Barbie Movie Discussion (Spoilers)

[Narz]

They should be interpreted as negative reviews when we know that the text was, in fact, meant to be taken at face value.

She said she enjoyed the movie. Sure it's goofy but can be ridiculous and still provide mirth.

I have yet to see but looking forward to it. They get the new formula to hit everyone's nerves, the point doesn't seem to be to portray an idealogy as much as to push buttons to drive engagement.

The "speech" is so cringy, you've got to be pretty but not too pretty, you can't be mean... What? There are people living under actual oppression in the world... I'm not a first world female but if I was I'd be pretty embarrassed to give the rest of the world the impression that this is what goes thru my head and counts as my feeling like a victim.

 

[Narz]

So by “take aways” you mean those facile nerd powerscaling videos by dudes with zero media literacy and no formal grounding in any kind of theory?

*calls other people nerds
*says a sentence that you need to be a nerd to decode

Theory? Does one need a masters degree to have an opinion about a movie about a plastic doll?

 

[Narz]

Just to expand on the reply you've gotten a little bit: western culture is a little weird because of the Roman Catholic Church in a pretty fundamental way people tend to be really blind to: being gay is not a sin to a Roman Catholic, even if you go waaaay back. Acting sexually on your gayness, is. Now that is quite a conundrum, but you wind up with an unusual interplay - the holiest lived lives in the Catholic institution are celibate, males in the holy orders that run the church all the way to the top, and females in the holy orders that run the church at the ground level as the best lived examples "outside the politics." If you want to add up the influence of the priesthood at its mightiest and most oppressive, when it dominated those who were learned, the Catholic churched offered(and enforced) itself as the place to be, the life to live, for those who wanted to be upright and respectable and powerful and influential --- while being gay. At the same price heterosexuals were expected to "pay." If I had to wager, I would say gay men and women played an outsized role, relatively speaking, through that institution throughout history, especially compared to what people think today.

Obviously they played an outsized role. The Catholic Church seems to be run by closeted gay men who know they can't live normally in society and spend their whole lives resisting (or more often not resisting) their urges.

 

[Farm Boy]

Not more often. Protestant clergy offends in that way at similar rates. That's a man thing. But it's not like being gay is much different from being anyone else, especially when you're celebate. Narrows one of the only actual differences.

 

[RobAnybody]

Can you kindly point us to where this has been explained numerous times? Because, as Sophie said, the explanations tend to be either "there's a minority and I don't think there should be because reasons" or "well it's woke if it's woke, I know it when I see it"

Are we supposed to link to locked threads? I'll just play it safe & say you can still find those threads easily enough if you're actually interested.

When people do give nuanced, detailed explanations, they tend to get dogpiled by insults, ad hominems, & enough strawmen (like the ones in your reply) to feed a horse for a lifetime, & so the thread gets locked.

 

[sophie]

That thread offered no such thing, and that was the entire issue. It played out more or less as I described above.

I would like to note that when zard finally did offer distinct selection criteria for the “scientific” study, they were
1) a character is race/gender/queer-swapped
2) the movie has a feminist or social justice message that is preachy or hamfisted

On those terms Barbie would classify. It has a trans character who has I think the third-most lines out of all the Barbie characters, McKinnon’s and Cera’s characters are both heavily queercoded. The whole film is about how women are oppressed by the patriarchy, has an extended monologue in which Robbie directly addresses the audience to tell them that the world is structurally set up specifically to oppress women, and ends with the Barbie character waking each Barbie up from her patriarchal programming by telling them the truth about how they’re oppressed, and then they unite to vote out “The Patriarchy” and overthrow the Kens. The villains of the movie are an all-male board of directors who don’t listen to or entertain the voices of women.

Like Gerwig is a director known for preachy liberal feminist films, and this is her at her preachiest. The only reason zard isn’t calling this a woke film is because 1) it was financially successful and he personally liked it and 2) because he has the media literacy of a child Moderator Action: Warned for flaming. The_J

 

[Farm Boy]

I love that we're still talking about postwar hooker dolls as liberation.

 

[RobAnybody]

"1) a character is race/gender/queer-swapped." <> "It has a trans character..."

This is what I mean about just willfully not listening at this point. So, Strawman? check

2) because he has the media literacy of a child

Insults? check
Moderator Action: Please report problems, don't reply to them. The_J

 

[Kyriakos]

Going from the bits and pieces mentioned in the thread, I'd think that for a movie which is centered on a girl's toy, this did what it could do to include Ken and even present strife ^^ Then in the end I gather the barbieworld is less of a barbie supremacy and more of a collaboration.
But again, why expect a Barbie movie to be serious social commentary? Even movies that were better placed to provide such, routinely fail. I'd imagine most girls playing with Barbies to not really focus on the Kens much - let alone when in prepuberty.

 

[Farm Boy]

"I had the major details of my wedding planned since I was 12, I was just missing the last piece."

 

[sophie]

This is what I mean about just willfully not listening at this point. So, Strawman? check

Insults? check

I’m just going by what he says, dude.

It’s also, again, in keeping with the media (like this one! specifically about Hari Nef!!) that gets slapped with the woke label by the people that care about this ****.

Like this is specifically the problem with people who claim there’s more nuance to it. Because there’s never actual objective criteria for where the delineations actually lie. It’s all vagueness and disregarding obvious contradictions. A trans woman getting prominent screen time is not woke (even though the big peddlers of this tripe are saying that’s woke), it’s about inserting unrealistic gender/race/queer swaps (except when they are realistic, like with the black or female soldiers in ww1; or when the unrealism entails celebrating whiteness or maleness); it’s about when the feminist messaging is hamfisted, like in Captain Marvel or Ghostbusters (except when it’s in Barbie, apparently).

If there is an actual nuance, then I need someone to actually articulate it, because nobody has ever meaningfully addressed the painfully obvious contradictions in how this stuff is actually defined, and simply leads me back to the delineation actually being “this movie is good/I subjectively liked it” vs “this movie is bad/I didn’t like it, and I have subjectively ascribed that dissatisfaction to the presence of a woman/black person/queer person”

Simply having minorities or LGBT+ people isn't woke (unless it's in a setting where it clearly isn't appropriate I guess, like an isolated medieval European village).

Honestly this is the clearest and most honest thing you’ve said about what wokeness actually means. It’s not actually about what *is* realistic or historically accurate, it’s about what *feels* right to you subjectively, and what feels right to you is that queer and black people didn’t exist in Europe until recently. There’s no interest in having that assumption challenged, or even actually checking if that’s right before declaring it to be so. It’s purely libidinal.

 

[Zardnaar]

That thread offered no such thing, and that was the entire issue. It played out more or less as I described above.

I would like to note that when zard finally did offer distinct selection criteria for the “scientific” study, they were
1) a character is race/gender/queer-swapped
2) the movie has a feminist or social justice message that is preachy or hamfisted

On those terms Barbie would classify. It has a trans character who has I think the third-most lines out of all the Barbie characters, McKinnon’s and Cera’s characters are both heavily queercoded. The whole film is about how women are oppressed by the patriarchy, has an extended monologue in which Robbie directly addresses the audience to tell them that the world is structurally set up specifically to oppress women, and ends with the Barbie character waking each Barbie up from her patriarchal programming by telling them the truth about how they’re oppressed, and then they unite to vote out “The Patriarchy” and overthrow the Kens. The villains of the movie are an all-male board of directors who don’t listen to or entertain the voices of women.

Like Gerwig is a director known for preachy liberal feminist films, and this is her at her preachiest. The only reason zard isn’t calling this a woke film is because 1) it was financially successful and he personally liked it and 2) because he has the media literacy of a child

Doesn't have most of the tropes of Hollywood "woke" films and also who it's targeted at.

If you take say an 80s film remake/reboot aimed at male audiences and put woke tropes in it the odds of the movie crashing and burning go up.

Those various tropes girl boss character, gender or race swapping, historical revisionism, lgbtq sidekick inserted that's easily removed for foreign market etc.

Basically when the "woke" tropes replace things such as good writing and then the directors or lead actor claims you're sexist or whatever if you don't go see it eg Terminator Dark Fate, Women King, Charlies Angels etc.

No you made a bad movie inserting your own ideology into it aimed at 5%-20% or so of the general audience.

If you want more woke movies to succeed maybe make more Barbie ones with good writing vs card board cut out characters with 0 charisma.

 

[Zardnaar]

I’m just going by what he says, dude.

It’s also, again, in keeping with the media (like this one! specifically about Hari Nef!!) that gets slapped with the woke label by the people that care about this horsehocky.

Like this is specifically the problem with people who claim there’s more nuance to it. Because there’s never actual objective criteria for where the delineations actually lie. It’s all vagueness and disregarding obvious contradictions. A trans woman getting prominent screen time is not woke (even though the big peddlers of this tripe are saying that’s woke), it’s about inserting unrealistic gender/race/queer swaps (except when they are realistic, like with the black or female soldiers in Battlefield; or when the unrealism entails celebrating whiteness or maleness); it’s about when the feminist messaging is hamfisted, like in Captain Marvel or Ghostbusters (except when it’s in Barbie, apparently).

If there is an actual nuance, then I need someone to actually articulate it, because nobody has ever meaningfully addressed the painfully obvious contradictions in how this stuff is actually defined, and simply leads me back to the delineation actually being “this movie is good/I subjectively liked it” vs “this movie is bad/I didn’t like it, and I have subjectively ascribed that dissatisfaction to the presence of a woman/black person/queer person”

The trans women in the movie isn't a main character and the movie doesn't draw attention that she's trans and use it as a big point.

I thought the character was charming the fact she's trans is irrelevant to the story.

It's like in the 90s watching a movie/show with a black lead lead or whatever. Their race was essentially irrelevant.

If your a gay comedian for example you still need to be funny. Being gay isn't a get out of jail free card if you're not that funny.

 

[CaffeineJunkie]

McKinnon’s and Cera’s characters are both heavily queercoded.

You can never have too many queercoded Kate McKinnon characters

it’s about when the feminist messaging is hamfisted, like in Captain Marvel or Ghostbusters

Whoa there, I'm pretty hardcore anti-woke but even I thought CM and Ghostbusters 2016 were pretty good.

CM... well, let me clarify. The MARKETING for the movie was woke trash. The movie itself was wokeness-free with the exception of the scene where Carol was told to smile, and even that's more of a dog whistle than preaching since it would go over the heads of anyone who's not familiar with the "women being told to smile" dead unicorn trope.

GB 2016 had a faint whiff of pandering about it. If you go through the first two movies, you can find a few times when the scripts call attention to the fact that it's an all-male team. For example, in the first movie, Peck says "Captain, these MEN are in criminal violation of the Environmental Protection Act..." and Winston says "Since I joined these MEN, I've seen [stuff] that'll turn you white!" In the second movie, when Peter and Dana's date is interrupted, he says "Boys! Boys! You're scaring the straights!". It should therefore come as no surprise that GB 2016 does the same thing. The whiff of pandering comes from the fact that 2016 does so noticeably more often than the first two movies did, including a comment or two from the villain in which he outs himself as a misogynist. But those differences could just be the result of a difference in writing styles rather than outright agenda-pushing.

 

[aelf]

I read it. Your post still comes off as a non-sequitor.

Don't see how his post implies he's ignoring anything willfully or not.

He was talking about the meaning of 'woke' in general while ignoring what actual people out there consider woke and denying such opinions exist. Still don't get it?

Well, ok, Ken

 

[aelf]

This is where I think people get confused on the "woke" criticism - just having representation isn't what people see as "woke" (I hate using that word, but it's shorthand at this point so whatever). Just having a female protagonist pushing a pro-women/girls message (like Barbie) isn't woke. That's expected & no big deal. Simply having minorities or LGBT+ people isn't woke (unless it's in a setting where it clearly isn't appropriate I guess, like an isolated medieval European village).

This has been explained numerous times but people keep going "but there's a woman in it! but there's a gay character! where's the consistency?!?" & it just strikes me as willfully not listening at this point. Not saying people have to agree, but just hearing what is actually said would be... I dunno, polite, I guess?

Uh, you do know that there are lots of people out there who consider any sort of representation as woke, right?

Who's willfully ignoring what now?

 

[Gorbles]

The doll modeled a hooker, originally.

Assuming that's true, is that so important it bears repeatedly mentioning? Do we need to talk about GI Joe, Action Man, and everything else built to glamourise the US military?

I'm trying to work out how important backstories are here. The Catholic Church has a ton, for example. A lot of it recent, even.

 

[choxorn]

I thought the character was charming the fact she's trans is irrelevant to the story.

It's like in the 90s watching a movie/show with a black lead lead or whatever. Their race was essentially irrelevant.

What so, is a minority existing in a story only not woke if their being a minority has no impact on the story and is never called attention to?

 

[Kyriakos]

If CFC is a microcosm of the web, one should see just how the Barbie movie made so much money. Basically people argue about anything, regardless of inherent ridiculousness of the premise.

 

[Gorbles]

I mean, people overwhelmingly enjoyed the movie. Not much dissent there