I didn’t even want to watch this thing. I was totally and completely neutral. I knew it wasn’t for me. Aside from the nauseating amount of money involved, and my disinterest in the cast and writer, I was never into Barbies. Or any dolls. I was too busy with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Micro Machines. This was not a film I was going to see unless it was thrown in front of me. And considering I can’t be an asshole and risk covid, I can’t go to a movie theatre anyway.
What suddenly piqued my interest yesterday was a large number of comments about how the film made women cry. Not, like, a little crying. Not normal movie crying. Breakdowns, hours of sobbing, days of depression, re-evaluation of life, etc. What could possibly be in this film that was causing women to lose their shit?
I started asking around, as did a friend who was planning to see the movie but wanted a heads-up on the trauma. We both have dead moms, and the answers we were getting were that the film had family and motherhood themes. Okay, fair enough. But that still did not explain reports of breakdowns, as not everyone had dead moms like us but were still crying.
One person compared it to an emotional scene in a Marvel film that I’ve not seen, which reaffirmed my suspicion of this film being very, very not for me. That is not a writing style that’s going to elicit anything from be besides boredom.
Which is FINE. I want to emphasize how okay it is for something to not be for me. I didn’t need it to be. There is plenty of media for me.
But curiosity prevailed, and I flagged down a pirate for the privilege to watch a film without risking death. And I watched it. And I did not cry. And I did not laugh. I was mostly bored. Which is exactly what I expected to be.
To me, the film felt like someone trying to smash me in the face with a brick that was wrapped in a colorfully printed Buzzfeed article about feminism written in 2018. It felt muddled, confused, and the soundtrack didn’t tickle me at all. But again, I emphasize: THIS IS FINE. There are so many worse things in the world than this movie. If you enjoyed it, if you loved it, if if made you cry, whatever. I’m happy for you!
The marketing was truthful: “If you love Barbie, you’ll love this movie. If you hate Barbie, you’ll love this movie.” They just left out explaining the third option that if you had no strong feelings about Barbie, you’ll probably not have strong feelings about the movie, because that is not a selling point.
But the problem is that before I even saw the film, I was already being told by white guys on the internet that I was wrong. I hadn’t even formed an opinion yet, I hadn’t even seen the film, and already I was being lectured about feminism by some dude because I mentioned I wasn’t interested in seeing it.
A film with a billion dollar magical toy company run by a kind and sympathetic white man CEO, in a world where racism and poverty don’t exist because the only problem in the real world is The Patriarchyâ„¢ and how it makes women sad sometimes, and presents tragically slow change as the only option for society, is a safe flag to wave and a safe brick to throw. The faux-left white boys who armor themselves in allyship (barf I fuckin hate that word) really seem to have latched on to this.
The fascist culture warriors are loving this as well. Palatable feminism that also says the word “patriarchy” out loud is a perfect outrage vector to push more crazy. So you’ve got the center/faux-left cheering this capitalist-loving slow-change pushing girl boss feminism, and anyone who has a criticism of it must be the enemy. And that’s how I came to the conclusion that Barbie is Joe Biden.
Fin.
