This is a secret. Given that Barbie dolls have long been reviled by feminists for promoting an impossible standard of female beauty, you can expect the American left to mobilize against the Barbie movie this week. Instead, it is the Republican Party of the USA. The film centers on Margot Robbie playing Barbie, a woman who looks like the Republican ideal of femininity, and the film is set in a world with strict gender segregation, which may seem like a positive thing to conservatives. However, several Republican pundits and politicians called for a boycott of the film as the hype around it rose ahead of its release on Friday.
So why the outrage? Republican Congressman Matt Gatz took his fiancee Ginger Lucky Gatz to an early screening in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. She tweeted a number of criticisms, highlighting the film's lack of portrayal of family or faith and the «unfair» treatment of Mattel's «pregnant Barbie», Midge (Emerald Fennell). She thought that Ryan Gosling's Ken had «disappointingly low testosterone levels» [testosterone that is not usually high in dolls], and said that the film «tries to normalize the idea that men and women can't cooperate positively (nasty)». Despite admiring his costumes and the lead role of Margot Robbie, she concluded, «I would recommend looking for inspiration in the outfits and skip the theater.»
Would you like to see a Barbie movie?
I'd recommend sticking to outfit inspiration and skipping the theatre. And here's why:
The Barbie I grew up with represented limitless possibilities, career diversity, and female empowerment.
Barbie 2023… pic.twitter.com/AsparSgvS4
— Ginger Gaetz (@LuckeyGinger) July 18, 2023
Gaetz's protest followed an international incident caused by a children's map of the world on a wall in Barbyland. The map includes wavy dotted lines in some of the world's oceans, and an eight-dot line off the east coast of the patch labeled «Asia» has been taken by Vietnam censors and Senator Ted Cruz as implicit support for China's disputed «nine-dash» territorial claims over parts of the South China Sea. As a result, Vietnam banned the film, with Cruise claiming on Fox News that it was evidence that the film was «trying to suck up to the Chinese Communist Party» and that the studios were «allowing China to censor American films.»The rough map in the Barbie movie has been seen by some as implicit support for China's «nine dash» territorial claim. Photo: Warner Bros Pictures
Criticism of Cruise came before he saw the film, as did an extensive discussion dedicated to him by conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. He titled his version: «If a Barbie movie isn't safe, then what is?» and focused on casting trans actor Hari Nef as Dr. Barbie. Kirk called the film «trans-propaganda, which is this hyper-feminine, ultra-pink propaganda, but it's actually been taken over by the transmafia.»
The inclusion of one trans woman and what Charlie Kirk's guest Peechee Keenan called a «rainbow coalition» of diverse Barbies around blonde Robbie was a major cause for concern for Republicans. Keenan also singled out lesbian actors in real life, although not on the screen: the filmmakers decided that since the dolls do not have genitals, they will not have sexual preferences either. It can also be the reason that the nave does not play a clearly transgender character, although in any case it does not have a central storyline.
Hari Oil at the Castings of Film About Barbie was marked by a conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. Photo: Warner Bros Pictures
When audiences finally saw the film, the criticism became only slightly more specific. Commentator Ben Shapiro tweeted, «All you need to know about #BarbieTheMovie is that it uses the word 'patriarchy' unironically over 10 times,» which is roughly true. Alt-right activist Jeff Posobec went even further, stating, «They've turned Barbie into a misanthropic Woke propaganda festival. They teach Barbie fans how to rebel against «patriarchy»… It's a horror show.»
Such outrage was probably inevitable. The film's premise is that the Barbies of Barbieland naively believe that the very existence of President Barbie, Astronaut Barbie and the rest has «solved» the problem of feminism and that Earth is now a haven of sexual equality, even though in Barbieland itself the Kens are second-class citizens. So Stereotypical Barbie Margot Robbie is horrified when she begins to have obsessive thoughts about death, and travels to our world to find out that everything is not as she expected from a pink paradise. e Ginger Lucky Gaetz Credit & Copyright: Anadolu
This invites a very funny and surprisingly poignant critique of how men and women are treated differently in everyday life. Ken is happy to know that people in our world respect and listen to him, and it is he who leads the uprising — however, against the Barbie matriarchy, not the patriarchy. The film's humor generally comes from a misunderstanding of fish-out-of-water dolls and from making fun of our own gender roles (Ken is really into horses, The Godfather, and dresses like Sylvester Stallone in the 1980s).
Of course, the Barbie movie was never going to fundamentally subvert ideas about gender or forget to portray the toys themselves in a good light: it's clear that the filmmakers went to great lengths. to show every little girl that she can have a Barbie just like her and still make the toys look beautiful.
The Best of Barbie
The film's director Greta Gerwig has leaned on Mattel's efforts in recent years to make its flagship doll more appealing to all women: shape, size, skin color, disability and identity. But they also make fun of many of Mattel's past mistakes, such as Midge and Alan's long-discontinued pregnant doll, which was simply marketed as a friend of Ken's that would go with all the same clothes. The barbie-fiction of everything in Barbieland is undeniably amusing: Barbie's lawyer stands before an all-Barbie Supreme Court, pointedly remarking that she can «keep logic and emotion in her head at the same time» despite being passionate about the issue at hand. Elsewhere, the gorgeous Nobel Prize-winning Barbie becomes the last gorgeous Barbie to win all the Nobel Prizes. It's funny simply because our world doesn't work that way; precisely because young women do not dominate these areas. But it will not work to provoke girls to rebel.
Unlike the Republican boycott of Bud Light and Target, there is no sign that party supporters — or anyone else — are joining the campaign. Perhaps it's because the men of the party are wary of showing too much interest in what is, after all, a deliberately drenched pink and girly film, or because it seems like too little a target for a big rage. Perhaps it's simply because the film is too hilarious, with appropriate jokes about toy company Mattel, Barbie creator Ruth Handler, and Barbie herself.
In any case, the film is expected to earn around $110 million at the US box office in its opening weekend, about double the predictions of its closest rival, Oppenheimer Christopher Nolan, or the total of Tom Cruise's hit last week, Miss ia impossible — the dead. Payback Part 1. The hashtag #BoycottBarbie hasn't caught on, so it seems like the capitalist appetite for the world-conquering doll may overcome any doubts about her cast or plot elements. After seven Transformers films and three G.I. Joe, the girls really want to finally see their favorite toys on the big screen.
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