#it wasn’t a deep movie

[ifyouknowmenoyoudontbitch]

So I watched Barbie.

Barbie (2023) was a movie that attempted to discuss the intricate and complex issues that come with womanhood.

The way they tried to do this was show the patriarchy through the lens of a matriarchy, misandry instead of misogyny

Except it didn’t.

Women in a patriarchy are oppressed by the society simply for existing, if we aren’t straight up paid less we’re taxed for simply being a woman, like having to take maternity leave, or having to buy feminine products for a body function we have zero control over.

Not to mention the societal oppression via beauty and emotional standards. Women need to be beautiful and they need to be emotionally mature to “balance” the immature men. Our lives revolve around the idea of serving men if not physically then emotionally.

In Barbie the Kens aren’t oppressed, they’re forgotten about. The Barbie’s could not give less of a shit about the Ken’s

This is an idealized world for some women. Women are in power and not made to feel like they need to apologize for taking up space, this is framed as a good thing, because it is. For the Barbies.

Meanwhile the Kens are forgotten, the movie doesn’t say or do anything about this fact.

The Kens as a collective don’t do anything until Beach Ken gets upset because Barbie keeps rejecting him.

We don’t see Ken’s feelings at all past a single line where he moodily mocks Barbie where he imagines Barbie finally saying yes to his advances and he gets to fantasize about rejecting her.

As far as a society goes this still isn’t the greatest, a whole section of the population is made to feel lesser

In a good movie we would see what happens with the Kens, maybe they’re all sleeping on the ground outside or in cars or whatever. Because then we’d understand the unfairness that the Kens feel in this world since this is supposed to be a reverse image of our world. Or at least it’s supposed to be a women oriented idealized version of our world, where men aren’t exactly oppressed but they don’t matter at all to women.

Anyway that doesnt happen but Barbie gets fucked up and has to go to the real world, Ken comes along because he’s such a desperate Manlet for Barbies attention

This is where the movie starts trying to have a message.

Barbie goes to the real world and starts getting objectified for the first time, this makes her feel bad however Ken feels great at the attention.

All the movie does with Barbies objectification is put it on a pedestal and point to it, it doesn’t say anything we just get this feeling of uncomfortableness at Barbie getting her ass slapped and cat called.

This isn’t inherently bad, putting something on a pedestal and pointing could be good, but this is a movie. It’s supposed to do something; say something, and it didn’t.

We move on from her objectification pretty quickly, it’s there and then it’s gone again never to be spoken of.

There’s One really good scene.

When Barbie is sitting on the bench she has yet to know the societal expectations of women, she’s still living in Barbieland.

So when she sees an old woman for the first time and calls her beautiful it’s a lovely poignant scene because she doesn’t know that women who are old are no longer desirable. Barbie never cared about being desired so she’s able to see this woman as she is and not as who she is “expected” to be. She’s Beautiful.

And then she goes to the school and we have the scene where Sasha calls Barbie out on “putting back feminism” because of beauty standards and what not. This is a great scene that should set up a conversation about the double standard Barbie sets for girls.

She’s Barbie, she can be a doctor, or an astronaut, or the President. But she’ll always be beautiful, she’ll always be skinny, she’ll always have perfect hair and makeup.

They did not talk about this at all.

It was framed as Sasha being a bitchy teen and we then move into Barbie meeting Mattel.

The entire Mattel plot line made so little sense, maybe it was a metaphor for something but idk so I’m just gonna move past it. All it did was give us two chase scenes back to back and introduce us better to Sasha’s mother who I don’t remember the name of.

So Barbie and Mom and Sasha go back to Barbieland cause…idk? It’s not made clear but they go back because society is so hard and when they get back to Barbieland and see that it’s now Like Society they’re devastated, as they should be, their “perfect” society is ruined.

So this is where the movie tries to talk about the patriarchy.

They don’t.

The patriarchy is the Kens being stereotypical men and the women being servants.

The movie does not discuss the implications of this, it doesn’t talk about why women needed to serve men throughout history.

Because historically women had to serve men because otherwise they’d be destitute, homeless, beaten, or killed.

Barbie does not comment on this, it just goes “this is bad” and moves on, again putting what we women already know and telling us in extremely simplistic terms.

People keep saying it’s a critique on what the patriarchy does to men, and I suppose in a very very very simple way it does. When the Kens are singing to their Barbies and the Barbies make them jealous by talking to other Kens at the same time.

Even though this isn’t really a critique on how the patriarchy makes men worse, it’s a vague critique on jealousy and relationships, it could’ve gone deeper into how the patriarchy sets a standard for men’s behavior, act like this, don’t show this emotion, look like this, but it doesn’t.

The Barbies are able to be de-programmed from the Kendom by getting tiktok ranted to by Sasha’s Mom about the double standard women go through

We weren’t shown this double standard we were told, over and over again

In an extremely anticlimactic scene the Barbies are able to take over Barbieland again, the Ken’s are right back to where they started and barely anything changed except now they like, sort of acknowledge the Ken’s deserve better than being ignored.

Once the “patriarchy” is disabled the Ken’s don’t show anger or resentment, they just miss their Barbie and want to be friends again.

Even Ken himself didn’t want to be a patriarchal leader, he just wanted Barbie to notice and acknowledge him. He makes a comical comment about “it was hard Barbie”

How Ken, how was it hard? Was it hard because the patriarchy makes men disillusioned with their emotions, making their mental health worse because they refuse to seek help due to perceived weakness?

The plot of the movie is about Barbie and her human counterpart being connected, but even after find out Barbie is connected to Sasha’s mom and not Sasha we never get any scenes about that connection

Why was Mom sad? Why was she having existential thoughts about death? Why was she worried about cellulite? We don’t get that

We don’t get any scenes with Barbie coming to terms with “being a woman” she just cries

The movie ends with her becoming human but she doesn’t do anything meaningful.

The issue is also that this is only a single niche womens experience. This doesn’t talk about PoC women, or queer women.

The issue with trying to make a movie about girl-womanhood is that not even women truly know what that means.

How do you explain womanhood? Does being a woman mean you get catcalled? Does it mean periods? Does it mean feeling unsafe to walk down the street?

Is being a woman just to live in fear?

I feel like that’s an awful definition of womanhood, but I don’t think womanhood can be defined by a single experience. Being a woman is just being a woman. What that means is up to you.

That’s the message Barbie should’ve given us but it didn’t. It played the safe card to appease Hollywood and it marketed the hell out of it to make bank.

To be so clear. I do not give a fuck if you liked this movie. Some people like stupid things cause it’s cute or campy or easy. That’s fine. Barbie is fine. But it’s not the ultra feminist movie of the century.

I think you do yourself a disservice as a woman to think that a movie needs to be about feminist to be feminist. A movie shouldn’t have to tell you it’s message, it should be able to show you. And Barbie didn’t show me anything I didn’t already know.

[daydreamerdrew]

excerpt from “Briar Rose” in The Complete First Edition: The Original Folk & Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated and edited by Jack Zipes

[minimoniii]

and they’re boyfriends

[daincrediblegg]

Ah yes daddy. Mansplain monty python to me in my own post one more time I’m gonna pre

[seilon]

finished watching fight club for the first time for film analysis class and can I just say. what the fuck

[arihi]

On my bullshit again but I still maintain the (once again very bastardized and westernized) idea of ‘healing’ a la “you don’t owe anything to anyone” and “cutting people off is maintaining healthy boundaries” is a brain rot and people are so caught up in their moral superiority of [have had a single thought of introspection at least once] they don’t realize how black and white and inconsistent these ideals are

[thebiffmethod]

listen i loved barbie too but can we stop pretending that ANY of the quotes from the film are groundbreaking political statements in any way

[angel-archivist]

m3gan is like the funniest movie of all time to be claimed by the queer community like hello???

[worm-in-a-trenchcoat]

“Wednesday” is what I was expecting the MH movie to be. Like, Mattel needs to take notes

[poorlittlevampire]

i do think disney movies have gone down in quality (for many reasons) but i also think. perhaps. some of us are expecting way too much out of movies meant for. children

[preciouslittletoonette]

Felt like saying this so: Going through the Battinson/The Batman 2022 tag and reading about the possibility/the desire of Robin appearing in the next film and all the different essays has made my love and appreciation for Dick Grayson increase tenfold.

[pop-punklouis]

-

[softestepilogue]

wow i’ve had a really bad day. time to turn on my favorite comfort movie.

[haunt4haunt]

i will say i’m not a fan of how in the last week or two the barbenheimer stuff just became straight up girls vs. boys

[imogens-temult]

your taste per chastain movies is terrible

feel free to make your own version with your preferred ratings then, god forbid someone’s opinions differ from your own pLS

[newjenns]

phase 4 i liked: wandavision, ds:mom, shang chi, wakanda forever

phase 4 i liked but honestly can’t remember: loki, captain america and the winter soldier, hawkeye

phase 4 mid: black widow

phase 4 i don’t remember but didn’t like: moonknight, ms marvel, thor love and thunder

phase 4 i didn’t like: eternals, she hulk, antman, gotg:hs