issue seventy

hopefully the last b*rbenh*imer essay you’ll ever have to read, ever

At this time, in the midst of this grueling heatwave, national labor reckonings and union solidarity efforts, digital collapse and discourse galore, it feels like we have reached Peak Everything. Maybe I’m just feeling the late-stage capitalism especially heavy this month, or maybe I’m online too much because I’m bored, but I’m sensing a fever pitch of an imminent overload; there’s a thick fatigue coating the frenzy. The vibes are certainly off, and they’re definitely bad. 

I’m feeling it in my spirit, too. I’m irritated, tired, getting snappy (unintentionally and internally), sick of my phone, and generally over the various ways things get under my skin these days: ignorance, cognitive dissonance, and whiteness. All often intertwined, as you may guess. 

Anyway, this is how I feel about the endless cycle of discourse surrounding Barbenheimer, which I’m groaning about as I type and you’re probably doing the same as you read it. It’s been posted to death, memed to death, worn on shirts and thongs and board shorts and margarita menus and proven successful in millions (probably soon billions) of dollars of revenue. I can point you to some excellent words written about this phenomenon or each of the two movies in question (I recommend clicking every single one of those links), but over the last month I’ve ingested such a wide variety of takes and opinions that I felt the need to take some time and space to feel out my own. As I often do with critical pieces, I don’t feel the need to be contrite or contrarian, or align with bigger voices; I parse and process valuable, well written insights as I contemplate and respond — that’s criticism, baby! With all of this said, I have to get this load off my chest.

I’m not opposed to the prospect of monoculture; I think it’s fun, it breeds discussion, and when done right, is historic! When there is something so fresh or so impactful that it's on absolutely everybody’s lips, some of the most interesting conversations can be had about how we perceive, consume and react to culture. At least, in an ideal world where human people know how to talk to each other about things, which it seems we’re slowly devolving from. Where Barbenheimer and various other pop culture phenomena go sour is in the corporate manufacturing of a “monoculture” that isn’t really even that at all, and simply seeks to gobble up eyeballs and ad clicks for the sake of itself. Given the state of media literacy and critical thinking in the general public right now, this is sort of a recipe for disaster.

Big film debuts — such as the case of Barbenheimer — from two big name directors, studios, and casts, aren’t inherently a bad thing. They’re regular, they happen all the time, and of course, they generate interest from audiences. However, the sheer force of Warner Brothers/Mattel pummeling each of the four quadrants for months in advance in an attempt to ideally promote their most recognizable IP raised some red flags for me, especially in their dissonance from years of expectations and audience discussions of “Barbie” as it approached. 

As the hype and brand presence increased, the excitement for a big weekend at the movies suddenly morphed into something much bigger, brighter, and more expensive. Post opening weekend, most of the reactions to both films I’ve witnessed simultaneously flattened, resulting in something like this:   

“Barbie” = for girls = girl movie = female director = feminist icon = feminist cause = Barbie representation = feminist movie = if you don’t like Barbie you inevitably hate women = Barbie makes millions (billions) = women win!!!

“Oppenheimer” = for boys = film bros = pretentious and incomprehensible = too long! = less valuable than Barbie = less representation = antithetical to important societal issues such as the Barbie movie = made less money (still millions) = flop

Obviously, this is stupid. Anyone with three brain cells left after 6 hours in the movie theater could discern that this is stupid. It’s infantilizing, overly simplistic, weirdly bio-essentialist and generally just lost-the-plot levels of derailed. Does the “2-hour Mattel commercial” progress women’s rights because it’s pink? Does the “dead-white-man-war-criminal biopic” feature a stunning breadth of characters of color, each explored in depth? Is a Christopher Nolan movie, of all films, a flop? I feel crazy seeing both of these movies distilled in the manner depicted above because I simply don’t get how people can walk out of either one and reach these conclusions, unless they’re seriously missing something or missing crucial tissue in their frontal lobe.

The most feasible reason I can muster for these types of reactions is that people are so eager to publicly ascribe ethical meaning or moral signifiers to their acts of consumption that they feel the need to make a split judgement the second they consume the thing. Oddly enough, I see this more applicable to fanatics of the scattershot, ideologically unfocused, tonally imbalanced “Barbie” as opposed to the 3-hour examination of moral posturing and the myth of political neutrality in war conducted in “Oppenheimer”. Then, I thought further, and I figured out the former. 

I’m especially disinterested in “Barbie”, having seen it opening weekend in the feverish excitement of a packed theater with friends. I had reasonably high expectations, but walked out at the end knowing that if the movie had anything to say at all, it definitely didn’t have anything to say to me. The veneer of a generalized, lukewarm, market tested to hell and back, default-square-zero, one size fits all version of feminism portrayed in the film is best when applied to dolls of abstracted gender and worst when pasted onto the words of real women. I thought it was a little hammy, heavy handed in the wrong places and grating to say the worst. Imagine my shock (which quickly faded to a familiar disdain) when I saw generous numbers of white women I follow on social media extol the life-changing potency and tear-jerking realness of the film, proclaiming it revolutionary and groundbreaking for every single woman ever. 

At first I just had to laugh, then I realized why this felt so familiar. Any sort of toothless, nostalgia-inspired feminism engineered to make the most money from a massive audience for a massive brand was of course, going to be through an exceptionally white lens. I’ve written about this in the mass appeal of Taylor Swift, much of YA literature, and so on and so forth. White becomes the default in every single one of these cases, and “Barbie” was no exception. The way Mattel got away with this was thumb-jabbing harder than thumbs had ever been jabbed to say “We’re the cool company, look how we let them make Will Ferrell caricatures of us! Women rule!” and run away with their billions to pump into, idk, their Hot Wheels franchise next or something. 

After digesting “Barbie” reactions for over a week and watching how defensive its fans get in response to valid criticisms such as mine above, I just feel slightly resigned and defeated. It really doesn’t take much to impress y’all, but if these are the hills you’re dying on in the war of “let people enjoy things”, we have to be so for real. 

With this said, “Barbie” and its verbal infographics isn’t the end of the world, or feminism. It’s certainly not giving us our rights back, and the right-wing backlash it has received is moreso based on a hair-trigger reactive response scale rather than a world unprepared for such a revolutionary text — they get mad at anything. It’s a cute movie with good performances, and fun to look at. However, the way the movie has been memefied and memorialized — both independently and in conversation with the polar-opposite depiction of atrocities in “Oppenheimer”, which people don’t seem to know how to discuss normally either, for reasons that could be a whole other newsletter on the valorization of surface level representation — doesn’t bode well for those of us who will be subjected to the conveyor belt of corporate-backed films next on the docket. As one supreme dies (the superhero smash hit) a new one rises (pieces of plastic who symbolize social progression, I guess).

i do like this meme though, credit to unknown twitter user on the tl

Mostly, I’m tired of hearing about it all. I’ve learned to pick my battles and simply side-eye and scroll when I see a particularly stupid take, because I don’t have the time or energy for it. Mostly, I have lower hopes for Gerwig’s Narnia, and I want white women to stop making their childhood my problem. Thanks for reading through this mid-week dispatch, and I’ll be back with another issue this Sunday !