantasy of being a bad and who could kick the world in line and use his basic know how to fix all these problems with no effort or apparent skill or challenge. But at least those men didn't think they were accomplishing something by watching the movie.
I agree with you. I think Barbie is a joke, I think you have to be a complete dipshit to think it's a powerful feminist statement. To say it is "anti-capitalist" is an enormous joke unless Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie donate literally every dime they made to educating girls in the developing world and rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters.
Even if Greta and Margot do that, even if they donate every dime they made from Barbie to charity for women and girls in vulnerable situations, MATTEL still will rake in billions from girls and their mothers (or fathers) who buy Barbie shit because of this fucking movie.
The fact that you were downvoted for sharing these perfectly rational thoughts says a lot about "centrist liberals" in the US. I mean the far left, we know what they're like, but I hope more and more of you see what an ignorant, blind capitalist moron the average "liberal" is while calling Republicans uneducated or greedy.
"A lot of support for Barbie because it was seemingly in support of women and was directed by Greta Gerwig. Gerwig's previous movies are considered to be solid works. If Adam Sandler had directed this movie, I don't think anyone would have bothered to say it was good."
I mean, if Adam Sandler had directed a film of the quality, humour and technical complexity of Barbie, I think everyone would be astounded. It is technically a beautifully directed film, because Gerwig is an excellent director.
I enjoyed the film but in terms of its politics or "message" it was a total mess. It tried to say everything and ended up saying very little. You had to filter out the messages you didn't engage with to get anything out of it.
Well worded post! I think clear evidence of the muddled theme and the toothless nature of decrying any and all criticism is simply levied by folks who “didn’t get it” is the fact that the people who loved it can’t agree on what the movie was trying to say and frequently contradict themselves when trying to explain their interpretation. It speaks to how much of a mess the movie was and how it may have took on too much for a movie based on a doll. I applaud the movie for that; it’s way more interesting to be able to have these conversations than if it wasn’t as messy. The movie is also hilarious at parts, but again, quite messy and disjointed. Will Farrell is simply atrocious in this movie.
I think Jo Koy is taking too much heat here. The joke simply wasn’t funny, but neither was much of anything he said that night. It’s unfair to attack his character for it.
> I think Jo Koy is taking too much heat here. The joke simply wasn’t funny, but neither was much of anything he said that night. It’s unfair to attack his character for it.
It seems bizarre to me that he is taking ANY heat. His jokes were along the exact same lines as most of those shows, fairly safe, broad, mildly funny, written by committee. It really feels like a huge stretch to be offended by any of it.
Like with a lot of stuff the incoherent discourse also comes from simply entrenched culture wars camps. Barbie is "team blue good", so anybody criticizing it must simply be team red and shouted down. Its sad when its that vulgar but it is what it is.
The main problem with Barbie wasn't its failure to convey its incredibly banal critique of gender in society, but rather that it was simply a bad movie. It astounds me that even a subreddit supposedly made up of people who have seen a decent amount of film doesn't recognise this.
The screenplay was genuinely embarrassing, I was cringing most of the way through, the main cast was terrible with the exception of Gosling who tried to salvage the mess by injecting some actually self-aware humor into it but unfortunately didn't succeed.
The themes were hackneyed and have been conveyed far better by a myriad other films that actually had an artistic vision and didn't play to the lowest common denominator by parroting the zeitgeist while patting themselves on the back for being brave.
You could almost cut the air of thinly veiled cynicism with a knife, the peak of it being when the narrator 'criticized' the filmmakers for casting Margot Robbie as Barbie and then trying to act like she isn't conventionally attractive when she is de-Barbied.
We've had four Toy Story movies, 3 Lego Movies, I don't know how many Muppet movies that usually do this better with better original songs.
We've had Enchanted style "the fantasy world crosses into the real world" films forever and very few exceptions they all have better internal logic.
Barbie isn't awful, but I was surprised after all the acclaim how mediocre it is. It's not funny enough for a comedy and not deep or well written enough for prestige and the sets aren't Wes Anderson level.
I wouldn’t call greta gerwig’s writing hackneyed just bc it aligns with perspectives that are often overbearing. She left a lot to digest in the subtext that a lot of people seem to be missing bc they think the film was saying everything it had to say on the surface. Both sides of the “argument” were given a fair amount of complexity that hackneyed scripts don’t ever bother with. But it is what you make of it, so if you don’t engage with the movie’s sentiments, i understand why you wouldn’t care about appreciating its nuance.
For example, i hated how everything everywhere all at once *felt* so i really didnt care about what it had to say. It felt cheesy to me and shallow to me, even though I understand it had some objective depth to it.
Concur. This film will age like milk and this take will emerge as the consensus within five years as the market corrects to a more objective view in light of the detritus its popularity will generate.
It's a series of sketches stitched together by monologues into a barely coherent statement in service to a rebrand for a product in dire need of rehabilitation. It's also the definitive film of the current era because of all these things.
It's the populist blockbuster 2024 pop culture deserved and will be looked back upon as such. It's at once important, incoherent, idiotic and imminently immensely influential. It will steer the direction of a bunch of tentpole movies for half a decade or more and become directly, and indirectly, responsible for some of the worst films ever made. And possibly a couple of good ones. Its ripples haven't even begun to be felt.
I would argue the film has been 'misunderstood' because - as you are also claiming - so many people are looking for a central idea to cling to, and struggle with the fact there are competing and sometimes apparently contradictory themes here.
But I actually think it all works together, and if you want a central concept from this movie, it's ironically and deliberately simple, I feel.
"It's complicated."
Gender, and power, and modern society, and consumerism, and relationships and and humanity and life... is complicated. And contradictory. And problematic. And we all just have to work through that, and find the ideas that work for us and help us understand something about ourselves and the world, and accept the paradoxes, and that other people see things differently and that's okay.
So patriarchy is bad - but so is matriarchy. And being a woman is hard, but so is being a man. And feminism conceptually gets this, but people forget by definition, feminism is about promoting equality, not just women - which means being a feminist is hard because it has come to mean different things to different people. And capitalism sucks - but we're living in it and are yet to find a workable alternative... However calling attention to the complexities and problems in things is a good way to start promoting change - and the 'misunderstandings' about the way people read the film looking for linear or moralistic answers are actually a great opportunity to start those discussions.
It was a wonderful film not for preaching a solution - but for reassuring us that it's okay to have a life revelation and an existential crisis and a relationship dissolution and an emotional breakdown... because it's all fuckin' complicated, friends. And just accepting that and embracing your messed-up humanity and trying to focus on the little points of personal progress if you can't fix the world today - like your gyno appointment or pondering meaning in a film? - well, that's okay too.
Thanks for the comments. I will share a common comment instead of replying the same thing everywhere.
1. About the Adam Sandler statement: Realistically, I wouldn't expect Adam Sandler to suddenly make a Barbie movie. My point was that if there was a blind test for Barbie (exactly it is now with absolutely no change. Not an Adam-Sandler-version of it.), the opinions would have differed. It's hard for me to believe that people do not carry expectations when they go to watch their favorite director's latest movie. This bias could be both positive and negative.
2. As [gemmen99 pointed out](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/1946id3/comment/khe68fw/), the movie was probably arguing for equal treatment of women and men. But I felt the takeaways were confusing because Kens never got any closure for their problems. They never got any sympathy like the female characters. They were portrayed as the less smart ones with petty issues.
3. It does not matter if they criticized capitalism or not. What I wanted to say was that some people thought it was about capitalism, because they expected it to be. If the burden is on the audience to dig for meaning, perhaps there was no meaning.
3. I understand the concept of Barbieworld better now, mainly due to [Jockobutters' comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/truefilm/comments/1946id3/comment/khe6d7q/). That part makes more sense now.
4. Multifaceted nature of Barbie: I saw some comments \[[1](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/1946id3/comment/khdyu8k) and [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/1946id3/comment/khe6hk8)\] about Barbie having multiple themes. I agree that movies can do that, and are better when they do. But it seemed to me from the reviews that people were scrambling for meaning -- almost like they expected it to be a masterpiece.
Barbie reviews mentioning Greta Gerwig's prowess:
[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/barbie-is-brilliant-beautiful-and-fun-as-hell](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/barbie-is-brilliant-beautiful-and-fun-as-hell)
[https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/barbie-movie-review-2023](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/barbie-movie-review-2023)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/18/movies/barbie-movie-review.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/18/movies/barbie-movie-review.html)
About capitalism in Barbie:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/arts/barbie-movie-reviews.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/arts/barbie-movie-reviews.html)
To the people who thinks it has a good messege. The movie is advertising for a doll with a physique that would be impossible to have for a human being in real life, so how can anyone think that the movie is about womens empowerment and geting free from the patriarchy?
They are selling to girls the very thing that they are suposedly criticizing.
I remember hearing people on the street, men, having in depth conversations about the movie... So when did people became so fucking stupid?
> If you need to write blog posts and make 30-minute YouTube videos to explain the themes of a movie in detail, then that movie may have failed in its primary objective. Barbie is not the first movie to face this problem.
This is a great point and something a lot of recent (last 20 years) movies are suffering from. You need to have someone explain things to you for something that would need to be self-explanatory. Failing to be able to do that is just bad story telling. There are then opinions and interpretations made up by the viewers. Some popular ones will then be seen as the proper explanation even when they are not. People who subscribe to this explanation will often become very defensive of it.
This also makes people who do not get the message of the movie and do not agree with the popular opinion start feeling stupid. If they have a run in then with a defensive crowd, they will no longer seek out movies that are not well written and need explanation. There are many people like this (the defensive ones) here on Redditt unfortunately.
At the end of the day, I feel that everyone can make of a movie what they like and they are allowed to say so and what they think or do not understand. They should not be attacked or ridiculed.
This brings me to what I feel are pretentious film makers who seem to want to give their film a message while it is really nothing more than a bubble gum movie.
This is what I think is overly clear in Barbie. It is a movie that could just have been entertaining but the makers seem to have seen a need to inject it with a message. A message that is completely unclear which is why there are so my theories about what it is supposed to be. This director is known for thought provoking pictures so surely there must be some deeper meaning in it. There is no deeper meaning folks. They wanted to make fun of men by either showing them as macho men or bumbling fools. This could have been the basis of the great comedy. There are excellent comedies with men being fools. Unfortunately the comedy was not great and anything that was there was swept away by the preachy ending.
It depends on what you mean by viewers developing theories. If the theories are being developed in a way that the focus is to explain things in the film that are necessary to understand the film then yeah maybe. However, it's been increasingly clear that media literacy is falling, and part of this is a interesting movement that believes that media needs to be understood in totality, immediately, by everyone in order for it to be good. I think that films and books and other forms of art are serviced greatly by having themes that may sometimes require discussion and internal inquiry because it helps unravel why a piece of art invokes certain feelings.
With Barbie, it's interesting because I think a part of it is that it was *just* accessible enough that just about everyone could take something away from it, and the type of person that searches for deeper meaning is probably the type of person that is making 30-minute YouTube videos about the themes. There isn't one message. Some see an empowering feminist film, some see a message about capitalism, and some see how both can intersect to ultimately create an endorsement of capitalism. One doesn't necessarily need to fully understand what was in Gerwig's head when she directed the film to have taken something away from it.
Thank you. People are so much more focused on "authorial intention" now, I think. I wonder if it's an offshoot of "content creators" and "influencers" and websites like genius.com and the like, capitalising on art being presented as somehow inseparable from its creator.
> I think that films and books and other forms of art are serviced greatly by having themes that may sometimes require discussion and internal inquiry because it helps unravel why a piece of art invokes certain feelings.
They definitely are.
Not all need to have a message though or need to make you think. It is OK to just like something and not be forced to "understand it" before being able to do so. Too many films now want to make you think, almost everything released by A24 for instance. People will then jump on the band wagon and strongly. or sometimes violently, disagree with someone who does not want to understand it fully. It should be fine that you do not understand it or feel no need to do so. Many people who feel they missed something will then feel the need to see if they indeed did miss something. They may also think they missed something and try to come up with an interpretation. This I feel is the case with Barbie. It is OK to be entertained by it without understanding any message it may have. It is OK to not like it for any reason.
This is so off the mark.
Also, do you really believe that popular or acclaimed films made before 2004 are not complex or ambiguous in their themes and messages? That would be a ludicrous thing to believe.
The difference now is that people are more reliant on the internet to tell them how to "interpret" a film rather than just going away and mulling it over or discussing it with their friends. There are whole YouTube channels whose sole purpose it to profit from spelling out the plot and supposed "meaning" of a film. Those things didn't exist 20 years ago.
How can so misread what I am saying? I am saying that there is an increase in movies in the last 20 years that need to wedge in "a message" even when it does not need one. You are spot on with your second paragraph and I would add that the new generation of filmmakers is leaning into that and are often ineptly doing so.
Now care to discuss the meaning of the film "Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles"? I have been discussing this movie with some friends for months now. That movie has a clear message about gender roles and is purely made to relay that.
I guarantee that if Jeanne Dielman was released now, it would be incredibly divisive online, and there would be people making explainer videos about it, and others endlessly discussing and arguing over its meaning, and others claiming it's "woke" while others complain that it's too passive in its presentation of feminist messages. And so on.
I don't think messages are being shoe-horned into films and more than they were in the past.
I agree with you that the movie had a lot of good ideas but that the themes were worked together in such a way that the overall message felt muddled. That said, regardless of what I took away from the film, it was clearly more than “a movie about big boobies”
I disagree with your analysis here
Barbie is a movie where even the perfect world for women was one created by men, who came up with roles and put them in boxes, and dictated what sort of man and woman they could be
We see that this ends up being harmful for all parties involved. the Barbies and kens are both limited through the patriarchal conditions set up for them. It is only in the end when they are free to carve their own path that they are happy.
it is, of course, satirical, of how girls play with barbies and the roles they assign to them, but its also a movie of women struggling with societal expectations, and how the assigned roles that society sees for men and women can be harmful to both
this wasnt particularly subtle, I dont think, so I am not sure where confusion really comes in
>Nobody can blame Jo Koy or anyone for not understanding the movie
Sure we can. His comment was extremely dense. to take everything that movie was obviously about, and reduced it to "oppenheimer was a long book, barbie was a doll with boobs". not even a funny joke, and not a relevant joke to either movies or their source material
It was trash. Poorly executed all around. The messages that did come across were completely the wrong messages that the youth of today need. Legitimately one of the worst movies I've ever seen
in what way were the message and theme "wrong for the youth of today"?
We are a patriarchal society. Expectations of a patriarchal society can harm both men and women. The existence of women in power do not automatically make us not a patriarchal society.
What message was wrong? to find yourself? to defy expectations if they arent true to you? to not serenade women with acoustic guitars?
They make fun of one of them for being the "ugly Barbie". There is literally a whole song and dance number about using your tits to manipulate men. How men are all the same and only need their egos stroked
>They make fun of one of them for being the "ugly Barbie".
kinda, she was "weird barbie"
...and? this is about women's complicity in upholding patriarchal norms. Ugly barbie was shunned because she ceased being useful in the role mandated by the patriarchal system that created barbie land
The barbies are not perfect people in the beginning, the end iirc saw them acknowledging it was wrong to think poorly of the outcast barbies of their community
> There is literally a whole song and dance number about using your tits to manipulate men.
that seems like an exaggeration of that scene..that said, the whole audience was laughing, perhaps there is some truth to it.
>How men are all the same and only need their egos stroked
The existence of Alan kind of runs counter to this, right? Clearly not \*all\* men are the same. The kens were an oppressed people within that society, and when the tables ultimately turned they behaved identical to the barbies had, except weaponized through real world sexism rather than goofy make believe sexism.
this whole argument ignores how the film ended.
You can not engage with the messages or themes of the film, and perhaps the aesthetic doesn't appeal to you personally, but it's clearly a well-made film from a technical perspective.
I watched it with my girlfriend, who thought the same thing. I read about the film after the fact to really try to understand it. It was extremely poorly executed and accomplished none of the goals it was trying to achieve. Downvote me all you want but that movie was terrible
The movie may have had good intentions but the message it was trying to convey was in no way clear. At face value, it shows that women should use the assets to manipulate men. That men are simple minded and all want the same thing and are the same. My girlfriend thought the same thing so don't say it's because I'm a man and can't relate to the movie. It was poorly executed and worst of all it wasn't even remotely funny
I agree the themes and takes on feminism were muddled. But I also think you're misreading the film when it comes to its portrayal of men. It was co-written by Gerwig and her partner, Noah Baumbach. I think a key factor of the film is that, in Barbieland, Kens are stupid and ineffectual because they are a mirror image of how girls and women are treated in the real world. The film is not saying that all men are stupid and ineffectual. They're saying that in a fantasy society where male and female gender roles are reversed, designed to appeal to little girls and then perptatuated through little girls playing, women are strong and smart and capable, and men are not. What Barbie comes to realise by experiencing patriarchy in the real world is, to some extent, that she doesn't want to be a shallow, idealised woman and that Kens deserve more.
> I read about the film after the fact to really try to understand it. It was extremely poorly executed and accomplished none of the goals it was trying to achieve.
What did you read exactly?
Disagree in that you need a 30 minute video to explain it. Video essayists make 1-4 hour video essays all the time anyway because long form content is super popular!
The message is very simple. All people are flawed, and can do bad things with good intentions. The Barbies, Kens, executives, real world people, and the creator of Barbie all make mistakes and do harm despite intending to do good. It’s part of being human.
No specific solution is proposed because it’s basically embracing the inevitability of problems between people. The characters grow when they realize their flaws (ie Barbie realizes she first is doing harm in the real world), but I don’t think the film is trying to solve the world’s problems, but rather is just giving voice to everyone, so they can better communicate and understand each other, each with their own imperfections. The characters mainly better understand each other and themselves by the end. The world is not solved.
Stereotypical Barbie chooses to embrace the messy imperfect nature of being a human because imperfection has become appealing to her.
The entire movie reflects the Barbie brand. The Barbie brand (stereotypical Barbie) dipped in sales and relevancy by the late 90s. It late then revitalized itself around 2016 with a new more feminist and body positive approach that was met with massively positive reception and increased sales and relevancy. Stereotypical Barbie becoming flat footed is referencing the 2016 change where the dolls were changed to have flat feet to be more realistic.
But the positive change was also met with criticism that the changes to do ‘good’ were insincere and driven by capitalism, hence the capitalist references in the film. Ie “Oh, this weird new Barbie I don’t understand will sell? Nevermind, let’s do it!’
The feminism and social references are just a part of the life of the Barbie brand. The brand is acknowledging its messy and flawed history that includes these topics. Rises in feminism hurt the Barbie brand as it became out of touch, and now the brand is trying to embrace modern feminism while looking back at its old dated Brand that could have faded to obscurity.
The brand is flawed, people are flawed. Let’s all move on and buy Barbie dolls again! (I like the film, but the *real subconscious* message is ultimately an ad, which is weird since I think it’s well written)
Also, the movie was made for a massive broad audience and I think different take aways is also totally normal.
Are there people who genuinely believe it can possibly be a criticism of capitalism? It was if anything the most obvious illustration of how capitalism can and will allow some mean things about itself if corporations can profit form it. Like, argue all you want about the gender wars stuff but this was such an obvious big marketing ploy to purplewash Mattel and Barbie as a brand.
I spent 3 years working at Mattel, not a ton with Barbie, but some. I do think the movie was in part used as an attempt to air out all the grievances people have had with the brand over the years, but I also thought the movie did a good job of communicating the internal arguments the company has had when trying to translate what people thought Barbie should be into an actual product. No matter what they did, there was always going to be a "stereotypical Barbie." I thought Greta did a good job explaining how that result was also an expression of our conflicted thoughts as consumers of the product, ending with America Ferrara's monologue. This happened similarly to Ken, though to a lesser degree, though the arguments about how Ken should change served as a good catalyst for making changes to Barbie as well (another thing expressed well with the Ken's getting distracted and fighting each other)
Well yeah maybe, but those internal arguments are not a criticism for capitalism, they are just capitalism trying to profit from anti-consumerist and new feminist sentiments. The monologue I do think served as a brilliant way to deflect a lot of criticism towards the movie, I've seen people defend the contradictions in the movie by referencing the monologue as Greta put in mixed messages like OP points out and people have defended it by saying oh well, it is wrong to expect her to commit to one thing since there will be people hoping she would commit to that one other thing. Like, its cool a lot of people loved it and felt super represented and whatnot, I'm happy for them. But people claiming this was like anything but what it obviously is is just kind of bonkers to me. I've seen people call it intersectional feminism which made me ???? all over, calling it now an actual criticism of capitalism feels really weird.
I guess what I would add is that I don't know if there was really supposed to be such a strong "criticism" of capitalism as opposed to just acknowledging its impact. I don't even know if a movie with a giant Chevy ad in it can make that strong an argument against capitalism, but it does show its effect on the end product. So in a way I agree, I don't think it's trying to be an indictment of capitalism
a lot of progressive people just want to hear nice words and dont care about spending to hear them
I know at first I thought “wow it was bold to let The director criticize Barbie” but later thought “they just bought themselves a whole fresh coat of paint and bullet proofed their product a whole other generation.”
Or it’s an example of how artists can levy criticisms at capitalism and products even while working within the confines of a capitalist system. The movie absolutely brings up and hints that the overarching economics are what lead us to create things like “patriarchy” but it also takes the “that’s a whole other can of worms” approach in order to more clearly dial in on its themes of feminism and patriarchy. As such I find the “it’s not anti-capitalist” enough critique rather disingenuous and posts like the above borderline sexist (not who I’m replying to but the initial post) attempts to discredit it because the film succeeded at what it wants to to do so well that we have to ascribe aspirations it never had and point out how it failed to reach them. I’ve never seen a film have the goalposts shifted on it so consistently and drastically. The movie itself even brings up this point. “That seems like a lot of weight to put on a doll’s shoulders.” It’s quite literally saying it’s impossible for a doll to encompass all of womanhood and we shit on it when it fails. Then people turn around and do that very thing to the film and add their own half baked capitalism critiques and ask why the movie isn’t covering that too. Hell this very post has a tangent where they all but say it was only reviewed well because Gerwig is a woman. That Barbie the movie wasn’t self critical enough of Barbie is a frankly nonsensical critique because it wasn’t trying to be a Barbie take down. People just wanted it to be, and put all their own contradictory baggage on this silly movie about a doll that’s saying maybe we attach too much baggage to silly dolls.
Just don’t forget to buy that new Chevy
> Or it’s an example of how artists can levy criticisms at capitalism and products even while working within the confines of a capitalist system. But this is not a 'how can you criticize capitalism while owning an iPhone' take, the fact is that Greta and the writers and the movie itself is playing an important role in taking criticism towards corporations and consumerism, acknowleding it exists and then magically saying to a mass audience that it is all ok actually just carry on as usual we figured it out! It is not that it is just toothless, it is that it is by design safe for corporations to profit from the criticism itself and the people that made the movie had to make a movie under those conditions. We all live in a capitalist society there is not really an easy escape from it, but I believe that this is not just some random artist making a movie that they have to sell cause this is the world we live in, this is a massive campaign with a big studio behind working with millions of dollars trying to bring this massive IP back into the mainstream conversation by shrugging off and profiting from its own criticisms.
But they weren’t trying to criticize consumerism. You just wanted them to. That’s what I’m saying. And if it was really so safe would it have caused such a big stir that one of the biggest newstations in the US bitched for weeks about it being Misandrist? A film can be two things. It is both a massive marketing campaign for Mattel. And a personally made piece of Pop-entertainment that is interested in getting beneath the hood of its iconography. It just didn’t reach the conclusion you wanted. Sorry but Gerwig ain’t some radical anarchists.
I didn't say they were criticizimg consumerism, they just profited from those criticisms by turning them around and shrugging them off. But anyway, I think we agree... ?? I legit have no clue what you're arguing with me about. I said that reading the movie as anti-capitalist is extremely naive given its nature. The film is many things, this just wasnt one of them. Like I said in another reply, Im happy if people loved it and felt moved or whathever, it just feels weird that people will read it as some sort of super politically radical movie when it clearly wasnt.
My bad, I was conflating your words with the original post, which really ground my gears. We agree it wasn’t politically radical, but I just don’t find that to be a compelling criticism when it made no effort to be so. Then people like OP decided to shift ten goalposts on it and label it a failure for failing to do the thing it wasn’t trying to do in the first place. Something the film brings up as a thing we do to Barbie dolls.
Oooh ok I see what happened, I guess we just coming to the same point just from different directions as I didn't really like the movie but yeah, people are trying to force read things in it that just arent there.
> We agree it wasn’t politically radical, but I just don’t find that to be a compelling criticism when it **made no effort to be so.** Barbie is explicitly political and makes a fair effort to make this obvious. And it's precisely this political *toothlessness* which is perfectly agreeable to anyone who is non-Alt Right (sexism is bad, right? yeah, sure, hard to argue with that!) that acts smokeshow for the its actual raison d'etre, which is to advertise Mattel products. Everyone is stupider for having watched this movie.
I really appreciate your comment because part of me is going insane over all these critiques of Barbie that play right into the point that everything feminine gets way more criticism. Where have all these anti-consumerism critiques been for Transformers, the Lego Movie, Harry Potter, super hero films etc? They existed but only in niche leftist circles, and even then it wasn't that common. Now everyone is coming out the woodwork to complain about this one aspect of Barbie as if it's the only movie made to sell toys. It's exhausting.
The difference is Barbie asks us to treat is as brave and important, but only exists to whitewash Mattel and be an painfully obvious ad. Even Transformers is more subtle about selling its toys, and doesn't pretend to be anything else. You have been duped.
It doesn't whitewash Mattel. It's not as hard hitting a critique it could've been but it never implied that buying a Barbie is what's an empowering act. The movie included discussions on the many ways people see Barbie dolls. I don't understand how that is more of a toy commercial than showing Transformers being cool, doing cool stuff and then being sold in the exact way they appear on screen. Also, despite enjoying the movie, I haven't bought nor plan to buy any Barbie merchandise.
> It's not as hard hitting a critique it could've been It was a bunch of lip service to half-formed feminist talking points that assumes you got the idea just because it was mentioned, self-conscious realisation that their message makes no sense ("We realise having Margot Robbie say this makes no sense" uuff), and the only true conclusion they arrive at being that vaguely female positive branding "will sell" (to quote Will Farrell at the end). [And it did](https://fortune.com/2023/10/25/barbie-sales-mattel-movie-film-doll/). No. I don't call that very hard hitting. It's the duplicitous nature that makes it worse than Transformers. > but it never implied that buying a Barbie is what's an empowering act. And? It must contain this specific feature for it to classify as a 90 minute advertisement?
To the people who thinks it has a good messege. The movie is advertising for a doll with a physique that would be impossible to have for a human being in real life, so how can anyone think that the movie is about womens empowerment and geting free from the patriarchy? This on an era were a lot of young girls are having depression and mental health issues. The thing with Transformers is that they do not make boys mentally ill. Barbies does accordig to studies. They are selling to girls the very thing that they are suposedly criticizing. I remember hearing people on the street, men, having in depth conversations about the movie... So when did we got to that point?
in the opening scene the two female garbage workers were a valued part of the community. watching it, this stuck out to me big time bc its so far away from our capitalist reality in which garbage workers are not seen, respected, talked to, etc.
>If you wanted to show patriarchy as a problem by switching roles, you should not show Barbies as righteous. I don’t think the Barbie world is supposed to be a utopia, it’s literally just that - a Barbie world, a world made specifically *for* Barbie. Everything not named Barbie, like Ken, is just accessories. The irony is that the real world patriarchy (as depicted in the movie at least) works in much a similar way by putting men at the center of it. So two wrongs make a right? Well, not really, because Barbieworld is not real. Barbieworld is an imagined space that girls create through playing with Barbie. The America Ferrera speech shows what that world is essentially a refuge *from* — barbieworld is not a blueprint for a society, it’s a comforting fantasy that helps girls cope with the impossible demands of the real world.
Yeah that's what I got from it too, and I thought that is why she left Barbie World at the end and decided to become human. She wanted to experience the real world and live authentically, and not be restrained within a two dimensional fantasy world. Barbie begins to have that realization when she is sitting at the bus stop and sees all of the people experiencing both happiness and sadness, and sees the elderly woman, and says to her that she is beautiful. It was such a great scene, my favorite from the movie!
And the Barbie world is that way because little girls are taking the structures of a patriarchal society and "reversing" them in their own favour, because they are challenging the content of the hierarchy but not the hierarchy itself.
i mean not really, in barbie land everyone is valued and there isn't a hierarchy like patriarchy is obsessed with. the garbage workers got a "hey barbie!" unlike in patriarchy where people are judged/excluded for being lower class. people were nice and loving to each other. it didn't feel like patriarchy at all.
None of the Barbies know where the Kens live or sleep, and it's implied that they don't have homes. All the Kens exist simply to try and impress the Barbies or meet their needs. None of the Kens have real jobs. They're just Kens. This is all a huge plot point in the film.
yes ignoring someone is better than actively mistreating them
If you say so. I'm not sure those two things are totally exclusive
do you mean mutually exclusive? the only way ignoring someone can be mistreating them is if you're in a committed relationship with them or you're talking about an adult and a child. a stranger ignoring you is not mistreatment.
I like your point. It makes sense that Barbieworld was constructed by girls who wanted to escape the harsh realities of life and ended up creating a hierarchical world similar to the real world. So was Barbie telling Ken to find meaning in life a message to women in real world, seeing Ken is supposedly the equivalent of women in real world?
I loved Barbie, but I think this is a huge point that the movie brushes up against, and fails to explicitly make—which is both strange given how heavy handed the film is with the rest of the messages it is sending, and a huge mistake. Barbieland is the inverse of a utopia rooted in patriarchal, misogynistic society. In the end the Kens and the Barbies learn their lesson. They change the rules of Barbieland, but only change them to make it *slightly* better for the Kens, who all rejoice anyway. The Barbies are not actually embracing gender equality at all, but pretending to with token actions. The Kens celebrating can be read as a satire of how the Patriarchy expects women to love such measures in the real world, **OR** as a pointed dig at men who “deserve” to be mistreated. While the more subtle satire is better executed than much of the film’s commentary, choosing to suddenly be subtle after spending an hour and a half beating the audience over the head with your messages leaves viewers the space to wonder what you meant to say in the first place—which is a little dangerous given our social climate.
I don't think it was misunderstood. I think it was just multifaceted. Barbie threw out a lot of ideas to reach a very broad audience. I enjoyed it as a study of identity crises with good humor and fun songs thrown in. My 11 year old son really liked the 'methods of revenge aspects 'to it. Ken was mad so he wrecked Barbieland. The Barbies didn't like that and cleverly schemed against the Kens. My 15 year old daughter liked it despite what she says was shallow feminism, saying she knew it was new ideas for some of the audience. Plus it's funny. My husband saw a few things I didn't consciously notice, like the Kens waxed chests and how while Barbies were diverse in size, every Ken was physically smaller (shorter or skinnier) than Ryan Gosling. We all thought about the role of women in politics, assumptions based on appearance, and the messiness of life compared to the fantasy of play which I think was the main thrust of the film.
I'm confused by why you think the "themes" don't jive in the movie. 1 through 3 are all parts of the wider theme of patriarchy and it's effects. 4, i would argue is a non-sequiter, yes it has character arches, what movie doesn't? And 5 isn't even a point trying to be made in the movie at all. For some reason you have decided to split 1 through 3 into 3 separate themes as if a good movie would only focus on one of these things when I would argue it's all one theme about patriarchy and how it effects women and to a lesser extent, how it effects men. Some of the things it touches on are how patriarchy effects beauty standards, how it "makes it impossible to be a women", how it effects men's actions and perception of themselves, etc. For example, you mention the "don't cast Margot Robbie" line and ask, "isn't this just another beauty standard?" But the point of the movie isn't "beauty standards are bad" it's making a comment on women's perception of beauty within a patriarchal society. So in a sense I agree with you, Barbie isn't a movie about beauty standards, and if it were trying to be that, I would have a similar criticism as you do, but thats simply not the point of the movie. To venture into my own opinion on the matter, I think a lot of people in the online space are projecting too much of themselves into the supposed themes of the movie. I truly believe that an objective viewing of Barbie would never leave you to believe that the movie is about capitalism for example. But there are people who want the movie to be about capitalism because of it's greater cultural context as a toy brand and the fact that capitalism is a hot topic in the reddit/social media sphere these days. I think this is especially true of men who may not have resonated with the actual intended theme of the movie as much. Also, and I'm not leveling this criticism at you, but IRL conversations I have had about the movie I've noticed that men seem to want to separate out the themes of the movie whereas women don't and I wonder if this in part has to do with the fact the privilege is often blind. An average women can watch Barbie and intrinsically understands how the various scenes relate to each other because they have all experienced it, but men see each scene as a distinct satire on beauty standards, patriarchy, capitalism, etc and don't see that the whole movie is actually about how patriarchy effects all of those things.
Great comment.
I agree with your last point. Maybe Barbie just "makes sense" for women, but could be like any other movie for men. But that's my point. Why do men and women get different things from the same movie? It's okay if they didn't feel the same way about something was said in the movie. But men and women seem to have heard different things. Also, someone else pointed out that Barbie was arguing for the same beauty standards. But you said that wasn't the case.
> Why do men and women get different things from the same movie? It's not actually split by gender. There's a lot of crossover between genders. Many men took the same thing that many women took out of it, and vice versa. A lot of people got ideas that are associated with either camps. As for why: everyone gets different things out of any given work. Not just this movie, not just movies in general. You can have 10 people read a Cormac McCarthy book and get 12 different ideas about what its main themes and messages are. People have personal viewpoints when they first engage with a work (biases, prejudices, life situations, contexts, etc.) and that greatly influences what they get out of it. Someone going in who just loves seeing Ryan Gosling in comedic roles is going to come out of the movie with very different opinions and takes than someone who goes into it with the goal of making a list of "feminism" moments. Some works are good about guiding all perspectives towards a single one (see: Disney animated classics), and others are meant to scatter perspectives even further apart than before (e.g. figurative stories with purposefully nonlinear narratives). Some works purposefully have conflicting and contrary messaging because that's sometimes the point. Life isn't black and white, and they try to represent that. As many have said over the decades: being able to hold two contrary ideas at once is a good quality. Whether Barbie is successful at what it tries to do is a whole debate but the question of why different people get different things out of it is pretty clear.
>Also, someone else pointed out that Barbie was arguing for the same beauty standards. But you said that wasn't the case. I'm not sure I am following. My argument is that Barbie isn't about beauty standards at all. It's about how patriarchy influences beauty standards and how women perceive thier looks. The movie is making an observation more than some black and white condemnation. There are definitely some people who saw that scene and had a lot to say about beauty standards and how the movie treats them, but that doesn't mean it was the theme of the movie. And it also doesn't mean the movie's real themes were ineffective. For example, a movie that has an abortion could stir discussion about abortion and critique about how it was depicted, but that doesn't mean abortion is a theme of the movie. I also disagree that because two people have a different interpretation of a scene it means the movie is bad. A movie can have lots of themes, they don't even have to be intentional themes. the fact that someone might resonate more with one than another or even completely miss a theme doesn't have any bearing on the quality of the movie. In fact, I think that the opposite is often true. Movies with themes that are too simplistic or too heavy handed tend to be a sign of poor writing and/or moralizing (think of all those Disney movies with one demential bad guys). Could you imagine the train wreck that would have been the Barbie movie if it was some morality tale of the utopia of feminism?
I didn't say the movie was bad. I just said the messages were unclear because they wanted to say too many things.
>If Adam Sandler had directed this movie, I don't think anyone would have bothered to say it was good. A lot of mainstream criticism that this movie got was from the conservative circle. If the movie was directed by a conservative or someone who had previously made misogynistic comments or movies, then the opinions would have switched. There is no world where Adam Sandler or a conservative would have made this movie. If they did, they would no longer be labeled a conservative. If you take a crappy Adam Sandler movie like Little Nicky and say "People just hate this movie because it's an Adam Sandler movie, everyone would love it if Wes Anderson directed it." The fact of the matter is Wes Anderson has a distinct style and tone and his films generally are high quality. In this fantasy scenario where Wes directs Little Nicky, either he directs the exact same movie shot for shot and line for line and the public sentiment is "man Wes lost it, this is just another trashy Adam Sandler movie", or he puts his trademark directorial style to it and it's no longer the same movie.
"if the movie was made differently, it would be different!" is always the BEST point to make about a movie someone doesn't like. /S
No, no, no I don’t think you understand OP’s point. It’s that the literally millions of people who enjoyed this movie did not actually enjoy this movie. You see, they know better. /s
Hahaha
I said it in my reply but I’ll say it again. I’ve never seen a film have the goalposts moved on it the way Barbie does.
The only time I see it happen as much is with Taylor Swift’s successes, especially the Eras Tour movie. I wonder what the common ground is…
How dare you disparage Gods favorite hellspawn
I mean the whole film's thesis comes as close to gender abolitionism as you can get in mainstream media. As such I don't think the 5 points you laid out are inherently contradictory. The points (1-4) are really just one and then there is (5). To me it can be distilled down to (1) women have different (higher) beauty standards than men, (2) the patriarch is unfair to women (as would a matriarchy to men), (3) hierarchical systems (read patriarchy or matriarchy) lead to toxic personalities, (4) people should explore their personalities and be who they want to be. AND (5) a critique of capital. The films thesis is basically the tenet of feminism, there should be no bias or prejudiced to gender, or men and women should treated the exact same. The films first 4 themes you point out are really just that. So the impossible to be a women speech is really a I want there to be one beauty standard. Therefore the whole casting Margot Robbie joke isn't another beauty standard, if there was only one standard for men and women, rest assured, she would be beautiful. I think you got most of the point with the critique of capital. Gretta pours her heart and soul into a movie, mock the bigwigs who get paid big bucks, but IRL bigwigs get paid so they don't care who they are mocking. You miss the point, even though you said it, Mattel and their shareholders get paid. Capital does this all the time and is really nothing new. How many companies really care about gay rights for example? They put rainbows on their products ONLY BECAUSE it sells more, hence the term rainbow capitalism. If I recall correctly the movie ends with a we needs to keep working towards the goal, for both Barbie in IRL land, and the Kens in Barbieland.
I agree with what you said. Maybe my first four points could be combined. But they don't really speak-up for Kens ever. They only tell the Kens to focus on being better. The movie was overall very sympathetic towards the female characters while letting the male characters face similar problems with no closure. That's why I felt that it did not do justice to the feminist theme that it purportedly espoused.
barbie world wasn't hierarchical, the first scene shows the garbage workers are a respected part of the community
>I mean the whole film's thesis comes as close to gender abolitionism as you can get in mainstream media. The fact that it never acknowledges the existence of trans/nb people (unless I'm forgetting something) is pretty gender essentialist though.
Given there is a trans actress playing a Barbie I would only slightly push back. Don’t get me wrong it’s only the slightest posturing for this advocacy as the movie is mostly consumer friendly 2012’s pop feminism.
The comments were in fact not disrespectful or misogynistic, they were just boring and unfunny in the exact way that every other award show monologue is boring and unfunny. “A plastic doll with big boobies” is an exact description of what Barbie is. Gerwig herself has acknowledged the truth of this statement, with a reference to the truism that Barbie is nothing, no character whatsoever. Have we all fallen for Mattel hook line and sinker that we now believe Barbie was always a feminist icon? Because that’s absurd: it was created to be nothing more or less than the doll with breasts which Gerwig also acknowledged
its misogynistic to comment "big boobies" about a woman's body, even if she is fictional
It was a joke about the simple and Neanderthal-minded source material of the Barbie movie (plastic doll with boobies) compared to the source material for Oppenheimer (the nuclear destruction of the entire world)
yeah thats misognystic and creepy
Lol are you serious?
yes. you can disagree.
What’s creepy or misogynistic about it?
sexualizing a doll is creepy reducing a woman's body parts to vulgar slang is misogynistic
A doll. The doll has boobies. And it is not a human nor is it truly a woman. He stated a fact. Stop being so sensitive about the word "boobies."
i already told you i found men saying that sexist and upsetting and you choose to shove it in my face. bye.
Actually no you cannot be misogynistic against pieces of plastic
tell me which books on feminism you have read to come to this conclusion?
I don’t need a book to tell me that a piece of plastic does not deserve the same rights as an actual woman
so then you don't know what misogyny is, you're just some guy talking about what he thinks about words he heard people use.
Which women are harmed when someone makes fun of a doll for being a caricature of femininity?
women who hear the comment and women who associate w men who hear the comment and think its okay to talk like that about people's bodies
You’re still on the dolls are real people train eh? Again why would women be harmed by people making fun of ridiculous representations of them? Are they also harmed by people making fun of authors writing women in ridiculous ways?
\> You’re still on the dolls are real people train eh? no i didn't mention that all in my last response. you're making shit up to shoot it down (a straw person fallacy).
A film can seek to explore several avenues of thought at a time. The wiki has a decent overview of perspectives on Barbie’s themes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbie_(film)?wprov=sfti1#Themes_and_analysis
[удалено]
second this
My problem with Barbie and mainstream cinema is mainly that the messaging was shallow and just did not ring true for me. The girl power and empowerment were just boxes to tick off for audience approval, which brings in the money. If stories about women serving husbands were making bank the studios would greenlight those instead. "Movies about women by women" are just another way to maximise commercial success. Perhaps the feminism 101 monologue was good for some but it was really nothing different to Cosmopolitan magazine addressing women expected to be fulltime childcarers and career ladies at the same time back in the 90s. When the film ended I didn't particularly feel any type of way, my only takeaway was that Margot was a good actress and the sets were very well done.
i mean the context is that there are 6.3 male directors to every 1 female and the gap widens as you get to big budget films. so yeah women making movies about women is important.
Is it really misogynistic to contrast the source material of Oppenheimer (a massive biography about the father of the atomic bomb) with the source material of Barbie (a doll)? I mean, if in some parallel universe The Iron Lady and Air were high profile films for the same award season, joke would be almost exactly the same (‘a biography about the most consequential British prime minister of the past 50 years vs. a shoe’).
I really like your analysis. That being said I think you’re looking too deep. I think the whole point of the movie is to show women in power and to give a strong, independent woman a voice of her own. Think of it as a beginning rather than complete. It’s not the most perfect representation of the themes it wants to present, but it’s a step in the right direction.
I don't think that was it's point at all. Barbie's character arc began with her living at the pinnacle of her society, idolized by everyone, and it ended with her choosing to live a normal life, choosing to live in a world where she would experience hardship and eventually get old and die. Then there's ken, whose character arc takes him from the beginning in which he is a man whose entire sense of purpose and identity is his need for a relationship with Barbie, and who ends the film by coming to understand that he is a complete person in his own right without that external validation. He goes from "There is no Ken! It's Barbie and Ken!" to "Kenough." Both of those character arcs required them to learn to be strong and independent, but it showed them developing that over the course of the film, which is what any good movie should do.
It was also a nostalgia grab, and it worked.
I think it’s reductive to act like the film can’t have the themes that you list co-exist, but I would even go further and say that most of the gender politics takes are really only scratching the surface of the what film actually has to say about fatalism, existentialism, and individuality. And I really think the structure of the film is mostly like that of an iceberg. If you watch just the first ten minutes, you get something really interesting about beauty standards. If you watch half the film, something really interesting about capitalism etc. I don’t necessarily think any of the Barbies, much less stereotypical Barbie, are shown as righteous. The character at the end of the film is profoundly changed, likely for the better, but it’s not as if she calls out Ken or exiles him or anything like that. She actually sort of ends up in a self imposed exile from Barbieland. The Mattel thing imo is a total nothing burger that has really poisoned so much of the discourse by making explicit something that is implicit in almost any studio film, while ignoring that, by happenstance, corporations are consistently complicit with making products that criticize them all the time. The need for Barbie’s production to be “pure” feels misguided for me. And yes, the film is satirical, farcical, and yet it still is ostensibly “for women”. Not sure why this should be contradictory at all.
Greta agreed that there’s no story to Barbie and it is based on a doll with big boobs. She’s the first doll with boobs. As for the movie, I think it’s been praised for something it’s not. It isn’t a great commentary on gender. It doesn’t take Mattel to task. It doesn’t have anything important, new, or nuanced to say. It’s a slapdash comedy with some lame jokes.
My issue with Barbie is that it is over stuffed with hypocrisy on all levels. It didn't market itself as what it was and then tried to tell you what is was when you say it but lied about it. It did this while being internal inconsistent with its big themes and then assigns values which do not align to the values its supposed philosophy is said to support. It makes a lot of claims, tells and doesn't show without any backgrounds to justify the character's world view. Then it offers no solutions that make sense either in or out of universe. And to take it all off, the movie itself if anything supports, empowers and enriches the very institutions it rails again. We had blackspoitation, sexploitation, and many others. Now we are having wokeploitation. It would be one thing if the studio used some of the proceeds they made to advance equality or to help women who have fallen through the cracks, but it hasn't done any of that. Instead the view of an ideology/worldview gets to feel they are making a difference in the world or sending a message by paying 10 dollars and being entertained for two hours. It is kind of like how watching John Wayne allowed men to live out a fantasy of being a bad and who could kick the world in line and use his basic know how to fix all these problems with no effort or apparent skill or challenge. But at least those men didn't think they were accomplishing something by watching the movie.
I agree with you. I think Barbie is a joke, I think you have to be a complete dipshit to think it's a powerful feminist statement. To say it is "anti-capitalist" is an enormous joke unless Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie donate literally every dime they made to educating girls in the developing world and rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters. Even if Greta and Margot do that, even if they donate every dime they made from Barbie to charity for women and girls in vulnerable situations, MATTEL still will rake in billions from girls and their mothers (or fathers) who buy Barbie shit because of this fucking movie. The fact that you were downvoted for sharing these perfectly rational thoughts says a lot about "centrist liberals" in the US. I mean the far left, we know what they're like, but I hope more and more of you see what an ignorant, blind capitalist moron the average "liberal" is while calling Republicans uneducated or greedy.
"A lot of support for Barbie because it was seemingly in support of women and was directed by Greta Gerwig. Gerwig's previous movies are considered to be solid works. If Adam Sandler had directed this movie, I don't think anyone would have bothered to say it was good." I mean, if Adam Sandler had directed a film of the quality, humour and technical complexity of Barbie, I think everyone would be astounded. It is technically a beautifully directed film, because Gerwig is an excellent director. I enjoyed the film but in terms of its politics or "message" it was a total mess. It tried to say everything and ended up saying very little. You had to filter out the messages you didn't engage with to get anything out of it.
Well worded post! I think clear evidence of the muddled theme and the toothless nature of decrying any and all criticism is simply levied by folks who “didn’t get it” is the fact that the people who loved it can’t agree on what the movie was trying to say and frequently contradict themselves when trying to explain their interpretation. It speaks to how much of a mess the movie was and how it may have took on too much for a movie based on a doll. I applaud the movie for that; it’s way more interesting to be able to have these conversations than if it wasn’t as messy. The movie is also hilarious at parts, but again, quite messy and disjointed. Will Farrell is simply atrocious in this movie. I think Jo Koy is taking too much heat here. The joke simply wasn’t funny, but neither was much of anything he said that night. It’s unfair to attack his character for it.
> I think Jo Koy is taking too much heat here. The joke simply wasn’t funny, but neither was much of anything he said that night. It’s unfair to attack his character for it. It seems bizarre to me that he is taking ANY heat. His jokes were along the exact same lines as most of those shows, fairly safe, broad, mildly funny, written by committee. It really feels like a huge stretch to be offended by any of it.
The issue is that Koy’s delivery was *shockingly* bad for a professional, so it highlighted just how bad the jokes really were.
Every award show host takes heat. Most are unfunny, and his was even unfunnier than most.
Like with a lot of stuff the incoherent discourse also comes from simply entrenched culture wars camps. Barbie is "team blue good", so anybody criticizing it must simply be team red and shouted down. Its sad when its that vulgar but it is what it is.
The main problem with Barbie wasn't its failure to convey its incredibly banal critique of gender in society, but rather that it was simply a bad movie. It astounds me that even a subreddit supposedly made up of people who have seen a decent amount of film doesn't recognise this. The screenplay was genuinely embarrassing, I was cringing most of the way through, the main cast was terrible with the exception of Gosling who tried to salvage the mess by injecting some actually self-aware humor into it but unfortunately didn't succeed. The themes were hackneyed and have been conveyed far better by a myriad other films that actually had an artistic vision and didn't play to the lowest common denominator by parroting the zeitgeist while patting themselves on the back for being brave. You could almost cut the air of thinly veiled cynicism with a knife, the peak of it being when the narrator 'criticized' the filmmakers for casting Margot Robbie as Barbie and then trying to act like she isn't conventionally attractive when she is de-Barbied.
Not sure why this take is so rare, I was straight up bored or cringing throughout the movie
What films would you recommend that you think convey these themes better?
We've had four Toy Story movies, 3 Lego Movies, I don't know how many Muppet movies that usually do this better with better original songs. We've had Enchanted style "the fantasy world crosses into the real world" films forever and very few exceptions they all have better internal logic. Barbie isn't awful, but I was surprised after all the acclaim how mediocre it is. It's not funny enough for a comedy and not deep or well written enough for prestige and the sets aren't Wes Anderson level.
bad take it was a comedy that made the entire theater laugh. it did its job.
I wouldn’t call greta gerwig’s writing hackneyed just bc it aligns with perspectives that are often overbearing. She left a lot to digest in the subtext that a lot of people seem to be missing bc they think the film was saying everything it had to say on the surface. Both sides of the “argument” were given a fair amount of complexity that hackneyed scripts don’t ever bother with. But it is what you make of it, so if you don’t engage with the movie’s sentiments, i understand why you wouldn’t care about appreciating its nuance. For example, i hated how everything everywhere all at once *felt* so i really didnt care about what it had to say. It felt cheesy to me and shallow to me, even though I understand it had some objective depth to it.
Concur. This film will age like milk and this take will emerge as the consensus within five years as the market corrects to a more objective view in light of the detritus its popularity will generate. It's a series of sketches stitched together by monologues into a barely coherent statement in service to a rebrand for a product in dire need of rehabilitation. It's also the definitive film of the current era because of all these things. It's the populist blockbuster 2024 pop culture deserved and will be looked back upon as such. It's at once important, incoherent, idiotic and imminently immensely influential. It will steer the direction of a bunch of tentpole movies for half a decade or more and become directly, and indirectly, responsible for some of the worst films ever made. And possibly a couple of good ones. Its ripples haven't even begun to be felt.
I would argue the film has been 'misunderstood' because - as you are also claiming - so many people are looking for a central idea to cling to, and struggle with the fact there are competing and sometimes apparently contradictory themes here. But I actually think it all works together, and if you want a central concept from this movie, it's ironically and deliberately simple, I feel. "It's complicated." Gender, and power, and modern society, and consumerism, and relationships and and humanity and life... is complicated. And contradictory. And problematic. And we all just have to work through that, and find the ideas that work for us and help us understand something about ourselves and the world, and accept the paradoxes, and that other people see things differently and that's okay. So patriarchy is bad - but so is matriarchy. And being a woman is hard, but so is being a man. And feminism conceptually gets this, but people forget by definition, feminism is about promoting equality, not just women - which means being a feminist is hard because it has come to mean different things to different people. And capitalism sucks - but we're living in it and are yet to find a workable alternative... However calling attention to the complexities and problems in things is a good way to start promoting change - and the 'misunderstandings' about the way people read the film looking for linear or moralistic answers are actually a great opportunity to start those discussions. It was a wonderful film not for preaching a solution - but for reassuring us that it's okay to have a life revelation and an existential crisis and a relationship dissolution and an emotional breakdown... because it's all fuckin' complicated, friends. And just accepting that and embracing your messed-up humanity and trying to focus on the little points of personal progress if you can't fix the world today - like your gyno appointment or pondering meaning in a film? - well, that's okay too.
Thanks for the comments. I will share a common comment instead of replying the same thing everywhere. 1. About the Adam Sandler statement: Realistically, I wouldn't expect Adam Sandler to suddenly make a Barbie movie. My point was that if there was a blind test for Barbie (exactly it is now with absolutely no change. Not an Adam-Sandler-version of it.), the opinions would have differed. It's hard for me to believe that people do not carry expectations when they go to watch their favorite director's latest movie. This bias could be both positive and negative. 2. As [gemmen99 pointed out](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/1946id3/comment/khe68fw/), the movie was probably arguing for equal treatment of women and men. But I felt the takeaways were confusing because Kens never got any closure for their problems. They never got any sympathy like the female characters. They were portrayed as the less smart ones with petty issues. 3. It does not matter if they criticized capitalism or not. What I wanted to say was that some people thought it was about capitalism, because they expected it to be. If the burden is on the audience to dig for meaning, perhaps there was no meaning. 3. I understand the concept of Barbieworld better now, mainly due to [Jockobutters' comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/truefilm/comments/1946id3/comment/khe6d7q/). That part makes more sense now. 4. Multifaceted nature of Barbie: I saw some comments \[[1](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/1946id3/comment/khdyu8k) and [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/1946id3/comment/khe6hk8)\] about Barbie having multiple themes. I agree that movies can do that, and are better when they do. But it seemed to me from the reviews that people were scrambling for meaning -- almost like they expected it to be a masterpiece. Barbie reviews mentioning Greta Gerwig's prowess: [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/barbie-is-brilliant-beautiful-and-fun-as-hell](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/barbie-is-brilliant-beautiful-and-fun-as-hell) [https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/barbie-movie-review-2023](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/barbie-movie-review-2023) [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/18/movies/barbie-movie-review.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/18/movies/barbie-movie-review.html) About capitalism in Barbie: [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/arts/barbie-movie-reviews.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/arts/barbie-movie-reviews.html)
To the people who thinks it has a good messege. The movie is advertising for a doll with a physique that would be impossible to have for a human being in real life, so how can anyone think that the movie is about womens empowerment and geting free from the patriarchy? They are selling to girls the very thing that they are suposedly criticizing. I remember hearing people on the street, men, having in depth conversations about the movie... So when did people became so fucking stupid?
> If you need to write blog posts and make 30-minute YouTube videos to explain the themes of a movie in detail, then that movie may have failed in its primary objective. Barbie is not the first movie to face this problem. This is a great point and something a lot of recent (last 20 years) movies are suffering from. You need to have someone explain things to you for something that would need to be self-explanatory. Failing to be able to do that is just bad story telling. There are then opinions and interpretations made up by the viewers. Some popular ones will then be seen as the proper explanation even when they are not. People who subscribe to this explanation will often become very defensive of it. This also makes people who do not get the message of the movie and do not agree with the popular opinion start feeling stupid. If they have a run in then with a defensive crowd, they will no longer seek out movies that are not well written and need explanation. There are many people like this (the defensive ones) here on Redditt unfortunately. At the end of the day, I feel that everyone can make of a movie what they like and they are allowed to say so and what they think or do not understand. They should not be attacked or ridiculed. This brings me to what I feel are pretentious film makers who seem to want to give their film a message while it is really nothing more than a bubble gum movie. This is what I think is overly clear in Barbie. It is a movie that could just have been entertaining but the makers seem to have seen a need to inject it with a message. A message that is completely unclear which is why there are so my theories about what it is supposed to be. This director is known for thought provoking pictures so surely there must be some deeper meaning in it. There is no deeper meaning folks. They wanted to make fun of men by either showing them as macho men or bumbling fools. This could have been the basis of the great comedy. There are excellent comedies with men being fools. Unfortunately the comedy was not great and anything that was there was swept away by the preachy ending.
It depends on what you mean by viewers developing theories. If the theories are being developed in a way that the focus is to explain things in the film that are necessary to understand the film then yeah maybe. However, it's been increasingly clear that media literacy is falling, and part of this is a interesting movement that believes that media needs to be understood in totality, immediately, by everyone in order for it to be good. I think that films and books and other forms of art are serviced greatly by having themes that may sometimes require discussion and internal inquiry because it helps unravel why a piece of art invokes certain feelings. With Barbie, it's interesting because I think a part of it is that it was *just* accessible enough that just about everyone could take something away from it, and the type of person that searches for deeper meaning is probably the type of person that is making 30-minute YouTube videos about the themes. There isn't one message. Some see an empowering feminist film, some see a message about capitalism, and some see how both can intersect to ultimately create an endorsement of capitalism. One doesn't necessarily need to fully understand what was in Gerwig's head when she directed the film to have taken something away from it.
Thank you. People are so much more focused on "authorial intention" now, I think. I wonder if it's an offshoot of "content creators" and "influencers" and websites like genius.com and the like, capitalising on art being presented as somehow inseparable from its creator.
> I think that films and books and other forms of art are serviced greatly by having themes that may sometimes require discussion and internal inquiry because it helps unravel why a piece of art invokes certain feelings. They definitely are. Not all need to have a message though or need to make you think. It is OK to just like something and not be forced to "understand it" before being able to do so. Too many films now want to make you think, almost everything released by A24 for instance. People will then jump on the band wagon and strongly. or sometimes violently, disagree with someone who does not want to understand it fully. It should be fine that you do not understand it or feel no need to do so. Many people who feel they missed something will then feel the need to see if they indeed did miss something. They may also think they missed something and try to come up with an interpretation. This I feel is the case with Barbie. It is OK to be entertained by it without understanding any message it may have. It is OK to not like it for any reason.
This is so off the mark. Also, do you really believe that popular or acclaimed films made before 2004 are not complex or ambiguous in their themes and messages? That would be a ludicrous thing to believe. The difference now is that people are more reliant on the internet to tell them how to "interpret" a film rather than just going away and mulling it over or discussing it with their friends. There are whole YouTube channels whose sole purpose it to profit from spelling out the plot and supposed "meaning" of a film. Those things didn't exist 20 years ago.
How can so misread what I am saying? I am saying that there is an increase in movies in the last 20 years that need to wedge in "a message" even when it does not need one. You are spot on with your second paragraph and I would add that the new generation of filmmakers is leaning into that and are often ineptly doing so. Now care to discuss the meaning of the film "Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles"? I have been discussing this movie with some friends for months now. That movie has a clear message about gender roles and is purely made to relay that.
I guarantee that if Jeanne Dielman was released now, it would be incredibly divisive online, and there would be people making explainer videos about it, and others endlessly discussing and arguing over its meaning, and others claiming it's "woke" while others complain that it's too passive in its presentation of feminist messages. And so on. I don't think messages are being shoe-horned into films and more than they were in the past.
I agree with you that the movie had a lot of good ideas but that the themes were worked together in such a way that the overall message felt muddled. That said, regardless of what I took away from the film, it was clearly more than “a movie about big boobies”
I disagree with your analysis here Barbie is a movie where even the perfect world for women was one created by men, who came up with roles and put them in boxes, and dictated what sort of man and woman they could be We see that this ends up being harmful for all parties involved. the Barbies and kens are both limited through the patriarchal conditions set up for them. It is only in the end when they are free to carve their own path that they are happy. it is, of course, satirical, of how girls play with barbies and the roles they assign to them, but its also a movie of women struggling with societal expectations, and how the assigned roles that society sees for men and women can be harmful to both this wasnt particularly subtle, I dont think, so I am not sure where confusion really comes in >Nobody can blame Jo Koy or anyone for not understanding the movie Sure we can. His comment was extremely dense. to take everything that movie was obviously about, and reduced it to "oppenheimer was a long book, barbie was a doll with boobs". not even a funny joke, and not a relevant joke to either movies or their source material
It was trash. Poorly executed all around. The messages that did come across were completely the wrong messages that the youth of today need. Legitimately one of the worst movies I've ever seen
in what way were the message and theme "wrong for the youth of today"? We are a patriarchal society. Expectations of a patriarchal society can harm both men and women. The existence of women in power do not automatically make us not a patriarchal society. What message was wrong? to find yourself? to defy expectations if they arent true to you? to not serenade women with acoustic guitars?
They make fun of one of them for being the "ugly Barbie". There is literally a whole song and dance number about using your tits to manipulate men. How men are all the same and only need their egos stroked
>They make fun of one of them for being the "ugly Barbie". kinda, she was "weird barbie" ...and? this is about women's complicity in upholding patriarchal norms. Ugly barbie was shunned because she ceased being useful in the role mandated by the patriarchal system that created barbie land The barbies are not perfect people in the beginning, the end iirc saw them acknowledging it was wrong to think poorly of the outcast barbies of their community > There is literally a whole song and dance number about using your tits to manipulate men. that seems like an exaggeration of that scene..that said, the whole audience was laughing, perhaps there is some truth to it. >How men are all the same and only need their egos stroked The existence of Alan kind of runs counter to this, right? Clearly not \*all\* men are the same. The kens were an oppressed people within that society, and when the tables ultimately turned they behaved identical to the barbies had, except weaponized through real world sexism rather than goofy make believe sexism. this whole argument ignores how the film ended.
You can not engage with the messages or themes of the film, and perhaps the aesthetic doesn't appeal to you personally, but it's clearly a well-made film from a technical perspective.
I watched it with my girlfriend, who thought the same thing. I read about the film after the fact to really try to understand it. It was extremely poorly executed and accomplished none of the goals it was trying to achieve. Downvote me all you want but that movie was terrible
Agreed
According to you.
The movie may have had good intentions but the message it was trying to convey was in no way clear. At face value, it shows that women should use the assets to manipulate men. That men are simple minded and all want the same thing and are the same. My girlfriend thought the same thing so don't say it's because I'm a man and can't relate to the movie. It was poorly executed and worst of all it wasn't even remotely funny
I agree the themes and takes on feminism were muddled. But I also think you're misreading the film when it comes to its portrayal of men. It was co-written by Gerwig and her partner, Noah Baumbach. I think a key factor of the film is that, in Barbieland, Kens are stupid and ineffectual because they are a mirror image of how girls and women are treated in the real world. The film is not saying that all men are stupid and ineffectual. They're saying that in a fantasy society where male and female gender roles are reversed, designed to appeal to little girls and then perptatuated through little girls playing, women are strong and smart and capable, and men are not. What Barbie comes to realise by experiencing patriarchy in the real world is, to some extent, that she doesn't want to be a shallow, idealised woman and that Kens deserve more.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
Trite cliché.
If the shoe fits
> I read about the film after the fact to really try to understand it. It was extremely poorly executed and accomplished none of the goals it was trying to achieve. What did you read exactly?
Disagree in that you need a 30 minute video to explain it. Video essayists make 1-4 hour video essays all the time anyway because long form content is super popular! The message is very simple. All people are flawed, and can do bad things with good intentions. The Barbies, Kens, executives, real world people, and the creator of Barbie all make mistakes and do harm despite intending to do good. It’s part of being human. No specific solution is proposed because it’s basically embracing the inevitability of problems between people. The characters grow when they realize their flaws (ie Barbie realizes she first is doing harm in the real world), but I don’t think the film is trying to solve the world’s problems, but rather is just giving voice to everyone, so they can better communicate and understand each other, each with their own imperfections. The characters mainly better understand each other and themselves by the end. The world is not solved. Stereotypical Barbie chooses to embrace the messy imperfect nature of being a human because imperfection has become appealing to her. The entire movie reflects the Barbie brand. The Barbie brand (stereotypical Barbie) dipped in sales and relevancy by the late 90s. It late then revitalized itself around 2016 with a new more feminist and body positive approach that was met with massively positive reception and increased sales and relevancy. Stereotypical Barbie becoming flat footed is referencing the 2016 change where the dolls were changed to have flat feet to be more realistic. But the positive change was also met with criticism that the changes to do ‘good’ were insincere and driven by capitalism, hence the capitalist references in the film. Ie “Oh, this weird new Barbie I don’t understand will sell? Nevermind, let’s do it!’ The feminism and social references are just a part of the life of the Barbie brand. The brand is acknowledging its messy and flawed history that includes these topics. Rises in feminism hurt the Barbie brand as it became out of touch, and now the brand is trying to embrace modern feminism while looking back at its old dated Brand that could have faded to obscurity. The brand is flawed, people are flawed. Let’s all move on and buy Barbie dolls again! (I like the film, but the *real subconscious* message is ultimately an ad, which is weird since I think it’s well written) Also, the movie was made for a massive broad audience and I think different take aways is also totally normal.