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So, I went to see Barbie despite knowing that I would hate it, my mom really wanted to go see it and she feels weird going to the theatre alone, so I went with her. I did, in fact, hate it. It's a film full of politics and eyeroll moments, Ben Shapiro's review of it is essentially right. Yet, I did get something out of it, it showed me the difference between the archetypal story that appeals to males and the female equivalent, and how much just hitting that archetypal story is enough to make a movie enjoyable for either men or women.
The plot of the basic male story is "Man is weak. Man works hard with clear goal. Man becomes strong". I think men feel this basic archetypal story much more strongly than women, so that even an otherwise horrible story can be entertaining if it hits that particular chord well enough, if the man is weak enough at the beginning, or the work especially hard. I'm not exactly clear what the equivalent story is for women, but it's something like "Woman thinks she's not good enough, but she needs to realise that she is already perfect". And the Barbie movie really hits on that note, which is why I think women (including my mom) seemed to enjoy it.
You can really see the mutual blindness men and women have with respect to each other in this domain. Throughout the movie, Ken is basically subservient to Barbie, defining himself only in the relation to her, and the big emotional payoff at the end is supposed to be that Ken "finds himself", saying "I am Ken!". But this whole "finding yourself" business is a fundamentally feminine instinct, the male instinct is to decide who you want to be and then work hard towards that, building yourself up. The movie's female authors and director are completely blind to this difference, and essentially write every character with female motivations.
“You had the power in you all along” is a common male narrative, too. It’s core to the great majority of Christian mythmaking (in the sense of male leads who follow a Christ-like journey). The chosen one narrative is a version of this. Luke Skywalker is the son of the most powerful or second most powerful space wizard ever. Yeah, there are counter-examples, but “you were special the whole time / you’re the legendary man’s son / you found the magic crystal of power” is a common male hero’s journey component that can be reduced to “finding yourself”.
In general, women’s stories involve her realizing her worth, going through some shit, and in the end winning the man and/or achieving some other or additional goal that serves as a substitute for this.
I don't see it that way at all. The hero with the thousand faces may have the potential, but he is hesitant to embrace it (he generally refuses it at first) and realizing his potential always involves going to the other side to get it whether that other side is Dagobah for Luke Skywalker, the desert at first and then literal Hell for Jesus, or the red pill for Neo.
The hero never just needs to be himself. He needs to go through something terrifying to self-actualize. He didn't have the power all along, he merely had the potential. To realize that potential he has to go through hell and back.
Yeah I'm with you on this one.
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