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A week ago, I wrote a post about the nascent anti-Barbie movie crusade, and I noted that it seemed oddly muted. Well, what a difference a week makes: with the movie actually out this weekend, the anti-Barbie forces have turned up the volume, denouncing the movie as “woke” feminazi garbage that pushes a not-very-secret LGBTQ agenda.
As is regularly the case with boycotts of movies, the boycotters and boycott organizers haven’t seen the film and basically don’t know anything about it. But that doesn’t stop them from tagging it as everything from a misandrist nightmare to a literally demonic attempt by leftists and alleged perverts to groom young girls.
So let’s take a look at some of the anti-Barbie propaganda.
Every single one of these tweets made me want to see the movie more. And I’m not the only one: the film is on track to take in as much as $150 million over its first weekend.
But my favorite anti-Barbie tweet has to be this one:
Remember that time seven years ago when the internet’s biggest doofuses ganged up on a Ghostbusters movie because all the main characters were women, and this was somehow destroying their childhood or something? Valliant Renegade remembers. And so do I. And so will you if you click here. Ah, memories!
Oh, and if all the chatter about doll-smashing in the tweets above has you curious, here’s the relevant clip from the film.
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Tell me you’ve never seen 2001: A Space Odyssey without telling me you’ve never seen 2001: A Space Odyssey. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@ griffon8
They cast Margot Robbie because she’s 9 feet tall, 4 feet wide, and 1 foot deep.
You knew it was coming…
Barbie is… COMMUNIST!
I have a friend who does interesting art projects. Knitting, quilting, and … whatever this is, best defined by recounting the conversation she had with her husband:
Husband: “What’re you working on, petal?”
Wife: “Making a cock ring for Ken.”
Husband: (being very English) “Ah, that explains Barbie’s outfit.”
@Nah. They think Oppenheimer is also woke. After all, he was a commie traitor. Also, he was Jewish.
Supposedly Vietnam BANNED the Barbie movie over a map that is in it. According to the video I posted above (on page 1 of this thread).
That is true. China claims almost the entire South China Sea as its territory. They sent a map with the outline of the claim to the UN, with the claim illustrated by a dashed line. Vietnam is claiming that the crude map in Barbie is Chinese propaganda in support of this claim. At this point, Vietnam is basically paranoid that any movie featuring any kind of map of Asia is supporting China. This is only the most recent one they banned, but now the Philippines and Malaysia may follow suit, and Rupert Murdoch is publishing editorials in his papers agreeing with Vietnam for some reason.
@ Dave, where in the movie is the China line drawn with regards to India? Because China is always trying to move into Ladakh.
@griffon8: Exactly. Another all-dude movie, but way too thinky for them. (Cute doggo!)
@Alan: LOL. Once at a hotel, a rollaway bed was delivered to our room. Standing on end and completely backlit by the sun, a black rectangle. My friend and I started “Also Sprach Zarathustra” without thinking. Then we went “ook ook” for a bit. (We hadn’t even ordered it, it simply appeared. Called housekeeping, shoved it into the hallway.)
@Doubles: The giant whoosh over their heads must have been hurricane-force winds. There’s little more capitalist than Barbie. (Also, your name makes me hungry.)
I’ve heard that Mattel’s legal department is filled with some of the fiercest attack dogs when it comes to copyright and trademark infringement. That’s not exactly a hallmark of socialism or communism.
I’m so tired of these disingenuous and fake a$$ reviewers that I’ve just given up at this point. If the reviewer is straight white and male I just skip anything they have to say, especially if I feel it’s not the type of movie aimed at them as the audience, like women, little girls, or PoC. If it’s not already someone I’ve already been following for several years I skip them.
I don’t actually read reviews as a general rule, since I have never needed help figuring out what I wanted to pay money to see in theaters. I prefer meta-analysis and commentary. That’s much more interesting to me than whether or not someone who isn’t me thinks something is good.
I’m usually looking for insight not ratings, and those guys don’t know how to do that either, and what insights could they possibly provide regarding social issues they don’t know or never cared about anyway? 🙄
I guess this is just how we’re all gonna live now. We gotta get bacKlash against every popular movie that gets a release under the guise of “reviews”! People falling all over themselves to be the first one to release their hot wrong takes on popular media.
Its been my observation (since the days of the Yahoo Message Boards, which I watched happen in real-time) that every social media platform degrades in this fashion over time as it gets infested by trolls, idlers, and more and more people whose only agenda is trying to draw as much attention to their unimaginative drivel as possible.
I don’t like sounding so uncharitable (it feels mean spirited) but we need to face the idea that there have always been human beings whose thoughts simply were never worth listening to but feel entitled to an audience anyway.
They wouldn’t like the sequel much, either. Not only is it not all-dude, it’s got a spaceship with a female captain (a decade before Janeway!) and black people in prominent positions.
Well, I suppose there’s one thing they would like. In its timeline they apparently abolished term limits and Reagan became President For Life. (And started a Second Cuban Missile Crisis. Couldn’t let Nixon have screwed anything up that he hadn’t!) In the real world the most prominent position occupied by a black person in that year was “behind the Resolute desk” and they’ve been kvetching about it ever since.
It also had joint missions with Russia, but it was a still-Communist Russia, not a Nazi Russia, so they’d probably hate that too.
@ Lakitha Tolbert
I wholeheartedly agree with you on that. I usually avoid reviews before watching something to avoid spoilers, then look up some decent reviews afterward so I can get a different perspective and go “Oh wow! I never even thought about it that way. I had no clue it was a veiled reference to blah blah blah.” Then I proceed to annoy the nearest person with this new insight 😂
@.45
Yeah I can do that all day!😄😄😄
I have a thing with art generally that I always try to come to new stuff completely in the dark. I don’t even want to know who did it, let alone what it’s about or any background to it.
I just want to initially experience it totally blind and with no preconceptions. That way I can feel what it does to me on an visceral level.
Then, even if the work didn’t do anything for me, I will read up all about it and have a second (or even multiple) revisits. Sometimes that can actually make me appreciate something I didn’t like before. I might get an insight that puts a different slant on things. And if I did already like it, then I might get something out of it on more levels.
I do enjoy getting new perspectives on things. Then it’s a gift that keeps on giving. But I do like having my own preliminary take on things.
Welp the Barbie movie was number one at the box office. Thanks for all the free publicity, right wingers.
The funny thing is the film never appealed to me at all. Did not understand the hype.
These reviews have made sure I will now go and watch it.
There’s a big debate on Law Twitter (or Law X as I guess it is now) on the Constitution of Barbieland and the legislative framework. Apparently there’s a referendum or something and people are confused about how the executive works there and whether there’s separation of powers.
Law X? Lawks!
@Alan:
And how naïve to think the pattern stops at only three dimensions!
(Granted, I think you have had to have read Clarke’s novelization for that reference. Yes, Clarke wrote the original short story ‘The Sentinel’ which was one of the inspirations for the movie, but he also wrote the novelization of the movie. Which, due to production and publishing timelines, ended up operating off an earlier version of the script as to which moon the second monolith was found on.)
@ jenora
Have you read “Lost Worlds of 2001”
That’s ACC’s book on the development of the project with Kubrick. It’s really fascinating as to the process; and how Kubrick operates. It also has a lot of earlier drafts of the novel/screenplay.
@Alan:
Yes, I have read it, though that was several years ago now. It was definitely interesting, in a ‘see how the sausage is made’ sort of way.
Just a couple notes based on the body of the article:
For what most of these folks seem to think of as Barbie: glorified toy commercials though they are, that’s what the direct to video stuff is for.
Based on what little I’ve seen of the movie in clips, it’s actually kind of impressive. It’s kind of “Existential Crisis Barbie.” In a lot of ways it feels like the backstory to the neurotic mess version of Barbie from Disney/Pixar’s “Toy Story” movie. The one who always seems like she just shotgunned three Monsters & is about to start crying.
Bounding into Comics? Yeah, I’ll pass. I have uses of the “cannon fodder” variety for those scum down the road, but my time is not yet come.
And I’ll conclude by agreeing with others who pointed out that this is an adult take on children’s media. Which, while speaking somewhat to Western “Civilization”s current state of arrested development, can on occasion be executed well (I’m thinking of Neil Gaiman’s sideways homage to “The Chronicles of Narnia” in “The Problem of Susan.” Or Gregory Maguire’s “Wicked Years” series) is largely innocuous in this case. God knows it’s been done worse. “Lost Girls,” for example.
What I’ve heard so far about the Barbie movie is seriously reminding me of the Lego movie.
“Everything is awesome!”
Hey, how ’bout a “Lego Barbenheimer Movie?”