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Barbie

PoetPhilosopher

PoetPhilosopher

Veteran Member
Clizby Wampuscat said:
How about something like men and women are different but if we work together and communicate together we can understand each other better, make society better and each other better. Is this not a good message? They could have done that with this movie.
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I'd say this world is pretty much past working together currently and under the current political climate, with one side not even trying to. In such cases, "meeting fire with fire" might prove useful. Which this movie seems to be doing.

Such a message as yours might have worked for a movie pre-2016, though.
 
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Debater Slayer

Debater Slayer

Vipassana
Staff member
Premium Member
Clizby Wampuscat said:
Barbie was a relentless attack on men with pro abortion imagery showing all men to be patriarchal, misogynistic, low intelligence, easily manipulated, greedy and violent. I cannot tell you how relentless it was, you have to see it to understand. If I was not at the drive in I would have walked out. My wife was appalled as well. We both felt sick when we left.

Here is a summary: It starts in Barbieland where the Barbies are in charge and the Kens are submissive. Stereotypical Barbie and White Ken go to the real world from Barbieland to find a girl that needs help. They depict the real world as a patriarchal misogynistic world where men rule everything and women are subjugated. White Ken sees this and learns from this "real" society. He goes back to Barbieland without Barbie and brainwashes the Barbies and institutes a patriarchal, misogynistic society that oppresses women. Barbie goes back to find this and manipulates the men into fighting a violent war between themselves so the Barbies can take over again. When this is done, everything is back to the way it should be. The Kens are submissive again and the Barbies are in charge.

Key Takeaways:

1. First scene bashed motherhood and literally had little girls bashing baby dolls heads on strollers, cribs and rocks to destroy them
2. Heard the word patriarchy at least 40 times.
3. All men acted like it was 1950.
4. The only "good" male in the movie was shown as meek and powerless.
5. Showed the Mattel board of directors as all misogynistic men when in actuality Mattel has 5 of the 11 board members as women.
6. All men were shown to be dumb.
7. The white Ken was shown to be a moron and the leader of the rebellion that brainwashed the Barbies into complying with an oppressive patriarchal society.
8. Long monologues of how women are oppressed and how hard it is to be a woman in a patriarchal society with no talk at all of any real issues men have.
9. Ken was "reformed" at the end of the movie depicting him as meek, submissive and powerless.

I wanted to like this movie hoping it was a fun movie with a good message for women and girls. It was worse than anything I could have imagined and a bait and switch. No trailer showed what the movie was really about. My 12 yo son will not be watching this movie. He would come out of it thinking that he is terrible just for being a boy. Instead of cleverly bringing up issues men and women have and have them work together to resolve or at least understand each other, they used hate and bigotry to get their view across.

Before you write this off as some kind of male fragility or something, take time to understand the movie or watch it. It was unfair and divisive.
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I'm eagerly looking forward to watching the movie, and I like that it has a different and rare story for a blockbuster. Its immense success seems to me a good sign that most moviegoers don't care as much or feel as outraged about the intentionally exaggerated, female-oriented theme as a subset of conservative critics are.

I don't see the need for a two-hour movie strictly about a doll marketed to girls to have a message about men's issues. Why would that be necessary? Should we expect a World War II movie to necessarily have messages about nuclear proliferation and its dangers? Or a movie about a rags-to-riches story to have a message about how not all rich and powerful people are unempathetic and how a lot of them are helpful and charitable?

I would equally be fine with a movie about men's issues not necessarily delving into women's issues. Movies need a primary focus given constraints of plot, runtime, and target audience.
 
Revoltingest

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Orbit said:
The Wall Street Journal, Ted Cruz, and all the usual suspects on the right have jumped on the Barbie-hatin' bandwagon.
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From the OP's description, it seems
reasonable to jump on it. I'll judge if
I ever watch it. Could be a parody, eh.
I'd heard that this was criticized by
people who thought it was serious....
 
Debater Slayer

Debater Slayer

Vipassana
Staff member
Premium Member
Snow White said:
I've seen Republican politicians critique it, and just mostly conservative corners in general.
Click to expand...

Orbit said:
The Wall Street Journal, Ted Cruz, and all the usual suspects on the right have jumped on the Barbie-hatin' bandwagon.
Click to expand...

I thought the GOP was embracing the ethos of snubbing the cultures of "outrage"/"being offended" and "victimhood." It looks like a movie has outraged and victimized a few there.
 
an anarchist

an anarchist

Your local loco.
Clizby Wampuscat said:
Barbie was a relentless attack on men with pro abortion imagery showing all men to be patriarchal, misogynistic, low intelligence, easily manipulated, greedy and violent. I cannot tell you how relentless it was, you have to see it to understand. If I was not at the drive in I would have walked out. My wife was appalled as well. We both felt sick when we left.

Here is a summary: It starts in Barbieland where the Barbies are in charge and the Kens are submissive. Stereotypical Barbie and White Ken go to the real world from Barbieland to find a girl that needs help. They depict the real world as a patriarchal misogynistic world where men rule everything and women are subjugated. White Ken sees this and learns from this "real" society. He goes back to Barbieland without Barbie and brainwashes the Barbies and institutes a patriarchal, misogynistic society that oppresses women. Barbie goes back to find this and manipulates the men into fighting a violent war between themselves so the Barbies can take over again. When this is done, everything is back to the way it should be. The Kens are submissive again and the Barbies are in charge.

Key Takeaways:

1. First scene bashed motherhood and literally had little girls bashing baby dolls heads on strollers, cribs and rocks to destroy them
2. Heard the word patriarchy at least 40 times.
3. All men acted like it was 1950.
4. The only "good" male in the movie was shown as meek and powerless.
5. Showed the Mattel board of directors as all misogynistic men when in actuality Mattel has 5 of the 11 board members as women.
6. All men were shown to be dumb.
7. The white Ken was shown to be a moron and the leader of the rebellion that brainwashed the Barbies into complying with an oppressive patriarchal society.
8. Long monologues of how women are oppressed and how hard it is to be a woman in a patriarchal society with no talk at all of any real issues men have.
9. Ken was "reformed" at the end of the movie depicting him as meek, submissive and powerless.

I wanted to like this movie hoping it was a fun movie with a good message for women and girls. It was worse than anything I could have imagined and a bait and switch. No trailer showed what the movie was really about. My 12 yo son will not be watching this movie. He would come out of it thinking that he is terrible just for being a boy. Instead of cleverly bringing up issues men and women have and have them work together to resolve or at least understand each other, they used hate and bigotry to get their view across.

Before you write this off as some kind of male fragility or something, take time to understand the movie or watch it. It was unfair and divisive.
Click to expand...
I haven't read through the whole thread but I just HAVE to jump to the defense of this movie.

I loved this movie, watched it with my boyfriend. It's been a long time since a movie had me laughing from start to finish.

It is PG-13. It is definitely not a movie for little kids and it's obvious by watching it that little kids were not the target audience at all. I saw a couple parents walk out with their little kiddos before the movie was halfway through. All the humor in it is like for millennials/and gen z even.

My immediate siblings and cousins saw it too (aged 20s-30s) and they all loved it. Sure, the movie was rather "liberal" i.e. a proud proponent of girl power, buuuut like most youngins are more liberal than the generations that has preceded them.

I'm not gonna go through your list of bullet points but I will comment on your first point about the opening scene.

The opening scene was a literal spoof of the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I think you read into it the wrong way.

Oh, also does the mentions of patriarchy make you uncomfortable? Do you disagree and say that we don't live in a patriarchal society? We definitely do, sure, progress has been made but not enough.
 
Debater Slayer

Debater Slayer

Vipassana
Staff member
Premium Member
an anarchist said:
I haven't read through the whole thread but I just HAVE to jump to the defense of this movie.

I loved this movie, watched it with my boyfriend. It's been a long time since a movie had me laughing from start to finish.

It is PG-13. It is definitely not a movie for little kids and it's obvious by watching it that little kids were not the target audience at all. I saw a couple parents walk out with their little kiddos before the movie was halfway through. All the humor in it is like for millennials/and gen z even.

My immediate siblings and cousins saw it too (aged 20s-30s) and they all loved it. Sure, the movie was rather "liberal" i.e. a proud proponent of girl power, buuuut like most youngins are more liberal than the generations that has preceded them.

I'm not gonna go through your list of bullet points but I will comment on your first point about the opening scene.

The opening scene was a literal spoof of the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I think you read into it the wrong way.

Oh, also does the mentions of patriarchy make you uncomfortable? Do you disagree and say that we don't live in a patriarchal society? We definitely do, sure, progress has been made but not enough.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the summary! What you said makes me even more interested to see it.

One way I could see repeated comments about patriarchy in such a movie would be as a method of highlighting certain issues by way of exaggerating them in the context of a highly stylized, deliberately fantastical story. I wouldn't expect to get a 1:1 mapping to reality, but I would expect some thought-provoking moments to be elicited through absurdity or hyperbole.

Of course, I could be wrong. I'll have to see it first to be sure of anything about it. Can't wait! :D
 
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