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The point of Barbie being "sexually harassed" five minutes after arriving in the real world is to illustrate that her luxury beliefs and wokeism is delusional. The Barbie dream world represents everyone who lives in a woke simulacra of the real world where the horrors of reality are shielded from their view. The point of the harassment isn't to portray the dangers of sexual assault, it is to illustrate the dangers of living in a fantasy world when other people are exposed to real horrors every day. Barbie brought the sexual harassment onto herself by dressing in a sexualized way and not anticipating the realities of interacting with people who aren't in on the luxury beliefs that Barbie got to hold previously.
Isn't "sexual harassment is enormously common to the point where it happens in five minutes" itself wokeism?
I guess I made the mistake of conflating wokism with luxury beliefs in my comment. It would probably be more accurate to interpret Barbie as someone with luxury beliefs and the Latino daughter in the "real world" of the movie as woke. Barbie's luxury beliefs echo and reinforce wokeness in a way, she believes the daughter will agree with whatever she has to say but the girl rejects and attacks her as a fascist and Barbie is hurt by the reality of interacting with the real world beliefs of this girl.
I see where your argument is coming from but I don't think the point of the harassment Barbie faces is to punch down at the "incessant sexual harassment of the lower classes" like the woke/luxury believers would argue about, it's depicted to make Barbie and Ken look ridiculous and out of touch with norms of reality, like that the construction workers aren't all women or the president isn't a black lady or whatever, and that she can't parade around in a miniskirt as a sexy blonde because people will catcall you and cops (or anyone else) might make lewd remarks toward you. I don't see that as a ridiculously woke statement, they're not saying we should all have the freedom to run around with our tits out without consequence, the point is that if you disregard the norms and customs of people around you they will feel empowered to disregard the norms and customs toward you as well. The mom and daughter characters weren't victims of sexual harassment, only Barbie was.
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I sort of saw that as the Barbie equivalent of Buddha leaving home for the first time and seeing the Four Sights. But rather than disease old age death and asceticism; she sees ogling/catcalling, sexual assault, and old age, capped by defiance from the old lady.
I'm not sure where a discussion of realism fits into a film that features both tiny girls replaying the 2001 monolith scene and multiple extended musical numbers.
I wasn't familiar with the Four Sights before your comment but I just read the wikipedia entry and it does seem like a good parallel to the Barbie movie. Barbie's shock at the things she sees and experiences make her look ridiculous, even if she is changed by the experience of seeing them. We're not meant to empathize with her character's initial state, only once she sees the suffering of others does she become more human.
Well, metaphors point to reality. Realism is the main theme of the movie as it's contrasted with the artificial Barbie dream world. The mom and daughter pair are the most apparent representation of reality in the film as they have to deal with the realities of humanity while Barbie gets to ignore them all in her perfect dream world. Extended musical numbers can be used to express great truths about reality even in their artifice. Effective art can mirror and illuminate reality rather than abstract or distract from it.
Siddhartha is equally ridiculous in seeing the Four Sights, the pampering is often taken to comical extents in retellings of the story. It's the idea of someone so pampered seeing our world for the first time, with eyes uncallused, that they see things we accept and are horrified by them, as perhaps we ourselves should be horrified.
It's just an odd complaint on realism to me because it is, at core, a frequency argument. I don't think anyone is arguing that getting your ass smacked by a stranger is unrealistic. I'd go so far as to say it's a normal experience, for most men and women, at some point in their lives.
So the argument isn't that the occurrence itself is unrealistic, it's that the occurrence happens too fast to be realistic. That it portrays harassment as something that happens to every woman every day, when it's probably more like a couple incidents in there course of a lifetime.
That's gonna seem really nitpicky. It's meant to portray all of real life on an accelerated timeline. The movie doesn't have months to noodle about between interesting occurrences. So it comes out sounding like no woman ever gets her ass smacked, and that's just a silly point.
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