Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie

(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.

kind of a derail for this thread but every character in squid and the whale is a terrible person, even his kid brother. kicking and screaming is basically a whit stillman movie if instead of charming everyone was an unlikeable prick. similar things can be said of greenberg and margot. and as the record (my posts) shows i'm far from the modal ilx poster whose main reason for not liking a movie is because its characters are morally flawed; i like noah baumbach movies. but imo they're portraits of awful, largely void of human warmth, people by an artist who is at least mildly sociopathic himself

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.

"they should have made it more obvious which specific online people they were making fun of" - this is the opposite of how i feel lol. i liked how it mostly side-stepped being yet another piece of "culture war" fanfic (cf the black panther "exact kind of communist i am" tweet) (although it nonetheless benefitted from ppl like ben shapiro turning it into one)

Except for Squid and the Whale, I've only seem them all once, but Squid and the Whale is probably the one I like most by a substantial margin (and probably why I've seen it a few times). That was actually my introduction to his work, back when I had yet to step foot in Brooklyn - all of the characters aren't nice or all that likable, but that also seemed logical given what the film was about to me: how even a progressive and intellectual family life can be prone to damaging, toxic problems, particularly different kinds of toxicity and how that ends up screwing up their kids.

Flops, that was a great post, and really captures how I feel/felt about the movie but am not nearly as good at articulating. In the end, I think the fact that the movie engenders (heh) so much thought and debate tips the scales way toward the positive. No matter how one ultimately feels about the movie, it's definitely worth thinking about, which puts it ahead of lot of stuff.

I don't agree about Baumbach's characters being devoid of human warmth. They are just people you want to direct to something better and of course you can't, because they are hapless. I thought Frances Ha was great, and Marriage Story, Mistress America and The Meyerowitz Stories were close to being great

I loved DeLillo's novel White Noise but thinking maybe the film is going to be pretty bad

It is.

Yeah I think his movies are sad about their character's flaws and predicaments, if they were evil they would be gleeful and celebratory about them.

Agreed that if they were evil that would also be ok tho.

Here for clickbait.

neither barbie nor oppenheimer have anything material to add to revolutionairy or liberatory struggle, stop trying to make it happen x

my latest for huck mag dot com https://t.co/GfmS7qlVLP

— Ben Smoke (@bencsmoke) August 9, 2023

I got someone really angry when I made the same point about Pedro Costa once.

🤣

I am trying to imagine what type of cultural product could possibly satisfy that person and coming up pretty empty

I actually didn't mind White Noise, but I approached it less looking for a good adaptation of the book and just as an excuse to get some good performances from Driver and Gerwig in a weird setting and, from that vantage point, I was not disappointed.

I love that it qualifies as a hot take to suggest that a Mattel-approved Barbie movie (despite its merits!) is not actually a tool for revolutionary uprising.

The best parts of White Noise (like the best parts of most 20th century novels) are sentences, and sentences tend not to be filmable.

Along with DeLillo, the best works of my favorite novelists (Woolf, Nabokov, Atwood, Ondaatje) have proven completely unfilmable. I mean yeah people make movies but their relationship to the books is pretty tangential.

ok i finally saw the barbie movie

it was fun

i don't understand how anybody on earth found the film "offensive". i thought it was an entertaining, well-made big-budget hollywood film with some good jokes in it.

i must admit the character of allan is a bit confusing to me. not sure what the character's role in the film was.

i mean i have my own read on it but it says a lot about me and very little about the actual character

allan's entire existence in the film is centered around the fact that he is Not Ken. he's not like all those other guys. he doesn't seem to really know what to make of that any more than we do. he doesn't really want to have anything to do with all the kens. he joins the barbies in their plot against the patriarchy, he hangs out with them, he dresses like them, even though he doesn't really have much of anything to _do_ in terms of helping them with their plan. allan is just trying to be, you know, a really good ally.

maybe there are other ways to read allan. i've got kind of a blinkered view on things.

Yeah i think that’s basically it. The add on might be that Allan might, in a different movie, get an “allan saves the day” moment and his allyship would be celebrated or played for a happy gag. In this movie, allyship isnt celebrated because *chris rock voice* you’re SUPPOSED to be an ally and you dont get credit for shit you’re supposed to do

imo allan is trans coded

― ivy., Friday, July 28, 2023 12:54 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

Over $500 million domestically at this point, crossed a billion worldwide. Seems like in a week or so it'll overtake the Super Mario movie to be number one for the year so far around here, would still need more to go worldwide but looks reachable.

imo allan is trans coded

― ivy., Friday, July 28, 2023 12:54 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

― ivy.

oh thank god it's not just me

that _would_ explain all the blocky artifacting

and yeah i mean i'm jumping in like a month after everybody has seen and discussed the movie so it's probably all been said lol

I still haven’t seen it! Maybe next weekend.

I'll see it two years from now and revive this thread so I can give all of you my fresh insights. ;-)

Get that money etc per Variety:

Margot Robbie is being richly rewarded for her key role in bringing “Barbie” to the big screen. The star and producer behind the summer’s biggest hit stands to make roughly $50 million in salary and box office bonuses, according to three individuals with knowledge of her deal.

“Barbie” director and co-writer Greta Gerwig will also likely receive bonuses because of the film’s outsized success. “Barbie” has earned an astonishing $526.3 million at the domestic box office since it opened a month ago, as well as $657.6 million at the international box office. That comes out to $1.18 billion globally — and that figure should keep climbing given that “Barbie” is still topping box office charts. The film is now the second highest-grossing release in the history of Warner Bros., behind “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2.”

A collection of responses, some more critical than others https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/who-was-barbie/

Hey we go the plot of the sequel set:

https://www.tumblr.com/spongebobssquarepants/725814666959486976

The reviews are in from Mt. Juliet

Somehow we almost missed MOUNT JULIET, TN MAGA grifter Greg Locke demolishing a Barbie Dream House with a Bible attached to a baseball bat.

The movie would go on to gross over $1 BILLION dollars💰 pic.twitter.com/2CJwXLKe8J

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) August 17, 2023

very low budget special effects there. a monster truck fueled by bibles would have been much better

Demon Barbie would be hella cool.

For what it's worth, that was a Rainbow High House, not a Barbie Dream House.

Officially number one for the year here as of a couple of days ago:

https://variety.com/2023/film/box-office/barbie-highest-grossing-movie-2023-1235700741/

And as noted then:

“Barbie” has grossed $1.3 billion globally and will soon surpass “Mario” (with $1.35 billion globally) as the biggest worldwide release of 2023 as well.

So yeah, preexisiting IP, marketing, everything else, but the fact remains: a Gerwig-directed film, with a script cowritten by her and Baumbach = the biggest film of the year, hands down.

The add on might be that Allan might, in a different movie, get an “allan saves the day” moment and his allyship would be celebrated or played for a happy gag. In this movie, allyship isnt celebrated because *chris rock voice* you’re SUPPOSED to be an ally and you dont get credit for shit you’re supposed to do

― Its big ball chunky time (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Saturday, 12 August 2023 15:04 (two weeks ago)

My friend and I guffawed heartily at the line about "Good job, White Savior Barbie!"

I found America Ferrara's speech genuinely moving.

going back and reading this thread made me want to slam my head into a wall

Big ol' new interview with Gerwig here:

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/11/greta-gerwig-interview

saw this, really liked the gags, performances, originality and style

it's hard to figure out if gerwig genuinely pitches for sincerity at all with the plot/resolution, because imo there are more than enough explicitly flagged caveats to suggest its far too cynical a movie to ask us to buy the earnest monologues from gloria even if they get us to where the plot needs to be

but it was great and if anything robbie was even better than i expected, given all she has to cover tonally throughout.

Margot Robbie absolutely eating Ryan Gosling’s lunch in this movie is a hill I’ll def die on

I don't go to theaters, so I finally caught up with this tonight and holy shit, it was hilarious. I laughed harder at Ken's fanny pack with "KEN" written on it in Metallica logo font than anything I've seen all year. Did it need Will Ferrell? No. But I'm glad that part was included because the depiction of Mattel HQ was almost something out of Terry Gilliam.

I liked it too. It's more of a kids movie than I had understood it was going to be. But a very good kids movie!

I haven’t seen anyone else describe it in those terms but it really does feel that way - I almost want to compare it to a typical Pixar movie where it doesn’t shy away from exploring complex ideas but has a broad and direct approach to the way it presents them, self-conscious that it’s trying to reach a much younger audience too.

And it has one of the all time greatest closing lines ever. Up there with "Some like it Hit" easy.

Hot

Damn speling korrector