This weekend the big Barbie movie opens and it’s getting a pretty good critical reception. Metacritic gives it an 80/100. It’s 90% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.
But honestly, I would be pretty shocked if the movie was even slightly ‘for me.’ The moment I heard they were making this movie, I thought that there was very little chance that this would be a movie I would like. Which is fine. Not everyone likes the same things and there’s nothing wrong with it. Life would be boring if we all liked the same things. So as long as there is no serious moral issue involved, enjoy what you enjoy without shame.
But I am starting to hear from more conservative voices in the media that there is a pretty toxic message in this movie that, at the very least, you might not want to expose your children to. Of course, I haven’t seen the movie and normally when a work gets controversial, I believe one should start by examining it for yourself. I talked about that just the other day when talking about the Jason Aldean controversy. But asking you to watch a music video that is just over three minutes for free is a very different ask compared to going to a nearly two-hour movie with ticket prices the way they are.
Furthermore, frankly, I feel pretty confident that these three sources—Midnight’s Edge, The Critical Drinker and Ben Shapiro—are being accurate, because what they are saying about the movie is extremely consistent. Especially the last two, which go into a lot of detail about the plot.
Therefore, I am going to talk eventually about spoilers. I will always give you, dear reader, a solid warning before we get there, so you can click away.
Btw, who are these people I trust? Well, Ben Shapiro probably doesn’t need much introduction. He’s a conservative pundit that runs a radio show who basically shares his opinions on things for a living.
The Critical Drinker is actually novelist Will Jordan, a Scottish man who has developed a comedic persona where he exaggerates his Scottish accent and pretends to be drunk all the time. And while much of his commentary is intentionally humorous, he typically includes a lot of good information and analysis. He would probably be puzzled to be called conservative, but his main axe to grind is that recent Hollywood movies have been pushing what he calls ‘the message’ which is basically a number of woke political beliefs shoved into movies at the expense of actual filmmaking.
Finally, there is Midnight’s Edge. That is a YouTube channel I have enjoyed for a while that these days deals with a similar problem—how ideology is ruining Hollywood movies.
And just to be clear, I am not saying no good movie can have a message or even that I have to agree with them. For instance, it is very clear that James Cameron likes strong women and put them in Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgement Day, among other movies, as part of a message of at least equal opportunity for women (something I happen to agree with). But crucially he didn’t do so at the expense of the movie and didn’t do it in way that is ridiculous. I could go on, but Aliens and T2 are a masterclass on how to make believably strong female characters who remain interesting and contribute to the quality of the movie. Seriously, who wasn’t pumped when Ripley says ‘Get away from her, you b*tch’?
To explain the premise of Barbie a little—and I don’t think the premise of a movie counts as a spoiler—the basic idea is that there is a ‘Barbie World’ where all the Barbies exist and enjoy themselves and the Kens live off on their own and are looked down on, that is kind of created in the collective imagination of all the girls playing with their Barbie dolls in the real world. So that bears some resemblance to Toy Story, basically saying that there is some kind of reality behind what you thought was just play. But then the Margot Robbie ‘Barbie’ starts to have problems, like flat feet, and she discovers that it’s because the girl playing with her is sad, and so she has to come to the real world and make the girl playing with her happy and off we go.
Midnight’s Edge gives a pretty spoiler free review. It’s actually a little funny because most of the discussion is without the benefit of having seen the movie and then toward the end, he announces he did see the movie. So, Andre discusses how reactions are coming out telling everyone that there are warning signs and then shortly after the nine-minute mark, he announces that during the editing process he saw the movie and he reacts like he had seen Satan himself in the credits, even calling the movie evil. Here’s where they tweeted out a link to their video:
It's official, #Barbie is as woke as it gets. In this video, we go through the early reactions, and @AndreEinherjar gives his out of theater review!https://t.co/Jh7DJxUSsn pic.twitter.com/SN4aifdrPW
— The Official ME (@Midnights_Edge) July 21, 2023
And here’s the video, which has NO SPOILERS except in the sense that he says it is overall man-hating and capitalism-hating:
One thing he usefully discusses is how the word ‘feminism’ means very different things to different people. That is how it is sometimes with words. Lincoln noted a similar problem with the word ‘liberty’ back in his day:
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty. Recently, as it seems, the people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty; and thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf's dictionary, has been repudiated.
That last sentence is discussing a proposal for gradual emancipation. Just because Lincoln recognized that ‘liberty’ was being used in different ways, didn’t mean he was a moral relativist about it.
And just as ‘liberty’ can mean vastly different things to different people, ‘feminism’ can mean vastly different things to different people. I am not ashamed to say I am a ‘wear the pants’ kind of feminist, who believes that women should have an equal opportunity, with no guarantee of equal outcomes. I think that kind of feminism has conquered at least the West to the point that it goes without saying for most people. It’s the other kinds of feminism that are more controversial.
But that is the last of the spoiler-free commentary. Next, I am going to give you The Critical Drinker, who gives you a SPOILER-FIILLED PLOT SUMMARY.
So, if you don’t want to be SPOILED, leave now or forever hold your peace:
Barbie is definitely a movie for Modern Audiences. https://t.co/PNCO2gBv7U
— The Critical Drinker (@TheCriticalDri2) July 22, 2023
While I haven’t seen the movie, I feel pretty confident that he is getting it right because Ben Shapiro goes into even more detail and it pretty much lines up with what The Critical Drinker is saying.
So, according to them, the message of the film is that women are great but men can sometimes hypnotize them with their patriarchal power, so really only women can be safely trusted with power. Repeal the Nineteenth Amendment and replace it with only women having the right to vote, or something.
Maybe if I swapped out the race for sex, it would illustrate how toxic it sounds. So, imagine if a movie pictured a society where black people were oppressed. Then in the movie, one black man has a chance to see another society where black people are not oppressed and is immediately radicalized into a being black supremacist. Then he comes back to his society where black people are oppressed and he immediately sets up a black supremacist society, somehow, until a white person comes in and sets things right. But by ‘setting things right’ the filmmakers don’t mean a society where the races are treated equally, but rather by making sure the black people are being oppressed, again, because that is their ‘place.’ Besides tracking uncomfortably close to the plot of Birth of a Nation, an absolutely racist movie where the KKK are actually portrayed as good guys (I have discussed this movie before), that is the plot of Barbie, if you substitute ‘men’ for ‘black people’ and ‘women’ for ‘white people.’ My hypothetical movie would never fly these days and rightly so, but one where men are portrayed this way?
Well, I guess we will see. I agree with all of these pundits that Barbie will have a very good opening weekend, but we shall see what happens once word gets around. And will this harm the toy brand? I honestly don’t know, but I remember that Super Mario Brothers had an absolutely terrible live action movie, and that didn’t seem to hurt the brand of the game character. So maybe it will be similar with the Barbie dolls—although frankly, I feel really unqualified to guess.
Still, a critical reader might say, ‘hey, Aaron, didn’t you say just yesterday that sometimes if you don’t agree with the message of an artwork, that it nonetheless might be telling you what you need to hear?’ Well, you very astute figment of my imagination, you are exactly right, and maybe I should eventually watch Barbie once just to soak in this viewpoint, whether I agree with it or not. I think it is important to seek out views you don’t agree with, consider them, learn how those views work (or don’t work) and accept or reject them as appropriate. For instance, I am also a lawyer and one of the worst things a lawyer can do is fail to expose themselves to other people’s views, because a good lawyer needs to learn how the other side thinks, if only to do a better job demolishing their arguments.
But there are two limiting principles here, that I admit were unsaid. First, I am not going to pay a premium to expose myself to views like this—sooner or later, I will be able to watch the movie for free and I can wait for that. Second, there is a world of difference between what I would expose myself to versus what I might expose a young child to. If I should be blessed with children of my own, I would be very picky about what messages are being sent to my children. And as time goes on, I would encourage my children to think consume entertainment I don’t agree with and to think critically about that art and entertainment. Is this character in this story right? What is the message of this movie and what do you think of it? I won’t say I know when the time comes to start helping children to be critical thinkers, because this is all hypothetical to me. I feel that it is unlikely to be before the age of seven. But I could be wrong.
And in the end that is what I am concerned about: Whether the messages in this movie are appropriate to children. Should girls be taught these messages from an early age, or should we expose them to this ideology later in life when they are better critical thinkers?
And, also, is it even an entertaining or at least good movie? Like even if Batman and Robin had a great message, I’m not sure I would torture anyone I love with that movie. I’m pretty sure that movie violates the Geneva Convention.
Since I haven’t seen Barbie, I can’t say 100% if the movie is as toxic as these commentors claim. But I feel pretty confident that they are right, and I hope I helped you to make a more informed decision.
Besides a little bird told me that one of our writers might watch it so he or she might write a review. So, maybe stay tuned for that?
