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I'm still thinking about the Barbie movie. It occurred to me that, among the many plausible readings, there's one in which it's a parable about the responsibility that comes with the red pill.
After Ken reaches Kenlightenment, he immediately uses Facts and Logic to convince everyone in Barbieland that patriarchy is superior to all other forms of government. All of the Barbies agree to live under this system, but Ken worries that they may change their minds. And so, after the Kens are put in charge, they schedule a vote to change the constitution so that no woman can ever hold a position of power again.
Ken didn't do anything wrong when he convinced women to choose subservience, but he did do something wrong when he tried to force their permanent subservience. It's not that he didn't care about making the world better for the Barbies, it's just that he cared even more about making the world better for him and the other Kens. And despite his confident exterior, he knew deep down that patriarchy might not actually be the best system, so he needs a failsafe. Ken went from Jared "freedom of association" Taylor to Richard "peaceful ethnic cleansing" Spencer. That's when he became the villain.
To be clear, I am not trying to actually read the intent of the filmmakers. I just find it interesting how everyone can see a reflection of their own values in the movie. Some of my favorite political satire is stuff that doesn't take a clear stance, and when political propaganda is done so clumsily that nobody is sure what stance is being advocated, it accidentally becomes great satire.
Like, I'm not even sure the film does have a political message. I would just as easily buy that it's supposed to be a comedy without an real agenda as I would that it has an agenda it poorly communicates.
It would be more interesting if instead of changing the Constitution directly, he would create the Anti-Misinformation Ministry, which would ensure anybody who speaks against the Kenlightenment would be silenced and suppressed - while still proclaiming he is the chief protector of the constitution, and only cares about Facts and Logic being properly presented. Like Star Wars being fought by WW1 patterns, this culture war seems to be fought with 19th century means.
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Is this absolute insanity actually a part of the movie? You write as if it’s a plot summary, but no studio could actually film this, right?
They got us good. They hid all the feminism from the marketing and made it look like a fun, lighthearted movie.
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That's actually what happens.
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Taking note of the fascination with a two hour long Mattel commercial. Realistically it’s just a movie that’s intended to sell toys. It has a poorly communicated feminist agenda because the feminist agenda isn’t what the movie is about, the filmmaker just thought it was supposed to be there these days, and besides a two hour long toy commercial does need a plot somehow.
Given that the filmmaker is Greta Garberg, I'm quite certain she went in with the framework of feminist agenda first, toy commercial second.
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If it was intended to sell toys, it wouldn't be PG-13. The film is targeted at millennial women who used to play with Barbie, not children who currently do. And it's on track to cross a billion dollars, so it worked.
Kids don’t buy toys (especially not young children), moms do. Millennial women, now aged 27-42, are the main demographic of new and recent mothers and aunts of daughters in the West.
I thought kids tell their moms what toys they want based on whatever kiddie stuff they've been watching.
Kids don't pass laws like this.
Adults of a certain sort have ideological commitments and will pay to display them, not just for themselves but for their kids.
This change was achieved through the government, not the marketplace.
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The movie is primarily aimed at nostalgic millennials, not the young girls the toys are made for. It markets to people who grew up with the toys, but is more interested in using the toy brand to sell a film, not the other way around. Movies made to sell toys look like the ones on this list this list. They are animated, have child-friendly ratings, feature the toys center stage, and have a point of view that is neither critical nor deconstructive of the product featured, unlike the 2023 film.
To say the themes of the movie are only there due to the director just making the motions downplays the intent and artistry of the director, Greta Gerwig. Gerwig is known as a feminist director and earned a fair amount of buzz for Ladybird back in 2017. Regardless of how you feel about her work, looking at the three major films that she wrote and directed shows she has a point of view. The themes of her movies are not incidental or accidental, regardless of whether or not they're attached to a Mattel product.
Barbie is especially interesting due to the casting of Ryan Gosling, a masculine icon of problematic young men, as Ken. This has led to the film having a crossover appeal to both women and the incel and sigma subcultures of young men, who are attempting (successfully IMO) to co-opt the film's themes into their own thing with all the Ken memes. There's a lot to see here, and dismissing the movie as a Mattel commercial is reductive. People are not wrong or misguided to analyze a cultural product like this.
It’s targeting wine aunts who will buy dolls for their nieces.
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To add complications, the 30 something millennial woman is the target audience Mattel was missing when selling Barbies, because they might refuse to buy Barbies for their daughter.
Turning Barbie into a vaguely feminist hobby horse, and neutralizing the old knocks on her, helps sell the dolls to parents who want to buy them for their kids. Barbie was in danger of becoming low status.
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Ah, black culture continues taking over America.
Please choose either avoiding dropping hot takes, or backing them up in some way.
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Some truth in that but Mattel's strategy is to be an IP company like Marvel, they obviously want to sell toys but the movie itself is part of a bigger strategy to make more movies and such.
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It's interesting that whenever I've seen this issue brought up, I've never seen anyone propose a solution beyond "... And thus you can see why my political opponents' positions are so destructive, and must be stamped out permanently by re-education of !"
Do you know of any analysis that breaks that pattern in good faith?
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Slightly different take on where exactly the line is... is this recent drop via MR.
Are women liberal because they’re unmarried, or are they unmarried because they’re liberal?
I would expect a “traditional” “family-oriented” woman to be both more conservative and more willing to settle.
Having participated in the modern dating market, it's pretty staggering how different your reception is 'on the apps' with moderate in your bio versus left-wing. Changing that one detail literally 4x'd my response rate.
Which one did better?
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Much of that gap disappears when age is included in the analysis.
I don't really care what happens at the senior center speed dating session.
I'm interested. This would, I think, imply that old single women, whether never married or no longer married due to either divorce or death, are even more in favor of dems. Like, what's happening there? Why is that the case? What's driving it, and is it just a historical phenomenon that is likely to disappear as that generation of old ladies disappears, or is there something more fundamental happening?
Iirc divorcees are more liberal than single women as a whole, and you’d probably expect them to skew mostly middle-aged and older.
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I think that's a reasonable concern, and at times it does seem to me to be concentrating that way, but overall I'm reminded of the quote that "no one will win the battle of the sexes: there's too much fraternization with the enemy."
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This is what I thought hydro meant when he called it a 2 hour toy commercial.
In my description the feminism is integral to the advertising strategy, where Hydro describes it as ancillary or unnecessary, just tacked on because it's a thing you do these days.
There's a big difference between "Let's make a toy ad... What's popular... Feminism!" Implying that, idk, a Barbie movie from 2002 would use patriotic themes the same way.
Versus "Let's use a long form film to reposition our branding from a lower-prestige to a higher-prestige tier by using feminist branding to rework how parents view our product."
I'm honestly shocked how much play the film is getting, and how many Ivy-League feminists I know are dressing up in pink to attend the film, many multiple times! It's getting significant cultural space, for an IP adaptation that probably deserves to be closer to the Battleship movie.
Compare Bud Light. They just threw some branding at the wall.
I think, to be clear, a Barbie movie from 2002 would have patriotic themes. Possibly feminist-patriotic themes, because it’s a girl movie, but patriotic themes- maybe Islam references and the American way freeing women to walk around without a burka or something.
Hollywood in 2002 was extremely careful about being Islam critical.
Even prior to 9/11 they changed the villains in The Sum of all Fears to be Neo Nazis instead of Islamists.
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A bit off topic, but what exactly is the sigma thing? My vague sense it's a rebranded MGTOW (attempting to leave all the pathetic parts behind) but could use an explainer.
It started out as the usual internet autists that systematize any topic to make wikis about the millions of niche political ideologies or genders applying their talents to the "sociosexual hierarchy". The pseudopsychological concept where we attempt to understand human social relations using the terms designed for pack wolves like alpha and beta. Which got pretty popular in the redpill/PUA circles at some point.
Like any incomplete model it had to be extended to fit enough archetypes to please everyone, and sigma is essentially the MGTOW archetype, or as he is classically called, the Übermench, the man who lives life according to his own principles.
People started to make graphs and to try to rank the archetypes, eventually putting sigma on top because, well he's better than the alpha because he's beyond the hierarchy since he refuses to acknowledge it, which not only sounds like immense cope it is also extremely memable.
So the internet did what it does best and started making ironic meme clips of movie characters "acting according to their own principles" and getting praise for doing insane self serving evil shit, most especially with Patrick Bateman who's already a meme icon in his own right.
And then it just followed the usual process where every ironic meme slowly turns post-ironic when people start thinking that while idolizing Walter White murdering a whole bunch of people for his own gain is funny because it's so wrong, there's also a kernel of truth to the idea that, as a man, social norms are burdensome and you deserve to pick your own fate.
So in a nutshell, the Sigma male started out at somewhat ridiculous element of a theory of social hierarchies and became a memetic exploration of will to power.
And we pretty much seem to have stabilized at MGTOW-but-post-ironic and with a better aesthetic than middle aged men whining about getting shafted in their divorce.
I thought it originally had a "spergy" quality to it. Basically like a James Damore-type guy who is too autistic to often notice let alone care about social cues and women.
Then somehow Tommy Shelby became a sigma.
I believe the original poster boy for it was Keanu Reeves who also has his own meme connotations but is pretty definitely the transcendental sperg that does stuff for its own sake.
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Isn't that every visual media aimed at kids since Star Wars?
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I think Barbie is just a (good) movie, and it's a mistake to read too much politics into it. Although the media commentary on it and the typical moviegoer probably reads the narrative through a typical feminist interpretative lens, it allows for other ones as well: Barbieland isn't some egalitarian utopia, and the movie doesn't try to portray the Barbiarchy as some ideal state. There's a bit of dialog that overdoes it a bit, but it doesn't dominate the movie. It's only the most shallow interpetation to think it's all about how awesome girlbossing is.
I get where you're coming from but come on. This is a political movie and really not much else. As a toy commercial it's a failure that shits on the product, the company that makes it and even its own existence and isn't even aimed at the target demographic for the toy. It does have interesting aesthetics (which are the best part of it besides Gosling's stellar acting) but the main and heavy focus of all that's going on is politics. The politics of sex specifically.
I think it's preposterous to say that you shouldn't read politics in a movie where the word patriarchy is said unironically more than a dozen times and is an actual plot point.
This is political and again though I'd have preferred it to be a live action cartoon with those really nice aesthetics, it's ultimately trying to be art about the modern relationship between the sexes, and is actually kinda successful if probably unintentionally.
People say we'll forget this and Oppenheimer will be the one that's remembered, I think the opposite is true. Ken's arc is probably the most honest attempt at understanding men's place from the point of view of modern women I've ever seen. Even if it was stumbling over itself, was afraid to explore the full consequences of what happened and ultimately was probably mostly unintentional.
The most depressing thing about this movie for me is what it says about the condition of women, not men really. "Girlbossing is fucking awful and we hate everything about it but the only alternative is slavery therefore we must endure and oppress or get oppressed" is fucking grim.
This would explain the rates of depression and neurosis among liberal women.
Men have a higher suicide rate.
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The film is interesting because it's not a simple story abou a utopia being destroyed by dastardly men: it's clearly a pretty shitty experience for the Kens, it shows vectors of female power, and at the end it shows the Barbies mostly recreating the old shitty world instead of having learned anything, despite the talk of patriarchy and complaining of a single-sex dominated society.
Although I would agree that Greta Gerwig probably didn't intend for it to be some MRA rallying cry, death of the author and all that. The movie is narratively textured enough to support alternative interpretations, and the aesthetics and excellent acting by Gosling make it worth watching.
I guess what I meant by reading politics into it is that someone doesn't have to imagine Gerwig's politics, project them onto the movie, and be stuck in that interpretive box.
It's far from unknown for writers to write things promoting a point of view, and not realize that they've actually shown that their point of view isn't as great as they think. The more ideological the writer is being, the more likely this is to happen.
People in real life can be hypocrites without realizing it. So it's not that hard for an author to have the characters and themes in the work end up hypocritical without realizing it.
That's what you get when you think your outgroup is cartoonishly evil. Kens are oppressors because they're evil and what evil people do is oppress. They don't act to benefit themselves--they act Because They are Evil.
Not sure if you have seen the film? The Kens definitely aren't portrayed as evil, they're just misguided and naive and kinda sweet. Gerwig said she was inspired by her 4-year-old's emotional lability.
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I mean, it could be that Gerwig is making a point made by other progressives: there were big moments (e.g. Emancipation) followed by retrenchment of bigotry in other ways (Jim Crow).
I see a lot of progressives applying this to modern times even though it really doesn't fit imo. There can be a denial of progress or the belief that patriarchy/racism just transmuted or concealed itself to explain why the movement needs to continue. As Kanye put it: racism still alive they just be concealing it.
If you're a liberal feminist you do have some questions to answer about why we're not in the Promised Land. You can look to the fundamental deficiencies of the ideology OR...patriarchy is so dastardly and brilliant it can lose the war, put on a new coat and a latex mask of an ever more feminine society and still pull off its mission.
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Hence why, despite it being trite and annoying in parts, I think it'll be remembered. It actually is art of some description and is speaking to how people feel about our current condition.
That said I am eagerly waiting for the fancut that removes the whiny lectures and focuses on the real Kenergy behind it all.
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All of you are going to make me actually watch this movie, aren’t you?
It's actually not that terrible. Not great I grant you and the progressive messaging is slapped on thick but there's enough else going on that even if you ignore all that there's still a fun core left. It's definitely a better use of 3hrs than wasting it on the internet (I say this as someone who was corralled into going to it).
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Don't be weak-willed. Even Jesus Christ himself couldn't make me watch the BARBIE Movie (or any rom-com for that matter)
Don't be so sure. Jesus Christ was powerful.
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Sounds like you might have some internalized patriarchy going on, 2rafa. If you end up watching this movie about a kids' toy, don't blame TheMotte for it!
Blame TheMattell
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There's a camrip out.
I was going to see the movie in theaters, but after hearing Richard Hanania denounce the film as feminist propaganda, I watched the camrip instead. I regret watching the camrip. I would have enjoyed seeing it in theaters much better. It is not feminist propaganda to the extent Hanania makes it out to be. The filmmakers leave their movie open to interpretation and don't force any specific interpretation on the audience.
They do force an interpretation via Ferrara's monologue, and they have blatantly counterfactual stuff like an all-male board room in a state where there illegal. But if you edit out the more on the nose parts, the movie does become open to interpretation, yes.
The Mattel executive team appears to be 6 men and 1 woman (in HR of course) so it's not actually that far off!
https://corporate.mattel.com/investors/corporate-governance/executive-officers
I thought there was an interesting bit where the Will Ferrell character insists that they've had a female CEO in the past, that was one of the (relatively few) moments in the movie where I sensed the hand of Mattel behind the scenes.
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I can't bring myself to go to the theater for this (I did Spider-Man, Mission Impossible and Oppenheimer in a couple of weeks I just can't be bothered to go again) it but I read the text of the speech. And it was absurd.
Reading Gerwig's comments on the monologue actually changed my mind a bit on that speech.
I think the problem is that "feminism" calls to mind "a movement against the fact that society treats women worse than men" (Caplan notes his difficulty in getting any definition other than this from feminists). So, when Ferrara, or any feminist, complains it feels like it should be treated as that sort of issue which makes it inherently exclusionary of male concerns. "It's so hard to be a woman" means "these are specifically female problems"
But maybe Gerwig doesn't see it way. Dunno, will find out when I see it.
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