I really wanted to like the Barbie movie. I suppose I would have liked the movie that they marketed to me, but that isn’t what the movie turned out to be. I want to first say that the marketing (albeit deceptive) was the best marketing I’ve seen for a movie in a long, long time. It harkened back to the days of the one or two per summer blockbusters. --when movies truly were events, and it took years to make tent-pole pictures. Well, as brilliant (and all encompassing) as the marketing was, the movie was the opposite. It was perhaps diabolical, but that might be giving the creators too much credit. It was so incredibly convoluted on top of its nonsense (as well as choosing matriarch revenge -- very non-matriarch-like) over a world of gender equality, that I have to think the authors are ignorant if not also mean-spirited. At minimum, a few visits to even a half-assed shrink could have cleared up some of the whiny victimhood that the movie actually promotes.
Now, I would just dismiss this whole thing as a “silly little movie.” Why get “worked up about it?” Well, only because many people have “drank the Kool-Aid” and consider it to be some sort of seminal work. Most egregious is the celebrated and “heralded as genius” speech written for America Ferrera by Greta and her husband. “Yeah, they really get me and understand women and their plight” is what many women seemingly “take away.” (And, clutch the pearls, she was nominated for best screenplay but snubbed for best director!) The issue is, the speech is purposely woven with paradox. That’s fine, but it mostly blames men for downside of the paradox. It hands over all the power to men, while believing that it somehow empowers women. It actually puts them in a victim posture, at the mercy of men and their whims. It also wants to “have its cake and eat it too.” Because it’s really the women behind this movie that are “putting women in their place” rather than men. Why is it that a “Magical Latina” must speak for Barbie and the “theme/point?” Because they could never cast Ferrera as the lead for a movie that is supposedly about equality and celebrating all shapes and sizes and colors of women. Without much “training,” most anyone can be snapped out of the haze and recognize that this “important speech” that made so many people on the set cry, is a typical “BEFORE” snapshot of a victim who has not had any sort of introspection, awakening, or therapy yet it is being celebrated as the “AFTER” self-awareness image. Let me ask you: Would any of you want to date, befriend, or hang out with anyone who talks about themselves and “womanhood” that way? ‘Seems like a big red (pink) flag to me. Ironically, feminism is about gaining equality. The movie instead lands right back where it started, with victim women ruling the land of Barbie. And for some reason, Robbie’s Barbie goes back to the horrible 1950s version of “Reality.” What? What is her motivation there? This movie is a convoluted mess.
NOTE: The clip used for the metaphor for Gerwig’s speech is from the ending of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.” (And that kind of sums it all up!) In it, all of the women march into a hospital room filled with all of the injured men. Ethel Merman leads the hoard and screams at the men calling them idiots and telling them, “It’s all your fault!” Of course she takes zero responsibility for the actions which render her flat on her rear. I’d say that sums up what Gerwig was saying in the America Ferrera speech. I cannot remember whether the men were solely to blame in that comedy, but, regardless, it was clear that Merman’s character was a blow-hard. And no matter what, the film was a silly comedy. There was no “message” or activist agenda. Anyone and everyone could kick back and enjoy the shenanigans. I’m sure there’s plenty for the SJW snowflakes to have a fit over, but the movie is essentially a “cartoon.” Who would have thought it would have something so important to say 60+ years later in summarizing the Barbie Speech.
