"The U.S. audience isn’t patient or intelligent enough to follow complex narrative or dialog such as in a film like Oppenheimer. Mental mush is easier to digest for the masses so of course they'd flock to 'Barbie' - adorned in Barbie-styles".- Commenter on WaPo yesterday
Barbenheimer is upon us, or so we were informed by the media mavens and so moviegoers must decide between two cinematic marvels: “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s three-hour biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atomic bomb,” or “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig’s Day-Glo feminist-magical take on reality. As CNN reported yesterday, the weekend totals were basically in: 'Barbie' snatched $155m and 'Oppenheimer' 80.5m. As Janice dryly noted: "Evidently Americans want to escape to the doll houses of their childhoods more than they want to understand the beginning of the atomic age."
And who could blame them, mostly adult American women to be sure? What with living in a parlous politically toxic environment, climate change havoc all over - and oh yeah, the nuclear war 'sword of Damocles' hanging over all our heads with the endless Ukraine war.
But let's back up and register there was never any need for a ponderous decision on which film to see. At least for a self-aware citizen with a degree of mental maturity. The film was Nolan’s magnum opus about one of the foremost physicists to ever live. The header and partial piece shown above says it all: Nolan has produced a "thrilling, serious film for adults." Hence, if you regard yourself as an adult then that costly expense to go to a cinema movie ($47 for a couple according to one NY Times commenter) makes this film a 'no-brainer'.
You really gonna blow your money on cotton candy, bubble-headed fluff? On an artificial alternate universe based on a plastic doll? Please. But that's what happened. (Though many astute observers did point out that 'Oppenheimer' had about one third fewer screens to run on given its 3 hr. length.)
Even before the numbers came out there was a running thread among a certain bunch of reviewers, and even supposed ordinary commenters, that 'Barbie' is actually "a deep, serious and transgressive work". Never mind the pinkish, scatterbrained presentation of a mesmerized girly fantasy world - it is really really about a "subversive" plot line that will shock your assumptions. Also this choice chestnut:
"The movie is really aimed at adults".
Well, ok, adult females at a certain stage of arrested development and decked out to boot, e.g.:
Believe it or not all of these women are supposed adults, the one at the bottom - from LA - 29 ripe years of age. Can we say a case of doll-triggered infantilization? Which is why I supposed - from photos in LA Times, NY Times, WaPo - so many adult women (white and black) were decked out like teenyboppers to go see it - with their Barbies.
What those pumping this "serious" line of twaddle missed - and to me it was more defensive rhetoric in the wake of the subject matter of "Op" - is that even if there were some intent to be "subversive" it falls flat because it missed Marshall McCluhan's warning (in his book, 'Understanding Media') that the "medium is the message." So the message embedded in any anti-capitalist, "anti-fascist" flick is obliterated by the trappings of a pink doll world with a blonde sexy lead actress who embodies the eponymous 44-22- 36 (by proportion) doll. In the words of blogger Sonali Kohatkar (see first link at bottom):
"The film doesn’t truly attack Barbie’s baggage. The opening scene of the film, showcased in its first trailer, was a nod to the deeply problematic original Barbie, with Robbie appearing in the same black-and-white striped bathing suit worn by the first version of the dolls to hit store shelves in 1959."
Thus some of the following comments which appeared on the NY Times boards:
Can anything be more ridiculous than likening the movie “Oppenheimer” with the Barbie movie. Has everyone gone nuts all at once from the heat? It’s like comparing Lawrence of Arabia with Garfield!
The hype given Barbie by the
media is an insult to public intelligence, even as low as it is.
I'd rather watch Oppenheimer twice back to back than Barbie once. I still can't believe that a grown up would sit down voluntarily and watch a 2 hour commercial for a plastic doll aimed at 5 year olds
Well, the last comment was met with this rejoinder: "Mr. X, the film is aimed at adults!" Yeah, well maybe female adults dressed as Barbie teenyboppers - as I noted above- all wishing to escape to a doll fantasy world. Clearly, the political and climate upheavals of the moment are playing havoc with vulnerable brains and regressing them. That certainly is the theory of my tenured Psychology prof niece Shayl, who opined:
"I could have predicted all of this gush and hype from Trump's last indictment". Adding: "I suppose it's preferable to seeing them all go crazy on planes or in department stores."
Let's run this up the memetic flagpole: Which is likely more familiar to most Americans, a plastic doll that's been idolized by most American young girls since the year dot (actually 1959) or the story behind the project to build the first atomic bomb? I go with the first, so that the second, by default, is the one needing more mental attention. But fragile American brains just can't handle it, so if they do go to see 'Op' they have to dilute the effects by taking the 'Barbie' tranq right after. Hence the 'Barbenheimer' baloney. (Again, thanks to Shayl for the comparison.)
But some will still yelp: "Yeah, but Copernicus, I can still see both!" Yes you can especially if you've got the $$$ to blow. But back up a bit.
A lot of the hype - about seeing both films together traces back to the genius marketer who created the Barbenheimer meme in the first place. I.e. that a doll fantasy flick and serious atomic scientist biopic could be seen back to back. This shtick was even evident in today's LA Times where we read the words of one promoter:
"Man, this is marketing catnip! To have two studios in camaraderie and rolling in the big bucks at the same time, same weekend, because of a meme!"
This elicited yet another comment earlier from a perspicacious citizen:
"Why are we calling a
marketing ploy meant to boost ticket sales of two entirely unconnected movies a
“cultural phenomenon?"
Never mind the $94 dollar one off dent to the budget that would emerge for most couples. In the meantime I will agree with this comment by one NY Times reviewer:
"It’s an absurd juxtaposition: Mr. Nolan’s dark history of a man-made existential threat and Ms. Gerwig’s gleefully ironic interpretation of Barbie’s upbeat pink bubble.
If the films
have anything in common, it’s that they both explore a macro view of humanity,
one through the lens of state power and personal morality, and the other
through patriarchy and consumer culture."
And if 'Barbie' might have had potentially anything to commend it, it would have been hitting more on the dire perils of that malignant consumer culture and how it's weakened and mummified too many brains in this country. But all those efforts were washed away with the pink glitz and Barbie banter that more distracts from that same nefarious consumer culture, rather than focuses on it. So the millions swept up in this craze end up too brain bereft to grasp they've now become mindless sheeple. "Blinded by the pink." as Shayl says.
Basically, these two films are so radically divergent in their content that talking about viewing them in one sitting is akin to trying to square the proverbial circle. It just doesn't work, doesn't compute. Those who watch the 'Barbie' flick first will be mentally mauled and freaked out by Oppenheimer. Those who do the reverse, will feel as if their brains were left on some alternate reality Earth.
For me, I am just waiting for my eyes to simultaneously adjust to the post-op effects of cataract surgery. Then, I will be going with Janice to see 'Oppenheimer'. There will be no 'Barbie' barbiturate to consume afterward, for either of us.
See Also:
by Sonali Kolhatkar | July 25, 2023 - 5:56am | permalink
Excerpt:
A few months ago, my two sons, aged 10 and 15, told me they were excited to see the new Barbie film. I was surprised. They are not interested in dolls, and, in spite of Barbie being the top-selling doll in the world, they were not very familiar with the iconic toy until they saw an online trailer of the live-action feature film starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. Although I had played with a much-loved Barbie doll as a child, I had grown up to hate everything the doll stood for: dangerously unattainable beauty standards, the deliberate vapidity of femininity and feminism, and the centering of whiteness.
But, the clever marketing of the new film has people of all demographics eager to see it: “If you love Barbie, this movie is for you. If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you,” proclaimed the trailer. There should have been an addendum: “If you’re indifferent because you have no idea who or what Barbie is, this movie is also for you.” Because, ultimately the film is a giant commercial for an outdated toy. Its interminably long marketing campaign helped generate breathless anticipation for months.
And:
Christopher Nolan biopic ‘Oppenheimer’ is a supersize masterpiece
Excerpt:
It turns out that Nolan’s monumentalist aesthetic is perfectly suited for a story that otherwise could barely fit within a feature-length narrative: It’s too big, too consequential, its layers of hubris and history and swirling social impulses too unruly to be neatly contained. If “Oppenheimer” is a supersize movie, that’s because anything else would do a disservice to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the tragic figure at its core brought to fascinatingly paradoxical life by Cillian Murphy....
There is so much substance to “Oppenheimer”: so many ideas and contradictions and philosophical quandaries; so many egos, talents and temperaments, loyalties and lofty ideals. Murphy’s mesmerizing performance notwithstanding, those ineffable forces are what drive “Oppenheimer,” which Nolan films mostly in finely etched close-ups, punctuated with shots of stars and water and cosmic blasts. Visually, the movie is nothing short of magnificent,
And:
Meet Lilli, the High-end German Call Girl Who Became Barbie
And:
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