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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29676 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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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.

All of you are going to make me actually watch this movie, aren’t you?

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.

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.

“When America was giving her beautiful speech, I was just sobbing, and then I looked around and I realized everybody’s crying on the set,” Gerwig told Variety. “The men are crying, too, because they have their own speech they feel they can’t ever give, you know? And they have their twin tightrope, which is also painful. There’s something about some of these structures that are just, you know, ‘Somebody make me stop!’ That’s sort of, I suppose, the feeling behind Ken.”

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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