I liked many things about the movie. I loved the scene where the Kens are serenading the Barbies with the matchbox 20 song: push. Mainly because the music is great but the lyrics are awful: I need you to understand it’s not my fault I treat you badly.
Should men ever need to take responsibility for the way they behave? Only with each other I suppose?
Another interesting thing was Barbie had no idea where all the Kens slept in Barbie world. After all Barbie world is modeled on the imagination of young girls of the real world. So I forgive the young girls of our world for their narrow concerns.
Curiously, I never played with dolls as a young girl or so I was told by my mother. Then later as I approached puberty I did. And Barbie became what I imagine adults think ‘action figure’ toys are to boys. She did the things I thought I’d be doing when I grew up, the things I thought I’d be doing when I was 18-22. I had no idea what I’d be doing, yet the reality was vastly different to what I had imagined. But I had so little exposure to reality and that’s why I don’t blame young girls for not knowing where the Kens sleep.
Yes the Barbies were very ‘woke’ and came to realize they weren’t completely ‘woke’ by the end of the film.
Another film for females, and the ‘public’ (male audience) cried so completely because it happened. Most TV and movies are written for men, the owners of movie studios and TV just assume their audience is male because they themselves are male. And that’s because males feel entitled to exist in their own bubble (kinda like how young girls don’t have any idea where the Kens sleep). And look how much money is spent on entertaining males: every action film, all sports, most TV… the only TV not made for men is daytime and do men watch that? I know I seldom did and now it’s very easy to avoid it completely. Do women as an audience complain about being excluded from quality entertainment? No. Despite the trite representation of women in film, the Bechdel test was invented for a reason.
Even in Rom-coms men get more lines than women and the older the male actor, the more lines he gets, yet the opposite is true for women.
The only genuine purpose for women in films is to be a trophy for a male, a prize he gets for no reason other than that he appeared in the film. He doesn’t have to chase her, he doesn’t have to build the relationship, she just falls into his arms and we have to assume they live happily ever after.
The other times men cried about movies made for women (in my memory), the films Wonder Woman and the Sex and the City movies, both awful movies, the latter was developed by a man, and designed to sell products to women.
I have no idea the purpose of Wonder Woman, perhaps it was to test the waters, can comic book movies attract a female audience? Or even a male audience? Apparently it did find an audience because it did make money.
I think Mattel hasn’t been selling as many Barbie dolls because of the sexism associated with Barbie. The project was announced in 2009, so it is plausible. So Mattel thought they’d take the bull by the horns a la Lego movies, which actually turned out to be entertaining originally. These days I find the Lego franchise boring.
I wanted to address is the voice over when Helen Mirren says if the studio want to sell the idea that Margot Robbie feels ugly then they should rethink Robbie as the studios choice for generic Barbie. Robbie is great looking, but it’s not like she walks around with a mirror knowing exactly how she looks every moment of the day. She’d be criticized for extreme narcissism if she did. And while I don’t blame Mirren for the line or Robbie for her appearance, it seems to have been written by a man, do people genuinely think Robbie has a great day everyday because life is perfect for her? Beautiful women don’t have emotions that make her question her existence as something other than just merely beautiful? Beautiful women have bad days too and it’s trivializing to think otherwise.
On the other hand, I bet Robbie has a great deal of experience with men touching and feeling her up. I hope not for her sake but men can be and are awful when it comes to rape, and wandering hands… like in the scene when she hits the guy who hits her yet she’s the one (and Ken of course) who got arrested. I remember one women saying after years of being felt up and touched, that she finally grabbed the then latest guy by the balls (who had touched her inappropriately) after his hands wandered inappropriately. Immediately she was accused of assault by a member of her male audience. The woman was shocked. After all she’d been assaulted continuously during her life yet no one admitted she’d been assaulted, indeed why was her body considered public property and she was not allowed to respond in kind? After all the guy she’d assaulted, she said, looked quite delighted with her grabbing of his balls.
I sometimes wonder if men treat women the way men wish women would treat them?
The one thing I genuinely loved about the Barbie movie was how she said she didn’t love Ken.
I really have no idea what love is. I remember a teacher asking us what love was one day in school, and as normal I answered and my answer was: still liking a person despite knowing all their faults. The teacher was kinda surprised and thought it wasn't a bad answer.
I know it’s chic to love unconditionally. Unconditional love is all very fine until you can’t rely on your partner. I think it is possible to love unconditionally if there is no need for expectation. Not everyone we love might be someone we can live with. So perhaps unconditional love might mirror something like agape. Google defines this as Christian agape or love. Personally I think of love as being something or someone that helps us survive; things that/people who threaten our survival we hate, or should hate, depending on our conditioning.
I think there is plenty for us to think about in the Barbie movie so I definitely recommend it, I think those who made the movie wanted us to think about it too given the beginning of the film.