#barbie critical

[anarmorofwords]

Okay anyone else seen Barbie and is let down because they expected a truly revolutionary satire dismantling parts of patriarchy such as the cult of women's beauty and high contradictory expectations in an actually meaningful and substantial way and not one short monologue? and instead got a mainstream feminism lackluster "inspirational" adventure movie that paints patriarchy in a really naive and simple way and also operates on very binary views and ultimately is not half as deep as it promised to be?

[bookishfeylin]

bestie can u elaborate why don’t u like the barbie movie (i also don’t like it but i just love giving people the opportunity to be haters)

I feel like I should preface this response with several things:

I liked PARTS of the Barbie movie. Some of the messages in it were really good, and were delivered in a hilarious way. The pure love for humanity and LIFE was very evident and I loved Barbie’s arc. I also appreciated the underlying “redpill ideology is harmful and misleads men” message.

I knew Greta Gerwig was a white woman so I did not expect much in the way of intersectional feminism or even acknowledgment that white women are often the weakest link and tend to be 'class traitors' more than any other marginalized group, so that was not my issue with the movie

It's pretty! And bright! And colorful! It was FUN!

That being said… it did not sit well with me the more I thought about it.

My main problem with the Barbie movie is that it equates Barbieland with real life patriarchy and argues that both are equally bad, when that is demonstrably not true even as shown in the movie itself. When Barbie enters our world, she is sexually harassed, assaulted, and objectified. This is... not how the Kens are treated in Barbieland. They're just... ignored. That's it. The Barbies don't mistreat the Kens, and when Ken gets hurt in the beginning of the movie while beaching the Barbies all rush around him to get him medical attention and worry over him. The Barbies aren't cruel, and they certainly aren't treating the Kens as objects. They're just... ignoring them most of the time. And before someone brings up the Kens being homeless I'd like to add that, given their attempts to build a wall in the movie, there is certainly nothing STOPPING them from building their own homes. More than that: if it really bothered them so much why didn't they ask the construction Barbies for help with making one? I'm sure they would've said yes. There is literally nothing and no one stopping the Kens from making their own houses or having their own little Ken village because the Barbies DO NOT CARE what they do. At all.

The worst Barbieland offers men is being ignored by women. And that's not nice, sure. Hence why barbie apologized at the end. But the worst patriarchy offers women is being abused, raped, indoctrinated into patriarchal religions, and murdered by men. Those two things are not the same. So not only could this movie not commit to actually making a real matriarchy that is actually as bad as patriarchy (because don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that a matriarchy in actual practice would be bad y'all), it then argues that this fictional watered down version of a matriarchy is somehow the equivalent of the much more violent real world patriarchy as a ~warning~ to women's rights advocates to not get too carried away I guess? AND REACTIONARIES STILL CAME AWAY FROM THIS MOVIE THINKING BARBIELAND WAS JUST AS BAD AS PATRIARCHY AND BEING UPSET THAT BARBIELAND RETURNED UNDER BARBIE CONTROL (despite the movie's message that Kens were still going to get rights in Barbieland and would one day have the same rights women in our world have but I digress--) And then the reactionaries felt this movie was anti-Men???

So no. I don't like this movie. The fact that a lot of normie people walked away from this movie like "Yeah! It critiqued Matriarchy AND Patriarchy! It critiqued feminism and the red pill!" indicates to me that this movie failed. The premise of this movie was inherently flawed: that women ignoring men=matriarchy=just as bad as the violence and dehumanization of patriarchy. But more than that, the fact that so many agree with this premise concerns me, and suggests that misogyny is much more deeply rooted in the human consciousness than I had expected. If women merely ignoring men and living life without centering men is viewed as matriarchy, as misandry, as "just as bad" as patriarchy, then perhaps the advocacy for women's rights was always doomed.

Sorry to end this on such a downer btw

[drew-dopamine]

the more i learn about the barbie movie the less i want to see it……sorry 😢

[lucky-clover-gazette]

listen the movie introduces an annoying leftie teenager as a ridiculous strawman for the audience to resent, has her make all the valid criticisms of the franchise mattel can still slightly defend, and then makes barbie cry about it. why do you think it did that. why do you think that character existed. why do you think she quietly faded into a compliant, brand-supportive happy face in a pink dress

[tinkerbitch69]

Just saw a Tik Tok that played the speech about being a woman from the Barbie movie over screenshots of trump supporter tweets with a description lamenting that ‘every woman saw and loved the Barbie movie* but y’all learned nothing from it :’(’

Woah, you’re shocked the FUCKING Barbie movie of all things didn’t end misogyny for good?!!!

Get fucking REAL omfg. The most milquetoast liberal feminist takes ever, including and almost entirely limited to ‘well shucks being a women sure is not very swell, is it?’ dressed up in corporate propaganda and insipid product placement is not going to do shit in combating reactionary ideology, no matter how many of you absolute chucklefucks have the misconception that it is some radical piece of social commentary. Truly just the most vapid political takes coming out of Tik Tok for real. Tho I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

*press x to doubt

[botforlove]

tumblr leftists suck so bad bc they'll flock to barbie, the most corporatized depiction of feminism ever, in which mattel is framed as a 'good corporation' that is in on the joke, so capitalism can't be addressed at all and patriarchy is entirely reduced to gender dynamics (goodbye intersectionality), but has some kind of complex against oppenheimer, a far more explicitly leftist movie that is shockingly pro-communist and extremely condemning of the us military, american exceptionalism and jingoism, and warns against scientific innovation without ethics. it probably shouldn't shock me that tumblrinas refuse to engage with anything that portrays a horrific event in a complex light (bc we obviously can't depict something without endorsing it), even though the invention of the atomic bomb (probably THE most significant and controversial event in human history) invites scrutiny from ALL angles. i'm not saying you can't dislike the movie. but the lack of media literacy present in discussions around it is outstanding.

[hard-times-paramore]

You know what, I didn't like the Barbie movie much. It wasn't progressive at all.

It was funny. That goes from person to person on wether the movie is actually good and fun and worth your time. I just didn't think it was progressive and profound like it was being marketed and/or talked about by literally everyone.

I feel like it tried so hard to be progressive that it ended up making fun of and trivializing very real concerns like patriarchy and feminism. Like, it looped the other way and ended up being reductive instead. The whole thing was extremely yassified and white (there wasn't intersectionality at all). I didn't actually think a movie like that was gonna try to be deep, and it honestly shouldn't have.

I also thought the movie had too much stuff crammed into it. Barbie is a feminist icon. But she's also the reason girls are insecure. Barbie is discovering herself. Ken is the villain and he's plotting a men uprising. Feminism and patriarchy are discussed superficially. Ken doesn't actually care about patriarchy and wants to discover himself too. Mattel is there. And then the ending felt super hamfisted too.

There's a lot of other problems too, I know I'm only brushing over the surface, but other people probably have criticized it better than me. I just know that I watched it, not even expecting anything other than a fun lighthearted movie and came out with a bad taste in my mouth. It sucked.

But like, that's a deeper analysis of the movie, and that movie isn't deep at all, so on the surface I can say it was pretty funny.

[bad-wolf-circe]

finally watched the barbie movie. guys it's literally just an advertisement. yall hyped up an advertisement. y'all hyped up a 2-hour russian nesting doll of advertisements with surface level feminism that doesn't actually accomplish anything. this is literally just a giant, "edgy-but-self-aware" advertisement. it says alllll the right things, all of the politically correct things, but at the end of the day IT! IS! STILL! AN! AD!!! mattel does NOT care about ur asses and the literal BILLION dollars they made off of this movie only proves that.

[rave-melancholia]

Barbie is pure apologetics for girlboss feminism and doesn’t engage with one seriously interesting or intelligent idea. Next.

[fancylala4]

It’s kind of funny how Mattel acts like they are the most diverse doll company when they are not.

In their Disney princess lineup, they make dolls of Ariel and her blonde bugged eyed clone. They barely make dolls of the princesses of color.

It took them years to diversify their main Barbie dolls. And now they are having Brooklyn Barbie be the best black friend to white Barbie.

I also heard they are treating their black monster high dolls like trash (I’m not a fan of it. So I’m not sure about this) compared to the other characters.

I guess they only said it for attention and clout.

[sawthatmountainburn]

starting a conspiracy theory that the attempted revival of "femmephobia" as a concept and the posts about how we need to bring back 2012 tumblr feminism were a psyop prepping us to accept the barbie movie

[yesyourstalker]

I love the Barbie movie but like most things it is not free from criticism

It is a very feminist movie but it really kind of focuses around white heteronormative feminism and really could have addressed more intersectional issues like how the patriarchy affects women of color especially when one of the lead roles is a woman of color herself

(This will compared kenland to a smallpox outbreak in an indigenous tribe which was kind of weird)

In the message is very binary but we do have weird Barbie and Alan who undoubtedly are somewhat very queer coded characters but I'm I'm not convinced that they did that on purpose I think that was a happy accident is the movie good Yes is the movie perfect not in the slightest

I really can't be completely upset about it though because The movie is only an hour long and we kind of live in this very anti-woke climate where almost anything that criticizes white heteronormative ideals is welcome with violence and just blind hatred which is very frightening

[monstrousdaughter]

lol no actors from barbie should've been nominated. gosling was very charismatic and charming sure but there are probably a bunch of better performances in better movies that should have been nominated instead. america ferrera also wasn't given anything super special to do. however the nods for production design and costumes are well deserved imo

[feyres-divorce-lawyer]

professional hater 👩🏾‍🏫

[cloudbellsv3]

I love reading Barbie critiques because I thought I was the insane one coming out of that film. The way people built it up to be the pinnacle of feminist commentary - so revolutionary, so hard-hitting, so emotional....and I went in expecting a real mainstream feminist movie only to get...that.

[sunnyscript]

Do you ever just recontextualise that things happen under capitalism