Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie

Barbie's corporate ownership knows the value of Barbie as a brand and almost certainly retained a right of approval over the script, so that ambivalence about that Barbie's corporate roots may have been the only course Gerwig could safely steer to get their sign off.

Love to do everything I possibly can to get "sign off" by the manager.

that ambivalence about that Barbie's corporate roots may have been the only course Gerwig could safely steer to get their sign off.

Have you watched the film?

Alfred otm.

The movie is pretty freaking weird, but for me one of the weirdest things about it is the degree to which Mattel gleefully signed up to pay to satirize itself.

It's a very 2020s moment and I tentatively approve. Expect a Black Mirror episode soon.

another way to look at it is that mattel gleefully signed up to let greta gerwig make her third movie about mothers, daughters, and the sociteal expectations placed on both women and men that just happens to star barbie

It's not really that weird imo, cf all the anti-corporate jokes in 90's films or the recent films about an evil algorithm ruining creativity (new Space Jam did this) - they don't care as long as the money rolls in.

also as stated above Ferrel refuses to let the Ken reality stand even though it's profitable - because Mattel, in the end and for all their faults, care about the happiness of little girls above all else

another way to look at it is that mattel gleefully signed up to let greta gerwig make her third movie about mothers, daughters, and the sociteal expectations placed on both women and men that just happens to star barbie

otm

We've lingered enough. It's poll time: Barbenheimer: The inevitable poll

Finally saw this & really enjoyed it

My biggest takeaway was that I really felt like the heart of this movie (or the heart of the inspiration of the movie?) was that it is weirdly & specifically about 90’s feminism

the few years from like 1991 to 1994 where it felt like conversations were shifting & women centered ~things~ were just cooler & ideas about femininity were being challenged

then… SMASH CUT …. to aggro offspring numetal woodstock & girls are just drunk midriffs everywhere thongs-out uh, ok i’ll use my own wording at the time “slutfest”

and the going to war thing

like idk it all seems like it’s right there in this movie lol right down to Matchbox 20 and Gosling’s Kid Rock fur coat & guyliner

i don’t feel like i’m crazy to think that Gerwig was not indirectly kind of using that whole weird time & abrupt change to talk about bigger issues. it’s not perfectly 1:1 and she’s tackling a lot of things so it is kind of handwavey but it felt v clear to me lol

(also i have been listening to a ton of Bandsplain so i may just have nineties brain)

ALSO

rmde at all you nerds nerding this thread and literally no one bringing up how on point Barbie ~details~ were

Monolith barbie dressed identically to first Barbie!! Midge!!! Grown Up Skipper, Magic Earring Ken … the OUTFITS the HOUSES the SKI MOBILE the CAMPERVAN omg i was amazed

even Weird Barbie was deeeply hilariously accurate

sorry

i meant to say - part of why i saw the movie through that specific lens was also the repeated use of Indigo Girls — like, that song in my time in my late teens, it really & truly connoted a very specific kind of hopeful excitement within my circle of friends & women’s groups etc, this new perspective or something idk invigorating

and the way in just a few short years that that feeling was SO lost so fucking completely it made my head spin

haven't seen the film yet. I like these posts, VG

yeah great posts thx

You know something I caught that was kind of weird? Jamie Demetriou is in it, more than just a cameo but iirc he doesn't do anything more than some background mugging. But he's a funny guy! He would have made a better Mattel CEO than Will Ferrell.

“a podcast hosted by two wise young trees”

booming posts

I did love this, which will probably surprise no-one?

I briefly thought, during the last scene with Rhea Perlman, that Barbie's accent was turning more Australian, and fantasied that the final twist would be that she was turning into Margot Robbie.

All I saw was Simu Liu ad others eating his lunch

― fair but so uncool beliefs here (Eric H.), Friday, 28 July 2023 19:23 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

The Ken vs Ken angle was apparently birthed when Gerwig watched Gosling watching Liu nailing that backflip.

"Weird Barbie" is also barely weird at all

And got less weird as the film went on!

There's a cohort with an attitude that's gotten generally keener on equality as equality has gotten (slowly) closer - "hahaha careful now, we don't want to shoot past into where we're unfair against men!" - for them, I loved that the vibe at the end was "Well we've seen that the reverse of Barbieland is grossly inequitable, should we just go straight back to how we were?" "Yeah. Yeah, let's do that".

Also it is so good to see a film with a great trailer, where the first 20 minutes contains nearly everything in the trailer, and a joke about corporate personhood.

my own real life Weird Barbie:

tips of fingers missing from both hands because I “cut her nails”

one loose leg that kinda hung limp because my sister & fought over her and somehow “wishboned” the rubber band attaching her leg to her hip

crazy hair from many failed haircuts including an entire bald patch in the back

“earrings” that were actually just bent sewing pins stabbed into her ears but they kind of stuck out like frankenstein bolts

her clothes were the nasty handknitted barbie clothes that we hated that our aunt bought at a craft fair (long navy blue woollen skirt & a red & white striped cardigan with huge fake-pearl buttons

also her skin color was a weird zombie grey color after i took her “swimming” in the bathroom sink in water that i colored w my grandma’s permanent blue hair dye
(also was grounded for a week for staining the sink).

Nice to hear that you really played with your Barbie, VG!

<3 vg

we played HARD lol

I didn’t like Barbie as a kid, but I still got a couple as gifts from other people. Don’t remember playing with them much other than the time I cut the hair off one - I like to think it was practice for when I did the same thing to myself when I was 12 lol.

but I do recall a cousin of mine who loved them and she always had a stack of Weird Barbies with her in the bath. Matted, wet, grey hair Barbie, several beheaded/de-limbed Barbies, magic marker Barbie… but the most important thing for her was that none of them wore clothes. A nude colony of Weird Barbies.

lol wow

i really liked playing w barbies as a kid, like I definitely did well into 6th grade

my sister and I had a few over the years - we usually got one each for christmas iirc Sunsational Malibu Barbie; Happy Birthday Barbie; Golden Dreams barbie ; Pink N Pretty Barbie; Peaches & Cream barbie; Dream Time Barbie; Barbie & The Rockers with cassingle; Twirly Curls Barbie
I think we had a Skipper too that became my little brother’s Barbie bc we didn’t want him to play with Our Barbies™️

I didn't have a weird barbie. My worst mutilations were that I cut one's 'fingernails' on one hand, which haunts me to this day bc it was a barbie my mom had from the 60s who still had her hair in a beautiful big beehive wrap and I feel bad about ruining her, and I then used the same nail clippers to trim off the tip of my ken's nose. That might have been around the same time I gave a troll doll a tattoo with black pen. That's really the sum of my childhood toy destruction.

I found this movie's point of view a little incoherent in a way that probably bothers me if I think about it too much, but I loved all of its big swings and had a very pleasurable (even sometimes emotional) experience watching it.

Yeah, that was pretty much it for me as well.

Weird Barbie of course very true to life, but "Toy Story" kind of nailed the sad exile of tortured dolls, too. Come to think of it, lots of great Barbie (and Ken) gags in Toy Story 3. With musical sequences!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72swN9sb6A4

Anyway, so back when, when the Barbie trailer came out, and I noticed Will Ferrell was holding a pair of drumsticks? My prediction was that he would play the drums at some point, which is something Will Ferrell does a lot, for some reason. But he never did. He just was holding a pair of pink drumsticks. Why?

Will Ferrell is not, himself, a good drummer, but he did the tedious "more cowbell" SNL skit.

And he does bear a superficial resemblance to RHCP drummer Chad Smith, which has led to him doing a completely fake drum duel with Smith.

Maybe it's just a running gag.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uBOtQOO70Y

There's also all the drum stuff in "Step Brothers." It's a running Will Ferrell gag for sure, just don't what it's doing in this movie.

Perhaps something that was cut.

Anyway:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/06/movies/barbie-1-billion-box-office.html

(Still behind the Super Mario movie domestically but I'd guess that'll change.)

It's a-me, Barbio

I simply cannot be the only ILxor to have seen this movie who also treasures Alan Moore's Supreme: and so, to anyone else as such, doesn't barbieland bring immediately to mind The Supremacy? as barbieland is the meta-home to Alan, Midge and every other iteration of Barbie, no matter how shortlived, so is the Supremacy the dwelling of every Supremium-effected-for-one-issue version of the character, every version of Supreme rebooted and revised away from contemporary continuity?

Wife, myself and 6 year old went today: I wanted her to see a movie in the theatre likely to be remembered as emblematic of this year and era, but as bright as she is, that this film is META META META left her at a disadvantage…she liked it, but probly will not treasure her memory of seeing this film in this or any other manner…

I do salute Gerwig for getting away with "beach you off" etc etc

I rather liked this piece. (gift link)

Michael Sicinski's brief writeup hits all the right notes afaic:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/barbie-greta-87347254

The mid-film reversal, Kendom, isn't just an exaggeration of masculine tropes, although it certainly is that. It's a misguided play-acting at "being a man" by a group of "men" who don't even have genitals. It's the Incel Universe, and the only note I'd give on this is Gerwig might've found some way to directly parody Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson.

It's fine and she did.

Not even going to bother to link it, but unsurprisingly Bill Maher had an absolutely moronic take on this.

Finally saw it this weekend, liked it a lot! Not much to add that hasn't already been covered more eloquently in other posts, especially Veg's booming posts and the bit about "Closer to Fine" feeling emblematic of a brief window in the early 90's where things genuinely felt like things might be moving in a positive direction. Liu was fantastic and I didn't even mind Ferrell doing his usual schtick.

excellent piece, i really loved that

(re Ned’s NYT gift link)

I assumed that Closer to Fine was a reflection of America Ferrera’s character playing with her old doll that her kid no longer wanted, which was why I thought all the references leaned towards the mid-90s (and the Ken song was totally ‘Gillette! The best a man can get!’).

one thing the "meta" approach succeeds at is allow the movie to "have its cake an eat it too" in the sense of fulfilling audience's base desires on multiple levels while simultaneously critiquing them from other angles. it's all done in a playfully but also subtly enough that different people can walk away with totally different takes on it depending on what they "want" out of it

on one level the movie is a celebration of modern liberal "#girlboss" feminism. every woman in barbieland owns her own house and works in a high-status occupation. you're cheering on the barbies to stop the ken putsch. but at the same time, the kens are themselves a disenfranchised underclass; they're propertyless, have no representation on the supreme court, relegated to superfluous jobs. barbieland is a profoundly gender unequal society; it just happens to be a matriarchal one. the movie telegraphs this but only slightly (for example the line at the end that's like "we can give you one seat on like, a lower court, for now", itself echoing the line where the CEO in the real world admits "the patriarchy's still winning, we're just better at hiding it now"). for the most part the movie is smart enough to let the audience indulge in the patriarchy-smashing fantasy, while using the "alt text" to convey some cynical "hot takes" about simplistic representation narratives

barbieland is of course itself a creation of capitalist men. the movie is critical of mattel (ymmv but i was surprised at how much they got away with): the casting of will ferrel, america ferrera's daughter's anti-barbie rant, the soulless byzantine corporate hq. but that criticism stops short of criticizing the broader "barbieland ideological apparatus." this is what a lot of the criticism from pseudo-academic online marxists is about (like this n+1 symposium for example which contains the line "Did you hear that noise? I think it was a nail going into the coffin of mumblecore" lmao). sure, barbieland was cooked up in a corporate boardroom, but it's still something the audience has to be invested in saving for the movie to work. this is where things get a bit muddled imo. american ferrera's speech about how hard it is to be a woman is spitting hard truths to women in the real world, but why would it be persuasive to the barbies, who experienced like a few days of being mansplained to after a lifetime of being celebrated journalists and biochemists? and hearing the speech doesn't break the barbies out of the ideological "box" they were put in by mattel CEOs who dreamed them up, it just snaps them out of the temporary hypnosis patriarchy put them under. america ferrera is basically satisfied at being told "ok sure we'll make a normal barbie but only because it's profitable." the other move they try to pull here is a gesturing at a "reclamation" of barbie's feminist roots; all the Ruth Handler stuff, the montage of women home videos at the end. that all felt kinda random and tacked on to me

gerwig is b 1983 so kinda cusp generationally but the movie felt so gen x. makes me wonder how much influence noah baumbauch had on it

i didn't actually enjoy the movie that much (as like, a viewing experience) but it's been fun talking to people about it. everyone has a totally different take on it

great post!!

I've had that n+1 open in a tab for about a week now I guess I might as well read it

gerwig is b 1983 so kinda cusp generationally but the movie felt so gen x. makes me wonder how much influence noah baumbauch had on it

FWIW, when she made Lady Bird and Baumbach gave (or maybe just offered) his input, Gerwig expressed her concerns to him that she didn't want him to impose himself too much on what was supposed to be her film. Baumbach's credited as a co-writer this time, so I imagine he had more input, but unless something's changed, I imagine this film was very much her vision.

(Also I just noticed this, but if you google "barbie" or "gerwig" or a combination of the two, the following page of search results flashes pink with pink fireworks going off all over the place.)

Good post, flopson

thx homies ;)

FWIW, when she made Lady Bird and Baumbach gave (or maybe just offered) his input, Gerwig expressed her concerns to him that she didn't want him to impose himself too much on what was supposed to be her film. Baumbach's credited as a co-writer this time, so I imagine he had more input, but unless something's changed, I imagine this film was very much her vision.

gg studied went to barnard in the late 90s/early 00s, must've been steeped in gen x style media studies. all of nb's movies feel fundamentally evil to me and this had no trace of that

lol how so

I like The Squid and the Whale. I love Frances Ha, wonder why.

"fundamentally evil"

gonna need to hear some more context on this one.