I saw Barbenheimer the weekend it came out. Oppie is overrated as shit. I liked it but Barbie was 3x better. It’s apparent in the way women are written and the fact that Greta, Margot and Barbie are being snubbed for Nolan is a disgrace.
Oppie isn’t even his best work and it sure as shit doesn’t deserve a dozen fucking Oscar noms.
Whatever criticisms you have of Barbie being white/pop feminism are absolutely tossed aside when fucking OPPENHEIMER is the one winning shit. Cmon.
They’re giving noms to Poor Things instead of it as the “feminist” film cuz they’re cowards scared of women succeeding behind the camera in addition to in front of it and in the box office, and they’re horny teens horned up by Emma Stone and enraged Margot didn’t do that.
Edit- And before you come at me, I saw Oppie on proper film. Don’t tell me I didn’t get it or didn’t have a good experience or whatever. I liked it. But Barbie was better.
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barbie had a whole scene where a mean angry feminist bullies Barbie for destroying girl’s self image, and her character arch is accepting that Barbie are good. it’s an anti-feminist movie made to sell toys and punch down on actual feminists. how anyone could call themselves a leftist and think that this toy ad is feminist is beyond me. thisis like when people argue that black panther is a politically sound movie. enjoy your slop, don’t pretend its feminist.
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I’m not going to argue feminism here. You could argue Barbie and slutty Halloween dresses and fucking bikinis are pro-feminism or anti-feminism till the sun envelopes the earth.
But here’s what I know.
Nearly every woman I know was super excited to see the film. They couldn’t stop talking about it in a way they didn’t about other movies. We were planning out what to wear and if it would match and there was a genuine sense of excitement and camaraderie there even before the movie came out.
Then, on the day, fucking everyone wore pink. Everyone said “hi Barbie” in the theatre. During the film, the entire crowd, which was filled with women in a way I found so comforting and reassuring, laughed and whooped along with the movie.
Afterwards too we couldn’t stop buzzing about it. Anyone we met on the street who was wearing pink? Hi Barbie!
Was it basic? Yes. Was its feminism and (lack of ) criticism of capitalism a bit safe? Of course. But literally everyone I went with knew that going in. We are all leftists of different flavours and we still enjoyed the moment and the communal sense the movie was able to create in a community that often lacks such spaces in cinema.
And we fucking felt that lack when we went and saw Oppie next. The difference was fucking stark. I may not have even caught on it had I not seen Barbie first but I’m glad I did. Watching Barbie and Oppenheimer back to back forces you to see the way women are portrayed on screen by women and by other men. People talk about the “Male Gaze” but this is how you really experience it. It’s not just women’s bodies being looked at.
No, I could feel the camera in Oppenheimer look at its women, especially during certain scenes, like a predator would on a prey. It made me feel disgusted and unsafe.
It’s hard to even explain it properly.
Anyways, what I’m trying to say - there’s a lot more to life, and there’s a lot more to leftism, than just debating theory and whether or not something is good or bad. It’s important to cultivate a sense of community and recognize the things that do it and why they are able to do it. Of course Mattel is a horrible company. Everyone knows it. That doesn’t mean the sense of community we felt during Barbie was not genuine. You’ve got to be able to understand that if you want to take your politics into the real world.
you’re the one calling barbie feminist im just diagreeing, so its odd to start your response that way .you could say the exact same thing about black panther, does that make it anti-racist, or pro black liberation? you are the one calling barbie feminist I’m saying its not. i saw barbie in pink with my friends we had fun, I had fun at black panther too, that doesn’t mean anything, just because something make you feel good doesn’t mean its feminist. lastly its hard to take your condescension about the real world seriously when we you are defending the BARBIE movie, I probably am in the top 20% of grass touchers on this site. in the real world people are allowed to disagree with popular opinions, I don’t base my opinion on movies by whats popular, we live in a patriarchy its should not be shocking that an anti feminist move would be popular, that doesn’t mean I have to call it feminist. its fun slop, enjoy it, love it, wear pink with your friends every Friday but just don’t call it feminist. your allowed to enjoy things just don’t try to force everything you like into your politics. also oppenhiemer was dogshit just dogshit in every way, I don’t know what you keep comparing these two movies barbie was 100000% better then oppenheimer could ever dream to be.
one more thought.
Of course Mattel is a horrible company. Everyone knows it.
barbie is a CHILDREN’s movie, children do not know that Mattel is bad. this is a movie that implies “a bad feminist critiques capitalism, consumerism, and misogyny in the way women are represented, and a good feminist complains about the vague concept of patriarchy and never identifies which systems are oppressing them and also mattel is cool and you should buy barbies” children will see the bad angry anti-capitalist feminist character and try to not be like her and try to be soft and palatable like barbie. this movie send a shitty message to kids, the target audience who are unlikely to know as much as a leftist adult.
barbie is a CHILDREN’s movie,
This is one bit I’d definitely disagree on - Barbie is a children’s brand, but this specific movie is directed squarely at adults (at the very least, older teens who are over Barbie). The movie was meant to recapture part of an older market that has outgrown the dolls, but could be convinced to buy for their kids or, with declining birth rates limiting future profits, to buy other merchandise.
Making Mattel bumbling fools allows them to acknowledge previous controversies without taking responsibility by pretending everything was just a big mistake by people trying to do their best.my theater had many kids.
I’ve read your replies to mine and other’s comments in the thread. I’m sorry for coming across as defensive and attacking.
Even if I think Barbie does have redeeming parts and is not as bad as you make it out to be, the point you raised here is extremely important and one I hadn’t thought of. So thanks for bringing it up.
Much love and solidarity.
love and solidarity comrade, and you know this is not THAT big af a deal but i do disagree. i do hope they win costuming and set design. and greta gerwig is one of the best directors out there right now, she will 1000% get her flowers, honestly I’m pretty excited to see what she does next. i think shes in the perfect position to tell a studio to let her make whatever the fuck she wants and I think is gonna be great.
You’re right about Barbie (I haven’t seen Oppenheimer). The jokes were good but even an uncritical reading of its message fails. It needed to articulate a real theory of change through collective action, not vague “trick the men somehow”, but it couldn’t be revolutionary because it was at its core an ad for Mattel toys (and GM electric vehicles lol). I was honestly amazed to hear arguments about how it’s impossible for women to meet the contradictory feminine ideal applied in genuine defense of a DOLL. Extremely clever, pernicious co-optation. Punching left with the wokescold caricature girl to attack radical feminism seals the deal for me. Pink bloc and Hi Barbies! are important; the movie intends to bring “feminism” to everyone by having it mean nothing (and by enormous advertising spend).
However we need to put this in the site header carousel messages right away:
I probably am in the top 20% of grass touchers on this site
I did 10% at first but then I humbled myself. There are some serious grass touchers out here.
how anyone could call themselves a leftist and think that this toy ad is feminist is beyond me.
Woman in real life literally told me “this is the first movie I’ve watched that makes me feel seen”
and I have never seen a mainstream movie the bashes leftists and feminists as much as Barbie did. so glad you met a woman who agrees with you, good for you! you want a gold star? the barbie movie was deeply mean-spirited, like one of the most I’ve ever seen directed by women, if you want me to provide a personal anecdote it reminded me of being called a “removed” my entire life since the age of 6. it reminds me of being bullied for thinking that girls aren’t shallow empty creatures, it portrays people who critique capitalism as bullies who don’t let women exits as they are. feminism is not a popularity contest, just because capitalists have found a version of feminism that is highly profitable doesn’t mean you need to call that feminism. I’m sorry your idea of feminism is so shallow and useless. like as a former little girl I can tell you this movie would not have been good for me to watch, it basically tells women to shut up and consume or else they are a mean angry feminists. this movie has done more harm to feminism than it could promote feminism. look at this thread! you are all just parroting the feminist-bashing message of the movie. also your friends should watch more movies, there are disnely channel movies with the same message as barbie but without the anti feminist pro-capitalist messaging.
Genuinely thank you for saying this
you wanna get obnoxious and emotional? fine this movie quite literally reminded me vierserally and painfully in the theater of cw sexual assault
spoiler
MANY MANY men threatening to rape/ beat the “removed” out of me. it reminded me of being beaten with hockey stick in middle school by white girls for not liking feminine things enough and being labeled an angry lesbian in middle school. i reminded me of everytime is was told to shut up, or that I was talking to much about injustice, it reminded me of every white woman who has condescended to me. it reminded me of constantly being the joke of the family for not laughing at misogynistic jokes. this movie is MEAN this movie is shitty towards anyone outside the strict box they pretend feminsim is
anyway go read bell hooks’s many critiques of women like your friend.
with that context it makes sense you would hate it, there isn’t really any actual intersectional solidarity or analysis in the film or anything. I’m sorry for invalidating you like that
I found Barbie pretty underwhelming and did not understand the hype at all. I haven’t seen Oppenheimer but I don’t see the point in comparing them, the whole point of that meme was that the movies are opposites.
anyway the Oscars are dumb and you should not pay attention to them
ah yes i love the barbie movie where one himbo is able to singlehandedly convince an entire matriarchy into giving up power to men. the most libbed up second-wave feminist slop i’ve ever seen
edit: also what really bugs me about this movie is that it sets up the plot arc of “Stereotype Barbie is malfunctioning because her real-world owner is depressed about capitalism/patriarchy” and does nothing to actually resolve that.
Of course they can’t resolve that, just like the plot line involving the CEO falls by the wayside. You can feel the warmth of the sun but you can never look at it
yup… “oh isn’t it funny how all the people in charge of mattel are white men (hey just like real life!) but also the people in charge of mattel are good actually? anyways lets just leave it there no criticism just vibes”
And like the worst that comes their way is that they’re made to seem a tad bumbling and foolish at times. Which, no, it’s all their fault, all of it. The better ending would’ve been for the little girl to realize that Barbie herself isn’t a fascist, she’s just an unwilling arbiter of evil capitalists who sell a constrained, hobbling, heteronormative vision of femininity to women in order to make big bucks
one himbo is able to singlehandedly convince an entire matriarchy into giving up power to men
Finally, I see someone comment on this! The messaging on that was so weird. The Barie’s love patriarchy actually? What is even the problem then? They love patriarchy because all they know is matriarchy? wtf?
If you want to get down to the nitty gritty of it, Barbieland doe not exist independently as everything that happens in Barbieland is a reflection of what happens to the dolls the real world, so there is no real “immune system” there to stop the misogynistic ideas from spreading like an infection once it was brought back by Ken from the real world.
This is the justification given by the film in a single line, but I find the analogy highly unsatisfying. Sure, Ken accepts patriarchy when exposed, it benefits him. The Barbies accept it because… it was a strange new idea?
Surely lack of exposure to the idea of a large societal shift increases resistance to it, rather than causes uncritical acceptance?
Are we to expect that men who live in patriarchy, unexposed to feminist matriarchy just instantly accept the idea when exposed to it by feminists? Surely not.
Here is the key point of the movie that I think you are missing: the Barbies and Kens (and Alan) are NOT human beings, but IDEAS made into shapes of human beings that funhouse mirrors the thoughts and conditions of the real world. People can choose to accept ideas, but ideas can’t choose, which is why when the patriarchal ideas was brought back by Beach Ken from the real world, the entirety of Barbieland physically twisted itself to match these ideas.
You could say that the whole movie was about Stereotypical Barbie’s transition from an ideal as a “Barbie” to a real independent human being, capable of making choices on her own.
I thought Barbie was underwhelming. You have Dua Lipa in there and you don’t even mention Hoxha once? C’mon
When the map of the real world was shown and they used the 9 dash line for China, they should’ve also had greater Albania in there so they couldn’t show the movie in Serbia
Almost no media produced under capitalism prescribes a solution to real problems and Barbie is no different. I think the movie did a good job articulating the problems some women face in the west but the end of the movie they did a heckin status quo and shrugged their shoulders. If I were a literal person looking to Hollywood to solve my political contradictions, the message I’d take away is that women should do “separate but equal” shit to solve the inequalities and exploitation they face in a capitalist society.
So ya not great but that’s what you get when any real message would threaten the system that produced it.
I thought it very odd it ended by denying men full political rights and the matriarchy was so quickly overtaken by Ken and his misogynists. Given that they reversed the power relations it seemed odd to justify their disenfranchisement. I know they nearly did a coup, but the movie set up that plot point.
yeah it fucking sucks. They built this whole fictitious post scarcity world where the entire population of said world has achieved a semblance of consciousness and the best they can come up with is "lets do the same but opposite
" like come on.and you see it all the time in capitalist media. Here’s the problem, there’s a solution that has been rediscovered countless times throughout history but we’re just going to pretend we don’t know what it is, gosh what a problem you the viewer decide what is to be done roll credits. It is the political/mental equivalent of edging you just want to yell at the screen el problema es capitalismo but w/e. That’s what we get can’t have any flavor or spice.
I do like to imagine the ending being they abolish their constitution, establish housing for all (are the kens homeless??), give equal voting rights and at least banish the execs back to shitworld. Think of all the awkward car rides home from the theaters by all the lib het couples. But it breaks a cardinal rule in capitalism to put anything on display that shows a hopeful or positive alternative to what we have. You can only display problems and inspire hopelessness and nihilism in the masses - even with hollywoods greatest imagination all they can do is
It’s 2024 and a supposedly radical left wing website near you is discussing worthy/unworthy oscars
Oh I’m sorry I didn’t realize people were trying to form the n+1th international here
it’s fun to talk about bullshit hollywood popularity contests
Leftism means no fun allowed
fun is when mad about movies
Get out of my overturned tank.
Poor things was the best movie of the year
i haven’t seen a few of the other best picture noms, but i agree with this. especially if you are comparing barbie and poor things directly. on its face poor things is better visually, in its direction/acting, and in its plot. beyond that it grapples with its narrative topics better than barbie, chiefly feminism.
bella has more agency as a character than all of the barbies, even as the ‘mental toddler’ as others describe. and that agency only grows throughout the movie/with her character development.
The book Poor Things was based on had a huge overarching theme of Sottish people being colonized and exploited by wealthy Londoners from the south, so erasing the Scottish ethnic identify of the protagonist was definitely a strange move. Completely robs the story of its original anti-imperialist message, but I guess there’s not much of an audience for that.
yeah its odd that the film chooses to comment on colonialism in Africa instead, it was disappointing but I saw somewhere online that the author signed off on it before he died? idk maybe the writers didn’t feel equipped to tell that story, idk I agree they should have kept that in.
It really did blow everything else this year out of the water. I wish they had expanded on socialism more but it is what it is. At least it was shown positively.
The movie about having sex with a mental toddler?
Thats not actually what its about! Stop getting your takes from puritanical zoomers on social media.
what is it “about” then
It’s about the development of women’s psychology as they age to partially explain why the special needs aspect is touched on. If you haven’t seen it I recommend it because the movie is well done and not nearly as bad as people who cannot for the life of them understand a metaphor are saying.
To put it in perspective my wife made me watch it and I went in completely blind. Hadn’t even seen a trailer or anything. At first I was like WTF but as the story progressed it became clear this movie isn’t actually about sexually abusing special needs people.
I saw it just a few days ago. The premise of the movie is that an infant’s consciousness is placed in an adult women’s body. At the time when she is taken to Portugal by the lawyer, she walks, talks, acts, and has the motor and social skills of a toddler.
It’s wild that people defend the premise of the movie. It’s literally just the opposite of the terrible anime trope where an adult woman’s mind inhabits a child’s body.
Like I get that the movie has a message it’s supposedly trying to convey, but when you spend 142 minutes glamorizing how sexy it is to fuck Emma Stone (who is developmentally a child according to the plot) then it doesn’t matter what the other message is
Editing to add more thoughts. I understand that the men in the film were antagonists and bad people for taking advantage of Emma Stone’s character. My issue with the movie is that you should not glamorize the Bad Thing that you are trying to criticize. If you spend the entire runtime showing how fun and hot it is to fuck Emma Stone, people are going to walk away from the movie thinking “damn I wish that were me fucking her!”, not “what a wonderful deconstruction of the ‘born sexy yesterday’ trope, I think I’ll donate money to a women’s shelter now”
Depicting something is not the same as glamorizing it. If anything, the sex in this film is deeply unsexy
Agreed that depicting something is not the same as glamorizing it. I think a similar piece of media that does a good job of this is Lolita. Even though the story is told from Humbert’s biased point of view, it’s clear to the reader/viewer that what he’s doing is gross because his attraction to a child is only glamorous to him.
Contrast this with Poor Things, where we spend what feels like half the movie focused on Emma Stone’s face in ecstasy as she cums, or lingering on shots of her naked having incredible sex or basking in a post-coital glow in scenic settings. I think you’re right about a few sex scenes being unsexy (especially in the brothel… but even then, there are scenes like when she tells the priest he “has a gift” for fucking so good and her relationship with her fellow prostitute) but for the most part the sex scenes are really played up to be exciting.
Except people, like Othello, did walk away with the second interpretation. And i dont think you did understand that the men who take advantage of her are antagonists. Doesnt the film punish them for what they did? Othello has informed me that the film is pretty clear this is bad.
I think you are overly concerned with what horny men with no media literacy are going to think of the film.
The movie doesn’t explicitly punish a lot of the guys actually. I saw the point of the brothel scenes as the main character coming to terms with her position in life and taking charge of her own path after separating from mark ruffalo (I forgot the characters name). The thing about the Johns though is that it was clear that their “punishment” if you could call it that is the only way they could be vulnerable is with a prostitute.
And i dont think you did understand that the men who take advantage of her are antagonists. Doesnt the film punish them for what they did?
The lawyer is repeatedly punished and the military husband gets shot and turned into a goat, but the rest of the men either got to carry on with their lives with no punishment (her controlling father figure, all the johns that visit the brothel) or are actually rewarded for it (the young surgeon who Gets the Girl despite that he wanted to marry her when he knew she was a mental infant).
Again, my criticism of the movie isn’t this theme, it’s the glamorous portrayal of the thing the movie is supposedly criticizing. If you’re ironically portraying a girl being taken advantage of as sexy, then it’s still portraying a girl being taken advantage of as sexy. I really don’t think the man who directed it was thinking about how he was skewering men’s control over women when he was choosing the perfect angle to film Emma Stone fucking cowgirl style
The johns explicitly didn’t do anything wrong. They were all just embarrassing guys whose punishment was not being able to be vulnerable to anyone other than a stranger. At least that’s how I read it.
imo the guy having exhibitionist sex in front of his kids is wrong. The other johns are probably alright, although it is very skeevy when the madame is explaining how some clients enjoy the fact that the women don’t want to fuck them
Nothing about it was meant to be sexy lol. It was incredibly awkward and clearly intended to be fucked up, and a commentary on how shitty, controlling, and shallow the men around her were.
If you think the film was showing things in the light you’re describing, it’s more of a self-report than anything else lol.
Barbie is nominated for 8 Oscars.
I hope you are doing a bit, but too many people are saying what you’re saying unironically.another january, another unwarranted argument where we pretend that the oscars matter
And before you come at me, I saw Oppie on proper film. Don’t tell me I didn’t get it or didn’t have a good experience or whatever. I liked it.
I am coming at you for liking it.
The movie was one hour of magical realism physics and wishy-washy centrist political bullshit, one hour of “Y’all know about how my boy Julie Bob O. got mad pussy?”, and one hour of the worst West Wing episode you’ve ever seen. They could have cut that turd in half and it would have still been too long.
The acting was mid. The history was fictional. The cinematography was amateurish. The sound design just made my ears bleed.
Not only was Barbie better, but Barbie was actually a good fucking movie. Had I known what I was getting in for I’d have just gone back and watched the highlight reels from “A Beautiful Mind” and taken a refund on the balance of my time.
Yeah that’s fair lol. I haven’t seen it since Barbenheimer and my opinion might be similar to yours if I rewatch it. It didn’t need to be 3hrs long and I felt like a fool falling for the “gotta see it in 70mm imax” bs. Half of it is in a small white room for fucks sake.
Barbie was genuinely a good time and then people i was with and i talked for hours after it ended. And the atmosphere at the cinema that entire weekend was magical. Everyone wearing pink, saying “hi Barbie”…that’s real movie magic.
I felt like a fool falling for the “gotta see it in 70mm imax” bs.
In so far as they were going for this very immersive experience, I don’t think it was BS on its face. Yes, sitting in that chair I practically vibrated with that opening scene. When they were launching the Trinity tests and he was hallucinating Hiroshima and they were doing the weird “Lets have Cillian Murphy nut in the middle of a board room” scene, it was much more pervasive an experience than if I was watching it on a 7" airplane screen with earbuds.
But the content of the movie itself was dogshit. They just kinda slapped me around with the aesthetics when there was nothing underneath.
I actually had the misfortune of doing the 5D movie experience to watch the Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie and I had the opposite experience. Amazing film, great acting, excellent screenplay, totally underrated action/comedy film. But the movie theater was ruining the experience because I felt like it was constantly trying to give me a concussion. Would have loved to see that in 70mm IMAX, on the condition that the seats stayed still and a nozzle wasn’t randomly spraying shit at me during action sequences.
Barbie was genuinely a good time and then people i was with and i talked for hours after it ended. And the atmosphere at the cinema that entire weekend was magical. Everyone wearing pink, saying “hi Barbie”…that’s real movie magic.
They walked the tightrope between Oscar Bait historical setpiece and genuinely compelling dramady. Lots of good musical numbers, everyone left in a good mood, shameless excuse to cosplay. Literally everything a good movie should be.
I’m not even mad if the lesson the studios take from this is to do a dozen 80s-era action figure throw back films, so long as they get folks as talented as Gerwig, Robbie, and Gosling in it.
Did the nozzle activate during the nut scene?
It did not. Complete waste of $20.
I liked Barbie fine, but I think Oppenheimer is a much better movie.
Edit: The real snub is Asteroid City not even getting a nomination for production design or Best Original Song. What the fuck does Wes Anderson have to do?
I thought Asteroid City was going to sweep the awards. It’s exactly the kind of safe bland toothless navel-gazing “let’s watch fictional actors put on a show!” oscarbait that usually does.
safe bland toothless navel-gazing
Not a perfect movie by any means but its definitely not that
of course it is, it’s directed by Wes Anderson
