this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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I know I didn't watch it or have any interest to do so. But... Were the assumptions I have about it true? In that just like the woke craze a few years back, its message backfired by essentially smacking the pendulum from where ever it was between masculism and feminism, to the extreme edge of feminism. This, to the point it becomes toxic, and making it what it seems now, the butt of a joke?
I also understand the primary purpose of the movie was likely for repopularizing the line of toys. It still had some form of message.
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?
Could you define woke?
Opposite of slept.
Narrator: they can't
Acceptance and popularizing of previously stigmatized groups of people and cultures who underwent many social injustices, such as people of a different race, neurodivergants, or LGBTQ to name a few.
A few years ago media really started to shoehorn the culture into script writing to the point a show or movie, rather than just telling a story, made it a platform for culture. While I appreciated that these groups were gaining acceptance, I felt it could too much too soon, and the more closed-minded people would just close off even more.
Sounds like we shouldn't cater to closed-minded people then. You can't change people that don't want to change, and if they want to be wrong, that's on them.
Barbie is a decent movie with the message that women are people and to treat them like people and not play things. I wouldn't even call that your definition of woke. Now, if the movie started calling for women's hygiene products to be free and had Barbie stealing that shit from Walmart and Target and doling it out to the poor, we can start talking.
Hrm, so taking your post serious for a second, you could not be more wrong if you tried.
Including the toy thing, the whole movie basically dunks modern Mattel every time it can, continuously, and only praises the original inventor of Barbie and her ideals for the toy. But specifically not what the modern C-suites made of it.
The movie is also extensively about learning to survive to insane and unachievable expectancies modern society has for women, and at the same time about men learning to define their self-worth from within instead of via competition and rivalry.
It's... damn smart, honestly. Far more so than the movie has any right to be. Left me utterly impressed.
(Oh and "woke" is just the past form of waking, you're using it wrong)
The messages got from it are:
"the patriarchy" is not a good thing, but even the idealized "the matriarchy" has problems too, and whatever we have going on right now isn't really working
a man's value is inherent to himself, it doesn't come from a job or a relationship. (I suppose this applies to women too, but it was Ken who had to learn this lesson).
Men need to support each other more rather than compete with each other
Societal expectations for women are impossible to attain
Your assumptions aren't true at all. It looks like it's heading that way part-way through the film, when Barbie and Ken are at odds with each other. And then it goes ahead and empowers all the men as well. It's certainly critical of toxic masculinity but I think it's empowering for both men and women overall. Obviously your Ben Shapiro types were offended by it because it's not trying to appeal to incels, and it is woke, but not in a bad, inauthentic way.
I don't think it's really supposed to re-popularise the line of toys either. Sure, people who liked the toys when they were young will probably find details they appreciate, but it's not meant to sell the toys. It's not aimed at the demographic (young girls, typically) who would want to buy dolls. It's not an R-rated film, of course, but I'd say anyone under 12 probably isn't going to get much out of it, and it's probably much more enjoyable for adults overall. It's pretty philosophical and thoughtful, and has quite a lot of metaphors and symbolism that would be lost on younger viewers.
Rather than aiming to sell toys, the film is the product; it's a way to make money with the Barbie brand from audiences outside of the toy-buying demographic. And it achieved that (by being a good film).
Awfully fully formed question-but-really-I-wasn't-interested-anway you got there.
"Honest questions" don't use loaded language like "woke".