by Thor

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It seems I came to the same realization as the rest of America; that Barbie and Oppenheimer were destined to be together, because FUCK ME  are the meme’s being produced at an industrial pace. Nothing busts a writers strike revenue-slump like free publicity driven by the algo. Yet I also sense we’re probing irregularly around the edges of something larger. Like what strange rhyme scheme has these films fated to be together, or maybe that’s just the LSD talking. The voices coming from inside my walls are begging for the answers to the same dark question: Which is going to destroy the world first, the rampant global consumption machine or the proliferating children of its death-drive? Again, this could all just be an experience brought on by MK-Ultra-ing myself, at least that’s what my practitioner Dr. West is saying, but it’s MY review-essay-thing and I’m going to humor the people hidden in the walls. For NOW.

In defense of consumption the bench recognizes Barbie!

It used to be said that Americans saw themselves as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” an observation that either charitably highlights our ambitious spirit, or less so our warped sense of place within the country’s stratified class structure, but with total media saturation forcing a change in our social genome I think the phrase should be doctored to reflect that. Americans see themselves as temporarily deplatformed social media brands.

How else does one escape mediocrity? The word “discourse” especially reeks of online. Yes, even as I do these review essays to keep my mind from leaking out of my ears there is a twinge of hope to Allah that people notice so I can stop grinding and maybe one day (hopefully) stop rising. This is an incredibly overcooked preamble to me telling you that I saw the embarrassing Ben Shapiro picture too.

For those of you who are normal, the impish right-wing helium addict Ben Shapiro floated on a pillow of solidified logic into a theater and in a move only explicable if you are wetted to the social media cycle; took a picture next to the Barbie poster while making his best punished man face (I’m sure his bull would be proud.)  If this action smacked of kayfabe more then I’dve said Ben missed his calling as the fifth ever Jewish WWE wrestler.

This act of ginned up outrage started off what I referred to as The Cycle, a social media climate event that starts when some media product, like a movie or TV show,  falls on one side or the other of the political divide. As the balance demands someone with a secondary media product to sell you seeds the storm with a reaction and a dog pile ensues. A critical mass of  attempts at epic meme action so to be noticed by Algo “senpai” (fuckin’ gag).  By the way, strictly speaking having a woman centric movie shouldn’t be a political act,  but since dismantling the Supreme Court so it stops killing women isn’t a “viable” option we are left with the realm of symbols. This reaction germinates not just in finished products, but throughout the production of media whether it be the casting of a black woman as a fictional fish creature or a movie having a vaguely sympathetic tone about white male alienation. As brands ourselves, seeing an opportunity to associate with both a multimillion-dollar brand and the support or opposition of the famous elf pedant we signal to others that we are on the correct side of the divide. Each of us uses our own personal media consumption, or distaste for said media, to create a colosseum where we fight the enemies of the faith for the entertainment of the faithful. Which makes it sound way cooler than it really is. In reality Ben Shapiro bought a ticket for a movie he has already decided he’ll hate, I do the same for that boring Slave Stealers LLC (real thing) movie, and likely you spend too much human potential rhetorically defending a Mattel product to dunk on the hobbit prince. And brands fucking know about the cycle. Each media product is there by an equation written to express itself in small subsidiary bubbles of reaction and counter-reaction, creating a tessellating fractal of “hype” all delivered budget free by each of our brands. Not a dollar of sweet ad revenue to hang your hat on when all the posting is done, and it’s not even a prerequisite that the product be “good”. Signaling which side our brand is on to each other we act like fireflies in the digital field just hoping for an honest connection to a human being and maybe an opportunity not go back to our shitty shitty shitty shitty shitty day job. That flicker of human longing amongst our endless branding means we haven’t had all our blood turned cold by empty marketing, and amazingly it hasn’t managed to do it to this movie either (fuck this shit is good, now I know why they call the doctor “Jolly”).

Just like my own fluctuating lucidity on these research chems, the Barbie movie doesn’t necessarily adhere to a tone. The toon-town logic of the Barbie Universe bleeds over to some ostensibly normal people and also the FBI. It almost seems as though the tone needed to bend itself around Will Ferrell doing his usual admittedly still-charming schtick and also the FBI. Seriously if I had to say that I 100% hated something about this movie it would be them making FBI people into goofy little True Classic Tee commercial boys, but that’s probably because I’m a sad Bernard Brother crying in my gay little corner over how the secret police who tried to get MLK to kill himself are more popular than healthcare. The silliness is inexplicable in parts, sorely needed in others, and incredibly effective in the remainder. There’s a scene with a bit of physical comedy that made me feel like I was watching fucking Team America and that is like the Konami code for my soul.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t also say that I think it’s cheating opening the movie with a Kubrick reference to butter me up. A move I will go to my grave thinking was an olive branch to the boyfriend class. If I were to set the tone on two different ends it would be mid 2000s SNL spinoff movie a la Superstar or Ladies Man, and a well-executed Super Bowl commercial.

As anyone is bound to tell you, the messages of this film are many. The movie ambitiously takes on the forces of Patriarchy, love (self, romantic, and platonic), womanhood, motherhood, and the murky legacy of the toy itself. Much like the tone it really lands some and just barely misses others. An ambition probably beyond the grasp of a fun doll movie but you know what they say about shooting for the moon, and in many ways it ended somewhere bright. 

Let’s rap about camera work for a sec. For a director touted for her indelible style Greta Gerwig doesn’t do a lot of very interesting things with the camera. The camera itself seems like it’s wrapped in plastic and that is not very fantastic.(hahahahahaha googling if I can order one of those hats that holds beers on the side but they’re bleach bottles) That is until it comes time for the sweet product placement. The most dynamic camera work in the film is dead in the middle when they have to show you every tantalizing inch of the the all new Chevy Fuck-n-Suck, with all new cup holders that can handle 50 gallons of delicious refreshing Sprite Remix and under dash trim lights to view your  beautiful chinchilla skin Jordan 1 Mids in 8 insane colors (I found a bleach hat on Temu for a steal).   

So at this point I’m certain many people want me to stop getting so into the weeds about this toy movie, and that’s fine. Again I do this so I can ignore my shitty job, but I also do it to make an open eyed critique of the film, the state of the business and how we relate to media. I’m happy to see how happy this film makes other people feel, especially women because they have been taking fat fuckin’ heaps of shit the last couple years and that does not seem like it’s ending soon. If I had to bring my various small quibbles with the movie to a singular Megazord quibble it would be this; “Doesn’t it kinda suck that the biggest feminist film of the last couple years had to be an ad, especially for a company that does slavery?”  That isn’t the fault of the director or this movie, but the blame can definitely be laid at the feet of corporations like Mattel for throwing their weight behind anti-democratic, anti-labor, sexist, and racist institutions so they can continue to reap juicy profits. The Barbie^TM Movie^c is held back by its connection to a global behemoth that has an inherent interest in sanding down anything truly subversive, creative, or challenging into a smooth shiny pedestal on top of which it places its brand, and in spite all of that I laughed harder and enjoyed myself more than I had with a great many movies I saw this year. Fuck throw in last year too.