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Last month hate preacher Kent Christmas kicked off a crusade against the upcoming Barbie movie, calling for God to “loose a Holy judgment” on the film because it’s “full of transsexual and transgender and homosexuality.”
Now, with the release of the film imminent, a number of other right-wing culture warriors have joined the crusade against something they haven’t even seen, simply because it features trans actress Hari Nef as Doctor Barbie.
“WARNING: DON’T TAKE YOUR DAUGHTER TO BARBIE,” the right-wing Christian Movieguide site declared in a recent post.
The new BARBIE movie forgets its core audience of families and children while catering to nostalgic adults and pushing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender character stories.
Furthermore, the movie was poorly made with multiple premises, losing even the most die-hard fans.
As Movieguide sees it, no one should go to a movie that doesn’t cater enough to what Movieguide sees as its “core audience.”
To make an appealing movie, executives must define their audience. For Barbie, there was a built-in audience of little girls and merchandise for the movie.
“They had a built-in market and audience for this franchise that they completely ignored,” said a Movieguide® staff member. “Millions of families would have turned out to the theaters and purchased tickets, but instead, Mattel chose to cater to a small percentage of the population who has proven over and over to abandon the box office. …”
Families need to know how bad this is. Not only is it a missed business opportunity for a beloved brand, the movie itself is badly made.
The review offers no evidence or argument to back this up, because no one has yet seen the film. Nor do they seem aware that trans folks and gay people, in general, might also consider themselves as part of a “core audience” for a live-action Barbie film directed by Greta Gerwig.
Writers at right-wing “news” sites are piling on the film, with LifeSite grousing about the “gender-confused man portraying a female doctor” and the film’s alleged “overarching themes that belittle men in the name of gender equality.” Meanwhile, Mary Margaret Olohan of the Daily Signal rehearsed the same complaint on Twitter:
Self-hating gay reactionary Dave Rubin, meanwhile, complained that Nef was stealing a role from cis actresses who apparently have dibs on the whole Barbie thing.
“I don’t have a problem with the trans person being an actor,” he began.
[But] there’s a gajillion girls out there who would love to be in the ‘Barbie’ movie as a girl, so why do they go out of their way to have a biological boy play a girl who’s supposed to be completely a girl in the ‘Barbie’ movie unless they’re trying to confuse kids?
It’s not clear why Rubin thinks Barbie dolls are supposed to be girls rather than women. Nef, for her part, is 30 years old, and Doctor Barbie is obviously an adult character. As is the alpha Barbie, played by 33-year-old Margot Robbie.
The right-wing Western Journal is mad that the film will satirize traditional gender roles a bit. The publication explains that
transgender actor Hari Nef (a man who claims to be a woman) seemingly said the quiet part out loud in an interview with Out magazine.
“[He] says while the movie is a celebration of femininity, it’s also a loving sendup of it and how far it can be taken,” the glowing article notes. …
That’s when he muttered the most alarming bit: “It’s candy with a little poison, and that’s what I like.”
Look, whether you think child sex trafficking and pedophilia are real-world problems or are some conservative boogeyman, we can all agree that poisoning children with candy is wrong, no?
The Western Journal apparently doesn’t understand what a metaphor is.
And yet, Nef’s offhand remarks illustrate the very thing that has so many everyday Americans concerned.
Namely, most Americans don’t care about whatever perversion is going on behind closed doors. But once those doors are flung open and targeting children? That’s where many parents draw the line, and Nef’s remarks could be a death knell for the “Barbie” movie just weeks before its grand debut.
You wish.
Weirdo right-wing entertainment site Bounding Into Comics also took issue with Nef’s Out interview, describing her as “a man who pretends to be a woman and who mockingly plays Doctor Barbie” and complaining that she is using Gerwig’s Barbie to “[try] to normalize ‘transgenderism.’”
Meanwhile, the always irritating TV bloviator Piers Morgan thinks Barbie will be terrible because there’s not enough Ken in it. As the Mary Sue notes, Morgan
takes issue with the fact that the film’s many Barbies range in talent and occupation from President to Nobel Prize-winning physicist, while all the male characters are “simply called Ken.” This, Morgan says, “is an assault on not just Ken, but all men.”
Has Morgan just made himself into the world’s first Ken’s Rights Activist?
One bit of good news in all this nonsense is that the crusade against Barbie doesn’t seem to have caught on amongst the usual MAGA/Fox News crowd, at least not yet. Could it be that they are feeling a little bit of outrage fatigue? Or maybe it’s just that Fox News hasn’t yet made a big deal of it. We’ll see how it goes after the movie opens next weekend.
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They, uh, they do know that Barbie doesn’t have a vagina either, don’t they?
They don’t know that Ken has always been an accessory for Barbie. Fake fans!
@Lucrece
Given how often they’ll go on about fantasies involving sexbot and artificial wombs, I’d say they’re well aware, and they’re very upset about it.
Lucrece: Those guys would never go near any girls’ toys to find out. (Or if they did, they’d never admit it.)
Is Moon Goddess Barbie gonna be in this movie? How about Pregnant Cutaway View Barbie?
@Raging Bee:
Is Moon Goddess Barbie gonna be in this movie? How about Pregnant Cutaway View Barbie?
Let’s not forget Magical Transforming Boobs-On-Demand Skipper.
David wrote:
To the contrary, the quoted text clearly insinuates that “candy with a little poison in it” is supposed to be taken as a metaphor for slipping sexual perversion or somesuch into media targeted for children. The author then goes along with that supposed metaphor for a bit.
The seemingly random reference to “child sex trafficking and pedophilia” makes no sense whatsoever, except to entrench the perception that exposing children to LGBT whatever is driven by the same motivation and the same people as child sexual abuse. It’s straight up conspiracy theory messaging, up to the bit where it is taken as natural that evil queer pedophiles might admit in a public interview that they like poisoning children’s minds.
The author also refers to people who supposedly treat child sex trafficking and pedophilia as “some conservative boogeyman” rather than real “real-world problems”. The premise here seems to be that straight-up child sexual abuse literally only exists (inasmuch as it does) as an extension of the LGBT agenda of turning young people queer and sexually promiscuous and generally being obscene in front of children. These people are actively training themselves, for obvious political purpose, to erase any child sexual abuse and any human trafficking that doesn’t fit neatly in their anti-LGBT slander campaign.
@Lumpina
they don’t want to confront the reality that religious institutions in particular are very fertile grounds for all kinds of abuses. a reality that average people can easily accept because most people have a story of some kind where the perpetrator got away with it and continues to live their life free of consequence.
“To make an appealing movie, executives must define their audience. For Barbie, there was a built-in audience of little girls and merchandise for the movie.”
[sigh] How quickly they forget Earring Magic Ken.
Now, if we are discussing the white fundie crowd usually positioned as “normal America”, and “perversion” being grown adults choosing stuff like forming relationships or affirming their gender, this is *absolutely* not true. They care deeply about it.
On the other hand, this is true in the sense that actual perversions like child abuse are something they are quite happy to tolerate as long as it’s “behind closed doors”, seeing as they need to maintain plausible deniability.
Waitaminnit, Ted Cruz just said the Barbie movie was Chinese propaganda! So maybe the trans person is there to distract us from the inscrutable Yellow Peril stuff? Or maybe vice-versa…?
Considering neither Barbie nor Ken have genitals, it hardly matters.
I think the other Barbies are glorified cameos anyway. It’s all about Barbie and Ken Prime.
I don’t think your average 5 year old is going to care — or even realize — that Doctor Barbie was AMAB.
RW panickers, the many animated Barbie movies are for the littles. This one — with Gerwig and Baumbach creating* — is for grownups. Of which there are several generations of who played with Barbies. Everyone in the US who was born after 1959 knows who Barbie is. I’ve still got Barbies and I’m over 60.
Also, pearl-clutchers, there are these helpful movie ratings that tell you who it’s aimed at! This Barbie is a PG-13, meaning your single-digit kids probably shouldn’t be watching. Movies suitable for children are rated G. I’m sorry you haven’t realized that. Try watching the trailer, at least.
And I don’t see the 9 year olds planning to go as a double-feature to “Oppenheimer” this weekend either.
Piers Morgan should STFU about, well, everything. Let him make his own Ken movie, which will be a short, because Ken (according to Mattel) doesn’t exist when he’s not being Barbie’s boyfriend. FFS, he can’t console himself with a month of movies with Tom Cruise jumping off cliffs, Harrison Ford still wielding whip and fists, and Cillian Murphy and a lot of other dudes creating the atom bomb?
@Mea: These are probably the repressed and abused children/grandchildren of people who whined about Earring Magic Ken.
LOL, I just googled Gerwig, and when I clicked on the “Movies” bubble, I got a few seconds of bright pink sparkly stars!
*Under the helpful auspices of the mega-corp capitalist Mattel, who didn’t mind one of the Barbies being trans and don’t think it’ll hurt their profits. They’re also cool with LGBT and PoC Barbie and Ken actors.
I remember a Barbie anniversary (50th mebbe?). A store in Soho had a big window display of life size Barbie stuff. A mate quite liked Barbie, so we went to get some photos of her there. But the bouncers from the next door clip joint thought I was taking pictures of the punters and threatened to beat me up.
Happy days.
OT, but the MAGAites seem to be developing a few internal feuds:
I’d be more worried that a gunfight could break out. Boebert is infamous for carrying weapons onto the House floor and posting videos of herself target-shooting.
‘An assault on Ken’ lmfao, I love how Piers is phrasing this as if he or any other right wing male have ever once in their lifetimes given a solitary fuck (or even one solid minute of thought) about Barbie’s boyfriend and the dignity of his media portrayals.
I’m just sitting here waiting for the release of “Oppenheimer”.
Piers “liberal snowflakes” Morgan can’t take the joke and literal reference to the toy line. It’s not an attack on men, it’s self-aware humour.
Do they know that little girls don’t give a shit about gay, lesbian or trans characters? Like, they do not care if there are some of them in a movie or a TV show, especially in a movie with probably half a million different kind of women and girls.
How is this going to confuse kids? Are they going to be handed genetic test results when they walk into the theater? Is a giant schlong going to flash on the screen when she appears? Is Rubin going to go from town to town screaming “That’s a man!” at every showing he can get into?
When kids watch this movie, they’re going to see an actress playing a Barbie doctor. They’re not going to be transvestigating every face they see on the screen.
epronovost said:
“But, but little girls are supposed to give a shit and learn to hate them, just like we do!!! Otherwise it’s GROOMING!!!!!” /s
@Tabby
they are absolutely going to transvestigate everybody involved with the barbie movie now
Edit: i’m sorry, you meant the kids. these adults, though, think about trans stuff more than i do. and i’m trans.
@Ada: A gay friend once commented, “The Republicans are more obsessed with anal sex than me, and you all know what a (f-word) I am!” Other gay male friends have agreed with this. One partnered gay man even whispered “I’ve never had butt sex, but those ‘Christian’ kids have it all the time to preserve their technical virginity.”
@Surplus: Am I a bad person if I hope they take each other out of the government? No, I am not. I would still disapprove of a shootout on the House floor, though.
@ Surplus to Requirements and GSS ex-noob
That would be horrific but perhaps give government figures a slightly different viewpoint on gun violence afterward.
Eh, who am I kidding? They’d probably just use it as a political talking point while quietly increasing security in the building.
“I offer thoughts and prayers for the latest school shooting, which are really heartfelt because I was in a shooting too. I mean, I was in the bathroom at the time when Bobert shot a chair, table, and the wall, but you know, it was really scary when my aide told me about it later. Anyway, that’s why I hesitated a whole half a second before signing the GOP bill to lower the age to purchase ARs to fifteen (fourteen in Texas and Florida).”
@GSS: I’m more for the knife-fight in a pit myself.