The Barbie movie isn't about girl power. It's not about how women can do everything they set their mind to. It's about how sometimes women are tired and average and that has to be okay too, because you don't have to do everything to be worth anything. (And that this is also true of men.)
The review we all needed.
Barbie writers really said that
i hope shein gets shut down i hope ai projects get shut down i hope billionaires go bankrupt i hope public transportation expands fast i am so tired of the world's bs
He’s for the non-binary’s, right?
he is the guy of all time, immediate fave the second I saw him onscreen
i think the difference between the barbie's treatment of ken's in barbieland vs the ken's treatment of barbie's in kendom can be summed up pretty easily actually:
barbie's ignored ken, realistically they were given an opportunity to have their own lives and do what they wanted and they didn't do it. everything revolved around their barbie's, ken would only have a good day if barbie did or if barbie acknowledged him. they never tried to do anything they genuinely wanted to.
whereas when the ken's took over, they brainwashed the barbie's into liking them and doing things for them. they would bring them beers and act like waitresses, give them foot massages or watch films they otherwise wouldn't be interested in. they became mindless and existed to serve the ken's. they were no longer just friends with the barbie's, they didn't want barbie to love them back, they wanted to own them.
people talking about ken falling down the patriarchy pipeline out of neglect or loneliness but why couldn't the ken's form friendships and communities like the barbie's did? why is it up to barbie to ensure that ken doesn't feel that way? at what point is it acceptable to blame barbie for ken's feelings? barbie let ken come to her party, watched him beach, held him whilst he went to the hospital, agreed to let him go on her journey, says hi to him when she sees him, things friends do and things she's shown doing with all the other barbie's, but if he still feels loneliness after that because she doesn't want to kiss him or doesn't love him back, why is that barbie's fault? meanwhile the entire time ken is ignoring other ken's out of his fixation on barbie and is even trying to "beach" other ken's off and causing problems with other ken's to gain barbie's attention
to me it's the perfect representation of the real world in the sense that women will leave men alone, men will want to own women, and women will be blamed for men's neglect and loneliness but it's a paper cage they create for themselves because they refuse to see women as individuals and arguably they don't actively try to create and nurture communities in the same way women do. ken's story is sad yes, but it's a story of his own design and what makes it worse is that he blames barbie for it. not himself, not mattel, no the real world but barbie, who's friendly disinterest in him means that she should be the one who is blamed and punished
it is honestly insane how half the criticisms about the Barbie movie are that it's too feminist, and the other half that it's not feminist enough. add to that the film having an entire monologue about women not being ever able to win, because the patriarchy is full of contradictions and I'm convinced we're living in a TV programme.
do you see these hot takes about marvel? the Lego movie? the batman films?
... yeah
wonder why
I heard someone call barbie disappointingly heterosexual and I've never disagreed with anything more strongly in my life
mattel pls reboot allan to be the non binary doll for your barbie line,,, don't change a thing about him just make him non binary. thank you
The fandom really took "well I don't have a vagina, and he doesn't have a penis" and ran with it to kill terfs and make the trans agenda and I love that for us
I have to say, sitting in a theater full of people, at least half of which were men, and listening to a woman get rightfully angry about how difficult it is to just exist as a woman in our world made me unexpectedly emotional. Like it wasn’t anything I didn’t already know, but it was nice to hear it aired so blatantly in a big-budget film.
