barbie had a whole scene where a mean angry feminist bullies Barbie for destroying girl's self image, and her character arch is accepting that Barbie are good. it's an anti-feminist movie made to sell toys and punch down on actual feminists. how anyone could call themselves a leftist and think that this toy ad is feminist is beyond me. thisis like when people argue that black panther is a politically sound movie. enjoy your slop, don't pretend its feminist.
this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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I’m not going to argue feminism here. You could argue Barbie and slutty Halloween dresses and fucking bikinis are pro-feminism or anti-feminism till the sun envelopes the earth.
But here’s what I know.
Nearly every woman I know was super excited to see the film. They couldn’t stop talking about it in a way they didn’t about other movies. We were planning out what to wear and if it would match and there was a genuine sense of excitement and camaraderie there even before the movie came out.
Then, on the day, fucking everyone wore pink. Everyone said “hi Barbie” in the theatre. During the film, the entire crowd, which was filled with women in a way I found so comforting and reassuring, laughed and whooped along with the movie.
Afterwards too we couldn’t stop buzzing about it. Anyone we met on the street who was wearing pink? Hi Barbie!
Was it basic? Yes. Was its feminism and (lack of ) criticism of capitalism a bit safe? Of course. But literally everyone I went with knew that going in. We are all leftists of different flavours and we still enjoyed the moment and the communal sense the movie was able to create in a community that often lacks such spaces in cinema.
And we fucking felt that lack when we went and saw Oppie next. The difference was fucking stark. I may not have even caught on it had I not seen Barbie first but I’m glad I did. Watching Barbie and Oppenheimer back to back forces you to see the way women are portrayed on screen by women and by other men. People talk about the “Male Gaze” but this is how you really experience it. It’s not just women’s bodies being looked at.
No, I could feel the camera in Oppenheimer look at its women, especially during certain scenes, like a predator would on a prey. It made me feel disgusted and unsafe.
It’s hard to even explain it properly.
Anyways, what I’m trying to say - there’s a lot more to life, and there’s a lot more to leftism, than just debating theory and whether or not something is good or bad. It’s important to cultivate a sense of community and recognize the things that do it and why they are able to do it. Of course Mattel is a horrible company. Everyone knows it. That doesn’t mean the sense of community we felt during Barbie was not genuine. You’ve got to be able to understand that if you want to take your politics into the real world.
you're the one calling barbie feminist im just diagreeing, so its odd to start your response that way .you could say the exact same thing about black panther, does that make it anti-racist, or pro black liberation? you are the one calling barbie feminist I'm saying its not. i saw barbie in pink with my friends we had fun, I had fun at black panther too, that doesn't mean anything, just because something make you feel good doesn't mean its feminist. lastly its hard to take your condescension about the real world seriously when we you are defending the BARBIE movie, I probably am in the top 20% of grass touchers on this site. in the real world people are allowed to disagree with popular opinions, I don't base my opinion on movies by whats popular, we live in a patriarchy its should not be shocking that an anti feminist move would be popular, that doesn't mean I have to call it feminist. its fun slop, enjoy it, love it, wear pink with your friends every Friday but just don't call it feminist. your allowed to enjoy things just don't try to force everything you like into your politics. also oppenhiemer was dogshit just dogshit in every way, I don't know what you keep comparing these two movies barbie was 100000% better then oppenheimer could ever dream to be.
one more thought.
Of course Mattel is a horrible company. Everyone knows it.
barbie is a CHILDREN's movie, children do not know that Mattel is bad. this is a movie that implies "a bad feminist critiques capitalism, consumerism, and misogyny in the way women are represented, and a good feminist complains about the vague concept of patriarchy and never identifies which systems are oppressing them and also mattel is cool and you should buy barbies" children will see the bad angry anti-capitalist feminist character and try to not be like her and try to be soft and palatable like barbie. this movie send a shitty message to kids, the target audience who are unlikely to know as much as a leftist adult.
barbie is a CHILDREN's movie,
This is one bit I'd definitely disagree on - Barbie is a children's brand, but this specific movie is directed squarely at adults (at the very least, older teens who are over Barbie). The movie was meant to recapture part of an older market that has outgrown the dolls, but could be convinced to buy for their kids or, with declining birth rates limiting future profits, to buy other merchandise.
Making Mattel bumbling fools allows them to acknowledge previous controversies without taking responsibility by pretending everything was just a big mistake by people trying to do their best.
my theater had many kids.
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You're right about Barbie (I haven't seen Oppenheimer). The jokes were good but even an uncritical reading of its message fails. It needed to articulate a real theory of change through collective action, not vague "trick the men somehow", but it couldn't be revolutionary because it was at its core an ad for Mattel toys (and GM electric vehicles lol). I was honestly amazed to hear arguments about how it's impossible for women to meet the contradictory feminine ideal applied in genuine defense of a DOLL. Extremely clever, pernicious co-optation. Punching left with the wokescold caricature girl to attack radical feminism seals the deal for me. Pink bloc and Hi Barbies! are important; the movie intends to bring "feminism" to everyone by having it mean nothing (and by enormous advertising spend).
However we need to put this in the site header carousel messages right away:
I probably am in the top 20% of grass touchers on this site
I did 10% at first but then I humbled myself. There are some serious grass touchers out here.
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ah yes i love the barbie movie where one himbo is able to singlehandedly convince an entire matriarchy into giving up power to men. the most libbed up second-wave feminist slop i've ever seen
edit: also what really bugs me about this movie is that it sets up the plot arc of "Stereotype Barbie is malfunctioning because her real-world owner is depressed about capitalism/patriarchy" and does nothing to actually resolve that.
Of course they can't resolve that, just like the plot line involving the CEO falls by the wayside. You can feel the warmth of the sun but you can never look at it
yup... "oh isn't it funny how all the people in charge of mattel are white men (hey just like real life!) but also the people in charge of mattel are good actually? anyways lets just leave it there no criticism just vibes"
And like the worst that comes their way is that they're made to seem a tad bumbling and foolish at times. Which, no, it's all their fault, all of it. The better ending would've been for the little girl to realize that Barbie herself isn't a fascist, she's just an unwilling arbiter of evil capitalists who sell a constrained, hobbling, heteronormative vision of femininity to women in order to make big bucks
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I found Barbie pretty underwhelming and did not understand the hype at all. I haven't seen Oppenheimer but I don't see the point in comparing them, the whole point of that meme was that the movies are opposites.
anyway the Oscars are dumb and you should not pay attention to them
I thought Barbie was underwhelming. You have Dua Lipa in there and you don't even mention Hoxha once? C'mon
When the map of the real world was shown and they used the 9 dash line for China, they should've also had greater Albania in there so they couldn't show the movie in Serbia
Almost no media produced under capitalism prescribes a solution to real problems and Barbie is no different. I think the movie did a good job articulating the problems some women face in the west but the end of the movie they did a heckin status quo and shrugged their shoulders. If I were a literal person looking to Hollywood to solve my political contradictions, the message I'd take away is that women should do "separate but equal" shit to solve the inequalities and exploitation they face in a capitalist society.
So ya not great but that's what you get when any real message would threaten the system that produced it.
I thought it very odd it ended by denying men full political rights and the matriarchy was so quickly overtaken by Ken and his misogynists. Given that they reversed the power relations it seemed odd to justify their disenfranchisement. I know they nearly did a coup, but the movie set up that plot point.
yeah it fucking sucks. They built this whole fictitious post scarcity world where the entire population of said world has achieved a semblance of consciousness and the best they can come up with is "lets do the same but opposite 
" like come on.
and you see it all the time in capitalist media. Here's the problem, there's a solution that has been rediscovered countless times throughout history but we're just going to pretend we don't know what it is, gosh what a problem you the viewer decide what is to be done roll credits. It is the political/mental equivalent of edging you just want to yell at the screen el problema es capitalismo but w/e. That's what we get can't have any flavor or spice.
I do like to imagine the ending being they abolish their constitution, establish housing for all (are the kens homeless??), give equal voting rights and at least banish the execs back to shitworld. Think of all the awkward car rides home from the theaters by all the lib het couples. But it breaks a cardinal rule in capitalism to put anything on display that shows a hopeful or positive alternative to what we have. You can only display problems and inspire hopelessness and nihilism in the masses - even with hollywoods greatest imagination all they can do is 
another january, another unwarranted argument where we pretend that the oscars matter
It's 2024 and a supposedly radical left wing website near you is discussing worthy/unworthy oscars
it's fun to talk about bullshit hollywood popularity contests
Leftism means no fun allowed 
fun is when mad about movies
Get out of my overturned tank.
Oh I’m sorry I didn’t realize people were trying to form the n+1th international here
Barbie is nominated for 8 Oscars.
I hope you are doing a bit, but too many people are saying what you're saying unironically.
Poor things was the best movie of the year
i haven't seen a few of the other best picture noms, but i agree with this. especially if you are comparing barbie and poor things directly. on its face poor things is better visually, in its direction/acting, and in its plot. beyond that it grapples with its narrative topics better than barbie, chiefly feminism.
bella has more agency as a character than all of the barbies, even as the 'mental toddler' as others describe. and that agency only grows throughout the movie/with her character development.
The book Poor Things was based on had a huge overarching theme of Sottish people being colonized and exploited by wealthy Londoners from the south, so erasing the Scottish ethnic identify of the protagonist was definitely a strange move. Completely robs the story of its original anti-imperialist message, but I guess there's not much of an audience for that.
yeah its odd that the film chooses to comment on colonialism in Africa instead, it was disappointing but I saw somewhere online that the author signed off on it before he died? idk maybe the writers didn't feel equipped to tell that story, idk I agree they should have kept that in.
It really did blow everything else this year out of the water. I wish they had expanded on socialism more but it is what it is. At least it was shown positively.
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