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I really disagree with the idea that the atomization of the individual is a good thing, or that narratives fictional or otherwise which base empowerment apparently on the subjugation of the other Ken be anything but negative. The idea that Barbie can be whatever she wants to does not seem like one that should be dependent upon the kens being relegated to second class citizens even from a fictional standpoint unless the argument is that the one group could only prosper by the others misery.
Haven't seen Oppenheimer yet (have tickets for a 70mm showing this coming Friday), but my wife and I saw Barbie last night and had such an amazing time. It was weird reading reviews after seeing the film because a lot of the audience on IMDB did seem to think the movie was a little too unkind to men. But I picked up the same thing from it you did--it's actually very kind to men. It's sympathetic to the fact that we are also suckered in and harmed by patriarchy. And it tells us that we can change and that we are still deserving of forgiveness and love once we do. I actually found it quite empowering.
The only thing that I felt was missing was some small acknowledgement that little boys can also like and play with barbies too. The film is great but also very binary. Perhaps it had to be though, or the message would be muddied (and too many people already can’t seem to grasp the nuance 🙄).
yeah seen it for the second time yesterday and I loved it even more. After my first watch and then seeing all the criticisim, in the second viewing i was on the look out for all the stuff they were complaining about and I just didnt find it. The fact that even in the matriachy of barbie world there was a mistreatment of kens (at least the main ken) purely from neglect. Which i think was a really good emotional arc, almost showing boys that and everyone that your feelings are actually valid, actually communicating their emotions and seeing eachothers state of mind as purely valid was the big fix to the big problem that plauged ken and plagues most guys. yeah some things are a bit on the nose and tahts okay, its barbie, it was never meant to be as naunce in its represenatiotn as oppenheimer.
I think the Ken's can't be equal in the end of the film because ultimately they are just toys that reflect the real world, and they only exist serve a specific purpose for the real world. In the real world, women still need something like Barbie to serve as inspirations for young girls. If Ken's were even just equal to Barbie, then that still diminishes the importance of Barbie and the reason for their existence. Men don't really need Ken's in the real world like how women need Barbie. Men already have other toys. So Ken's shouldn't and couldn't get equal rights. Unfortunately in their imaginary Barbieland they just have to be secondary. That's how I interpret it at least.
It was highlighted by the Supreme Court joke. Kens will become Supreme Court justices, but only in inverse proportion to reality. It's really funny but also somewhat bleak with that larger context.
This is true, but the reason is to serve as a tragic mirror of our real world where patriarchy is just "normal" in a large swathe of the world. Women "shouldn't and couldn't get equal rights" is the barely surpressed opinion of many a man I've talked to as soon as feminism is being discussed. Oh, of course equality is important to them, but then again they think women are well off and equal enough in the west, so feminism is not needed or somehow actively harmful. I think Barbie makes a really good point, but one might need to understand the point of feminism to get it, which is why so many are unclear about it in the movie.
There’s also the fact that the Barbocracy _wasn’t_ considered good and right. It’s established that the way Kens were viewed was bad and they explicitly refuse to return to the status quo, even if we don’t get the magical instant equality some people wish we did.
This honestly might be one of your all-time best essays. The insightful cross-pollination of themes and ideas between these two films is surprising yet clear, and I love your final point about looking for this same level of interplay between all SORTS of different things, the better to illuminate and understand each of them individually. Well done!
This was the Barbenheimer analysis I'd been looking for, every other video I'd seen talked about which was better instead of using the opportunity to dig into how they can relate to one another.
"I hope you are become happy viewer, liker of video" is the only "like this vid" call to action that I have ever immediately and consciously chosen to follow. Had me howling, nice work.
Barbie apologizes to Ken at the end and recognizes that she did not regard him highly enough. It wasn't either women are in charge or men are in charge. Barbie land simply showed us what a complete gender/ power reversal would look like, but by the end of the film shows us some of the shortcomings of that world, regardless of which gender holds the power. We see so many people calling it "man-hating" when, in fact, it's only showing us how women are treated in reality and that it is problematic (which is too uncomfortable for many).
Agree. Barbie actually apologizes to Ken for treating him like an accessory. How many thousands of movies have shown men treating women like accessories, and never even thinking about apologizing? We applaud them as heroes as they ignore/mistreat/belittle/objectify women left and right. It never even occurs to the hero that there's anything wrong with his behavior. Of course this happens in the real world too. Any guy who thinks Barbie is man-bashing must be blind to the reality of man-woman dynamics the movie is inverting.
@jakubrejak1114 OK. Not in America. We are severely lacking in women in leadership positions. Also, having "several" women in these roles usually means they occupy a very small percentage of these positions, which is far from equal, let alone having the advantage.
I've seen people, who are likely just skeptical of everything, who are saying that "Barbenheimer" was manufactured by the studios, and I think that may be more insane than any conspiracy theory I've ever heard. No marketing team could create this. Don Draper and Peggy Olson fusing and going Super Sayan wouldn't have the advertising power level to create "Barbenheimer."
Everything about Barbenheimer feels like an echo of March 2020 when Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing dropped on the same day. Two completely totally different properties, dropping on the same day, marketing themselves very differently, built to create very different feelings and experiences for the audience. And both were massively successful, ended up having mutual fans of both properties, and then came the immediate flood of memes and family art combining the properties in an organic viral fad that is the stuff that marketing teams dream of. And people back then thought it was totally manufactured as well.
The best part about all of this is that releasing Barbie on the same day was actually supposed to hurt Oppenheimer’s box office, at least from what I hear. After Christopher Nolan left Warner Bros., they intentionally scheduled the release of Barbie to be on the same day as a “screw you”. Unfortunately, this ended up creating the best possible advertising campaign Oppenheimer could have received, especially when Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie posed with tickets for it.
@@samuelbarber6177 yeah, it's kind of stupid, because which fan of Oppenheimer would normally watch barbie and vice versa, so linking the two just asked for it
I bet $1000 we actually do get a studio trying to intentionally manufacture something like this only for it to crash and burn, or at least not catch on *nearly* as much as barbenheimer or doom crossing did
@PillarofGarbage I think that it helps that Oppenheimer is a legitimately interesting and conflicting figure in history. His personal life, his feeling and motivations (before, during, and after the Manhattan Project), and how he handles all this are messy and contradictory at times. He may not have been a household name, but he, and his complexity, were know enough that word of mouth _before_ the movie was able to combine with the Nolan and Murphy effects to really pull out all the stops. As I type this, it shows another parallel to Barbie in that way. She well know and polarizing enough of a figure to make for an interesting movie, but not a substantial one. Then throw in the draw of what Gerwig, Robbie, and Gosling could all add. Another unexpected but understandable wining combination.
There are multiple reasons but the brand name recognition of Christopher Nolan along with the exclusive IMAX 70mm showings of it that doesn't come all that often also played a quite significant role in Oppenheimer becoming a box office success. In fact, Oppenheimer probably benefitted the most from the Barbenheimer phenomenon because you had a lot of people who wouldn't normally take a chance on a Christopher Nolan film and it's cryptic nonlinear storytelling without it be wrapped into the double feature with Barbie.
@@ajiththomas2465 I detinitely agree that it beneffited the most. Barbie was already on track to do well, especially given the fun vibe it gave off (even if it had a lot if messages going on and an unsatisfying end to me).
And both attack American ideological supremacy. Consumerism and how we entwine it with "radicalism" and raw American power and our psychosis around it.
The Oppenheimer interpretation is funny given that in the movie after being humiliated by Oppenheimer and the rest of the scientists, Edward Teller makes an even bigger bomb.
I got a kick out of how the only time a male in Barbieland shows any competence is when Alan, the only man who has rejected toxic masculinity, kicks the ass of a dozen Kens. Not sure how he was able to do that, but i thought it really highlighted how the Kens are turning to the shallow trappings of masculinity for validation in the face of their own inadequacy
Barbie is for me about not needing to be greater or an ideal, but at least to be human and flawed. Oppenheimer also learns this lesson, even if too late so stop the bomb or save his face, having a very human reaction to the arms race.
After doing my own barbie->oppenheimer double feature I brought this up in the women's restroom. I felt like there was a lot of commentary on the patriarchy itself in Oppenheimer, the insidious lure of "legacy", and the way oppenheimer himself viewed the supporting people in his life with a shallow interest. This was a fantastic essay!
I haven't seen Oppenheimer, but I just saw Barbie. It was so good! It was creative, funny, clever, gorgeous, and all around great! It's currently my third favorite movie of the year, only behind Beau Is Afraid and Fool's Paradise.
I liked both films, but who'd have guessed that a movie about a Barbie doll would be more political than the story of the man who invented the atomic bomb?
Really enjoyed this. Intertext is one of my favourite things and I do like how reading them together patches up some of the issues I had with Barbie's feminism (I like the sum up here of Barbieland as a sort of examination of how patriarchy and misogyny get internalised, I have some issues with what I see as some confused theory and a very individualist view of liberation that doesn't seem to go anywhere at the end, but I think setting internalisation as the thing it's looking at works well with these, as it makes Barbie's process a story about decolonising her mind). I'll admit I haven't got around to Oppenheimer, yet, but I generally enjoyed Barbie. I'm just a bit of a theory nerd and have a hard time turning off the 'No you don't understand, x actually plays into patriarchy' part of my brain.
On the surface it looks like Barbie is a movie about gender and Oppenheimer is not, but this is actually a great example of how deeply woven these social ideas like gender are into everything, and it's just invisible when it blends in with what you have been taught to expect.
I find it interesting that the three most talked about movies right now are Barbie Oppenheimer and sounds of freedom, and regardless of your opinion about them all, I find it interesting that they all sort of have the same theme at their root: awful powerful men and the awful women that support them are awful and we should all do something about it.
I don't always agree with your analysis or conclusions (not referring to this video in particular, I've just never commented before...) But i don't think anyone could accuse you of not having well thought out and well articulated ideas.
Crazy to think that both movies are making huge successes in the box office and finically during the Hollywood strike and Hollywood itself is shut down due to the strike with both the writers and actors guild.
And it’s crazy to think that both movies are outperforming other blockbuster tent poles like Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible. Heck, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 made only about 850 million in its entire run and Barbie has made almost that in under two weeks. Okay, Oppenheimer hasn’t yet outperformed Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, but the fact that they’re even in the same league (a far greater success for Oppenheimer given its smaller budget) is real impressive.
Overall good analysis, but something of a nitpick - the Barbies are not rendered subservient by exposure to the contradictory feminine under patriarchy, but by exposure _to patriarchy_ itself. The Barbies and Kens react differently to exposure to the real world because the specific model of patriarchy was imported, and under patriarchy men and women are expected to react differently. It was enlightenment to the contradictory nature of femininity under patriarchy that _freed_ the Barbies from the brainwashing, as bringing attention to the cognitive dissonance jarred them from the hypnotic state.
I think our disagreement is a grammatical one. The quote is, 'By giving voice to the cognitive dissonance required to be a woman under the patriarchy, you robbed it of its power!' I think you're taking the 'it' whose power is robbed to be patriarchy, while I'm taking 'it' to be that cognitive dissonance itself. In my interpretation, that cognitive dissonance (while undoubtedly an _aspect_ of patriarchy) is the immediate cause of the Barbies' subservience, and the removal of its power through this voicing is what awakens them. I don't think there's a _right_ answer here, mind, just that we're seeing the film slightly differently as a result of this sentence's unclear construction.
@@PillarofGarbage That interpretation does make sense, especially since the Barbies still needed to carry out their plan to regain their political power from the patriarchy. Treating it as a component of the patriarchy I think satisfies my original comment, too, making exposure to the dissonance a more specific but not different thing from exposure to the patriarchy. And then bringing it from subconscious to conscious undermined that particular component. Thanks for the response. :)
I hadn't thought about how the Kens taking over Barbieland is like patriarchy encroaching on childhood imagination. Dang, that makes the whole movie feel different to me. I really want to go and watch these films again and view them through the lens of masculinity just to see where it leads me.
I think its so interesting that barbieland funktions as a mirror to the real world. Girls will only play with barbies in a gender neutral way once society treats girls in a gender neutral way, and so barbieland reflexts those experiences. At least that's my interpretation and i think that's a cool metatextual thing This was such a good reflection
The artistic-cultural movement you talk about in 5:58 (Picasso, etc) isn't modernism. Modernism equals to art nouveau (1890s-1920s) . The movement you describe is avanguarde (inside you hace surrealism, cubism, expressionism, futurism) and is set in 1930s-1940s. Maybe in USA is called modernism and is a kind of cultural shock. In Spain, specially in Catalonia Art Nouveau (which yes, it is a term quite stated in Europe) is literally translated as Modernism and in the rest of Europe too is quite set the term Avanguarde to the arts and the culture shift in the final 1920's-1930's..
It annoys when people say "intentionality" when they mean "intention." They use it as a pretentious way to say an ordinary thing; meanwhile the actual meaning of the word "intentionality" is very different.
3:23 you’re forgetting that at the end of the movie they addresses the imbalance by saying it was unfair of them to not allow the Kens to contribute more to society in Barbieland and they give them positions of power and encourage the Kens to be their own men. That imbalance of power was necessary to the plot as it facilitated Ken’s takeover, but also is a reflection of how women once existed in the world, and how we had to fight for power. It’s kinda the whole point of the movie…
Doesn't that voiceover end by saying something along the lines of 'maybe eventually the Kens will even reach the level of power women hold in _our_ world'? If so, it doesn't really seem like true equality is on the cards.
@PillarofGarbage We live in a world where up to about 100 years most women had one role in society. Our toys reflected that. Ruth Handler said no more. The world mostly caters to men. Even the way medicine is made, for example. Even though "We mothers stand still so that our daughters can look back and see how far they've come." There ia still a lot road. The Kens will have true equality in Barbieland when women have true equality in the real world. But hey, stereotypical Barbie was created to have no end, so was Ken. Do you think Barbie got so many career because Mattel came up with the idea? There was probably a lot research done and a lot little girls and women who dressed stereotypical Barbie into all those things. Buy yourself a Ken doll and dress it into what you want to become.
@@clarapilier matriarchys exist now in places on earth ~ also they existed in ancient tymes when men did not understand how babys were made as in their role in that ~ once they did they pulled women off the magic birth pedestal & subjugated them ~
Oppy could have walked out, or joined with the voices recommending it’s use, etc. But yeah, from our perspective, either way the bomb’s getting finished (and dropped).
One of the most interesting deeper takes on Barbenheimer that I’ve seen. A couple of notes: Oppenheimer is a dramatization of REAL historically, globally, existentially significant events; it is NOT an abstract fictional exploration of ‘ideas.’ All of the characters were REAL; its geopolitics were REAL; its sexual politics were REAL. And they all have relevance to the way things actually are today. The pivotal feature of the US-Saudi relationship to Iran is nuclear containment of Iran.India and Pakistan, mortal enemies with an intractable religious and border dispute both have nukes. North Korea routinely launches missiles over Japan to demonstrate its nuclear reach. Putin has invaded Ukraine and threatened nuclear war in face of the West’s fighting back. Because of how the USSR collapsed into Russia, there is the threat of a nuclear dirty bomb anywhere anytime. The last lines of the film are about how Oppenheimer and FDR’s Manhattan Project did IN FACT unleash a metaphorical chain reaction, aspects of which are described above. In your analysis, you have focused on real-ity to the exclusion of the REAL. Perhaps you were led there by Barbie because Barbie is a film that deals only in real-ity, with not a single thought to the real. But, to do a truly meaningful analysis of the two films together, one has to start from the frame of the REAL.
One thing about the world of Barbie really confused me. So apparently, according to the movie, the world of Barbieland is based on the idea of Barbie, with BL and the real world interconnected in some way. So does that mean that every single idea in the world of the film has their own universe? Not just Toy Brands, but like...basic everyday ideas? Is there like a microwave world, a lightbulb world, or whatnot? And if not, and Barbie is the only thing like this, why? What makes Barbie so special as to be the only idea with its own world? Maybe I'm overthinking this, but it's still an interesting question I haven't seen anyone else bring up.
As for Oppenheimer, fascism is not merely nor primarily the return to tradition. It is reaction to working class revolution. Oppenheimer is explicit on this: its a movie that exposes working class organization and communism, and how they interacted with the avant garde in the arts, and with the new physics. But of course: in a Western world without revolution, and therefore with war, imperialism is there to take over the new physics. No matter what Oppenheimer or anyone else thinks, a nuclear bomb will be detonated, and it will necessarily start a new arms race. Reducing this to "masculinity" is to lack an understanding of the impersonal oppressions of imperialism due to the mute compulsion of capital.
Barbenheimer is the same as Oppenheimer except the bombs are pink. Or was it Ken had competition from a dude named Robert who wants to drop a bomb on Japanese toy makers.
Ah yes Barbeinheimer was the first movies I had seen in the cinema in a long time. I have to admit even if I enjoyed both movies I liked Oppenheimer most. Barbie was a fun film but they really hit us over the head whit the message in the third act. and I am not sure I approve of flipping the gender roles why not have equality Barbie president Barbie doctors/judges but also Ken doctors and in other important roles. Equality
I think the Ken's continued inequality at the end of Barbie is part of the point. This newly "enlightened" society went from being a total matriarchy . . . to a mainly matriarchy with some male representation. One of the final lines of the film is, "And finally, the Kens had *almost* as many rights as the women in our world have." It's poking fun at the fact that our society likes to push people from asking for more, "Look how far we've come," "It was worse XX years ago," "What do you want *more* rights than *us*?" completely ignoring the continued disparity between genders. It's not about Barbieland Good Kendom Bad, it's they're both deeply flawed and letting go of what we're used to isn't as easy as becoming "enlightened" to what [insert gender] goes through. It's only until we acknowledge each other's struggle with empathy--but also acknowledge that there *is* still a power imbalance--that we can actually fix shit.
The Barbie movie is a subtle critique of values made without empathy or introspection and their inherent danger and value while also the ken subplot acts as the empathetic situational straw man for men to place themselves in female shoes. Ken isn't a male empowering roll, he serves as a stand in for someone to understand the dangers of the oppressed attempting to fix their oppression with what they have known: oppression. Reversing the roles here does give some understanding to the core message but denies the core message that the roles themselves are made up. All in all the barbie movie In my opinion was a cinematic success in terms of themes and narrative. When I see ken trying to create a benign patriarchy in response to a semi benign yet oppressive Matriarchy I think of my sister being told she couldn't get approved for a truck by a dude who was summarily fired from his dealership. Trucks and society are unisex and the answer to oppression should be stopping oppression. Also Ken wearing a woman's coat is like Rosey the riveter wearing Overalls and it's hella kickass. Oppenheimer was mid, I already know I'd enable nuclear war to prove I'm masculine,
Him quoting that, "Now I am become death..." is apparantly merely myth, though it's definitely more poetic than the truth. EDIT: When the bomb goes off successfully, I should have specified.
Barbie was hypocritical though, because Barbie didn't get with Ken at the end (and I'm gay). It's like The Little Mermaid without Prince Eric, Winnie the Pooh without Piglet, Bert without Ernie. The whole point was that he loves her, but then she gives that bs of "you have to find yourself without me", and in top of it, then they don't even get legislative voice in the Barbieland legal system, it's a very disgusting kinda thing, and why's Allen the only guy not being a literal pos cuz sexist writting? Is Allen supposed to be the gay one? Cuz that feels pretty messed uo, what message are they sending, "the gay ones are good, but weak and easily controlled"?
Oppenheimer's infidelity in his marriage, and his marginalization of his wife's career to support his own aspirations also support this reading of his motivations, of his need to prove his masculinity. That said, i think it misses the mark to say Oppenheimer is seeking comfort in tradition. He flirts with radical leftist political ideology in firm repudiation of traditional power structures and values. He ultimately rejects communism because he is intelligent enough to see the contradictions (even if he supports many of the same causes), making him a bit of a noncomformist within the noncomformists. His interest in eastern philosophy is another example of him looking beyond his society's traditions. I also think its reductionist to boil down his desire to build the bomb to a masculinity. That may be part of it, but there's also a healthy amount of scientific curiosity. And anyone who's ever invested significant time in a project has a personal investment in seeing it completed, especially after dedicating years of one's life. Definitely an interesting reading of the movie though!
The understanding of Barbie was way off the mark. It pounts out men and women are reciprocally completing one by the other. It is Mary Harrington's " Reactionary Feminism". Women and men want and need each other for their innate sexuality and complementality.
One of the most unintentionally questionable elements of Barbie's gender essentialism is that, when you really break it down, this movie is AGGRESSIVELY heteronormative
But the Nazis weren't Fascists. The Japanese might be viewed as aligned with Fascism because the cult of martialism was seen as perhaps the core to their culture, a core that WAS their sense of themaelves..
Imagine being an anti woke idiot saying Guardians vol 3 was woke while not being able to detect Barbie as being woke. Even though Barbie was far more “woke” than say Guardians of the Galaxy vol 3
It's funny how this movie is being praised by feminists and hated by the male reviewers who have been suffering under a decade of the Mary Sue trash Hollywood has been regurgitating. Barbenheimer was a perfect sales pitch as both are high end psychological and philisophical movies. While Oppenheimer was a look into quantum physics and mutually assured destruction not just the obvious global implications but going to war with others careers, Barbie was a GENIUS quantum philisophical movie that completely 💩s on Feminism, woke culture, the alpha-self absorbed glamour women and jocks while most surprisingly, utterly 💩ing on Mattel itself. It also subliminally goes directly at CAA which in this movie Mattel represents, brilliantly likening the Entertainers "created" and "marketed" as nothing more than a product. And when one dares to try to leave their realm created for them and be a "normal human being", they hunt her down and try to re-box her. (think Brittany Spears) The only flaw was the 3rd act when they beat you over the head with the patriarchy having taken over Barbieland and how the Barbie's must "deprogram them" from an existence they don't seem to have a problem with. But this is acutally a clear indictment on feminism as well. In fact, near the very end of the movie, they straight out claim that patriarchy is just a made up thing to be basically a coping mechanism. Also, the "real world" is not really the real world as one can plainly see, but another indictment of feminism and how feminists constantly portray men that are supposed to be in the real world, in the movies they create. Over the top, female fiction. The exact end of the movie is also interesting as you see the mother clearly treating her husband EXACTLY how she was complaining about how men supposedly treat women; belittling them, talking down to them, etc. Another scathing indictment on feminists. And in the end, Barbie leaves to become a real woman... anti-woke direct attack here... a real woman who goes to see a gynecologist for the first time... because... SHE NOW HAS A VAGINA. She is a real woman. Absolutely brilliant work from Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach (who I had no clue who they were). But it caused me to immediately rent LADY BIRD which was another very good movie deeply psychological and philisophical. And I will pretty soon watch Frances Ha as well as Gerwig has truly impressed me. For me it is an 8 out of 10 and would have been a 9 if not for the bludgening tool they used in the third act regarding the patriarchy, even though it was a intended humiliation of the feminist concept. It did however echo some historical moments of Earth history of men being manipulated by their women to go to war against each other. Or say John The Baptist's death at the manipulating from Herodias and her daughter. Feminists complain about the historical patriarchy but never mention that many women held considerable power over their men through such manipulation.
Interesting video but I have to say, it seems like you really drink deeply of the misandry Kool-Aid. Two things occurred to me while watching your video. First, asking men to reject their innate masculinity, is sort of like asking birds not to fly. And second, morality, without God, is monstrosity.
My only problem with the Barbie movie is its feminism lol. It's the sort of shallow one that only focuses on the gender aspect of an individual without considering how class and race play a role in the social make-up of a person. This mainstream, non-intersectional feminism has been plaguing our society for the past decade and I think is the reason why so many people have a massive gripe with feminism in general. In their eyes, Barbie's feminism is the only type of feminism and because of how anti-men it appears, they refuse to really take into account and appreciate the massive strides that wider feminism has made in progressing our culture and improving women's lives. At the end of the movie, the Barbieocracy is reinstated and the Kens are relegated back to their original position of being mere accessories to the Barbies. This, in my opinion, even though it was only supposed to be a silly commentary on our Real World society, undermines the message of men being negatively impacted by the patriarchy and also why I think most anti-SJW types left the movie with a bad taste in their mouths. Had it handled its feminism with more deft and mindfulness, Barbie could've definitely made a much more massive impact on our culture and the way we think and discuss gender roles in society. (sorry if this appears to be incoherent. I'm still wrestling with my thoughts on Barbie and what to think of it and etc lol)
Why is masculinity considered the sin of Oppenheimer in this video? From my viewing, it looked more like the yearning to fit in with the status quo of “for America” rather than anything gendered. I feel like Pillar uses the term masculinity as a replacement for things like “tradition”, “pursuit of power”, and “status quo” in this video. Nothing Oppenheimer does that Pillar considers a fault has anything to do with him being male, so why use that term?I know he doesn’t think men are just like this naturally since the entire point of this op ed was to refute that, so why use this term referring to simply existing as male interchangeably with all these bad things? My opinion is, I think using these gendered terms is only harmful when you actually mean more abstract things that have nothing to do with gender. I’m taking Pillar’s advice and “not playing the game” of referring to non gendered ideas as gendered, and I think we and Pillar should do the same.
In the movie, Oppenheimer is shown to have multple mistresses, to be ready to ridiculize his friends, colleagues, and allies at any moment for his own gain, and his ego can't really let the project go when Germany lose the war. Those three things are generally seen as toxic masculinity traits. I think Pillar's analysis is quite interesting and, tbh, nails some idea that I've could not organize vis-a-vis the themes of/in Oppenheimer.
The crux of the reason is that exchange with Jean. An emotionally struggling Oppy tries to kill his professor, who he likes, after being humiliated in front of his peers (not a connection I make in the video, but consider the similarity here to America’s school shooter problem). The offered solution by Jean the psychoanalyst is ‘git sum’. He does, and this ‘solution’ is where the film gives us that famous bomb quote. Later sections of the film don’t ever spell out why Oppy chose to support the finishing/use of the bomb when many colleagues no longer do. It seems he doesn’t even know himself (something that _is_ spelled out for us). Considering the above, the way the film almost literally affixes Oppy’s identity as the bomb-detonator (i.e. I am become death…) to his manhood (i.e. penis), I think the masculinity angle I take here is an answer to that question, and an interpretation more widely, that the film endorses (at least partially). As for why I chose this topic to talk about in this video… it’s a Barbenheimer video, not an Oppenheimer video, and that’s (imo) the angle that dovetails best with Barbie’s themes. Feel free to disagree with my reading (or the importance I’ve ascribed to it) but I’m sure you can agree that the basic idea is largely supported by the film.
@@Drake5607 I understand that’s what those traits are seen as, but putting those under the blanket of the word “masculinity” suddenly stamps the idea that all of these traits are just what being a man is. I’m asking a simple question of why use that terminology when there are already better, non gendered terms that even your example used? (ego, unfaithful cheating, self-interest)
@@norsehorse84 It's not "masculinity" it's "toxic masculinity"... Both words, together, it's kinda of important. Society push those "ideals" on men (not really on women); that's a problem (for both men and women)!
@@PillarofGarbage I’m not refuting the ideas you mention, at least abstractly, aren’t in the film. I’m only wondering why you tied these ideas to a gendered premise when these are negative traits that everyone can show. If the only reason you brought gendered terms is to tie it with Barbie, then I think either you should’ve went more abstract and talked about status quo and the need to fit in over simply calling all the negative traits “masculinity”, or the tie in with Barbie and Oppenheimer was manufactured by you essentially putting a square peg of Barbie’s more gendered themes in the round hole of Oppenheimer’s generally non gendered themes. Either way, it looks like you’re trying to play the gender game by the rules of society (I.e. this particular trait is seen as a masculine trait, therefore I too will call it masculine instead of what it actually is) rather than breaking away from this terminology like you claim we should at the end.
Alden Ehrenreich was wrong. Oppenheimer and Einstein _were_ in fact talking about becoming Pillar of Garbage Patreon supporters! Join them (and get cool perks) here: www.patreon.com/pillarofgarbage
alexander avila has a good video about the marxism in a barbie media on his channel,els good too,but a barbie politics video?
Remember, Einstein quipped that they won't do it for you, but for themselves 😊.
I really disagree with the idea that the atomization of the individual is a good thing, or that narratives fictional or otherwise which base empowerment apparently on the subjugation of the other Ken be anything but negative.
The idea that Barbie can be whatever she wants to does not seem like one that should be dependent upon the kens being relegated to second class citizens even from a fictional standpoint unless the argument is that the one group could only prosper by the others misery.
Don’t do the double feature and get drunk inbetween movies now I’m just drunk and sad about how much life sucks under the patriarchy
real as heck
Thank you for your sacrifice 🫡
I know for people drinking history.
Haven't seen Oppenheimer yet (have tickets for a 70mm showing this coming Friday), but my wife and I saw Barbie last night and had such an amazing time. It was weird reading reviews after seeing the film because a lot of the audience on IMDB did seem to think the movie was a little too unkind to men. But I picked up the same thing from it you did--it's actually very kind to men. It's sympathetic to the fact that we are also suckered in and harmed by patriarchy. And it tells us that we can change and that we are still deserving of forgiveness and love once we do. I actually found it quite empowering.
The only thing that I felt was missing was some small acknowledgement that little boys can also like and play with barbies too. The film is great but also very binary. Perhaps it had to be though, or the message would be muddied (and too many people already can’t seem to grasp the nuance 🙄).
yeah seen it for the second time yesterday and I loved it even more. After my first watch and then seeing all the criticisim, in the second viewing i was on the look out for all the stuff they were complaining about and I just didnt find it. The fact that even in the matriachy of barbie world there was a mistreatment of kens (at least the main ken) purely from neglect. Which i think was a really good emotional arc, almost showing boys that and everyone that your feelings are actually valid, actually communicating their emotions and seeing eachothers state of mind as purely valid was the big fix to the big problem that plauged ken and plagues most guys. yeah some things are a bit on the nose and tahts okay, its barbie, it was never meant to be as naunce in its represenatiotn as oppenheimer.
I cannot decide if it’s more appropriate to comment “it’s barben time” or “it’s oppen time”. The true artists dilemma.
🫂
My favorite part was when they said it’s Oppenbarbing time and they Oppenbarbed all over the place
Oppa Barben Style
It’s barbben time?
So dissapointed you didn't say oppentimer
I think the real important message of Barbie is that it doesn't matter what clothes you dress Ryan Gosling in, he will pull off that look.
“Ken” is the only reason I would watch this, and this is coming from a doll (females) collector
I think the Ken's can't be equal in the end of the film because ultimately they are just toys that reflect the real world, and they only exist serve a specific purpose for the real world. In the real world, women still need something like Barbie to serve as inspirations for young girls. If Ken's were even just equal to Barbie, then that still diminishes the importance of Barbie and the reason for their existence. Men don't really need Ken's in the real world like how women need Barbie. Men already have other toys. So Ken's shouldn't and couldn't get equal rights. Unfortunately in their imaginary Barbieland they just have to be secondary. That's how I interpret it at least.
It was highlighted by the Supreme Court joke.
Kens will become Supreme Court justices, but only in inverse proportion to reality. It's really funny but also somewhat bleak with that larger context.
@@BomberTM A necessary injustice I guess.
This is true, but the reason is to serve as a tragic mirror of our real world where patriarchy is just "normal" in a large swathe of the world. Women "shouldn't and couldn't get equal rights" is the barely surpressed opinion of many a man I've talked to as soon as feminism is being discussed. Oh, of course equality is important to them, but then again they think women are well off and equal enough in the west, so feminism is not needed or somehow actively harmful.
I think Barbie makes a really good point, but one might need to understand the point of feminism to get it, which is why so many are unclear about it in the movie.
There’s also the fact that the Barbocracy _wasn’t_ considered good and right. It’s established that the way Kens were viewed was bad and they explicitly refuse to return to the status quo, even if we don’t get the magical instant equality some people wish we did.
What a time to be alive. Kens' shouldn't and couldn't get equal rights and I'm convinced.
This honestly might be one of your all-time best essays. The insightful cross-pollination of themes and ideas between these two films is surprising yet clear, and I love your final point about looking for this same level of interplay between all SORTS of different things, the better to illuminate and understand each of them individually. Well done!
Thanks so much!
This is almost word-for-word what I came here to say. Very excellent and insightful video
This was the Barbenheimer analysis I'd been looking for, every other video I'd seen talked about which was better instead of using the opportunity to dig into how they can relate to one another.
"I hope you are become happy viewer, liker of video" is the only "like this vid" call to action that I have ever immediately and consciously chosen to follow. Had me howling, nice work.
Oppenheimer is about how ideas destroy their creator, Barbie is about ideas becoming their creator.
This. Perfectly put.
That’s amazing.
Well said.
Barbie apologizes to Ken at the end and recognizes that she did not regard him highly enough. It wasn't either women are in charge or men are in charge. Barbie land simply showed us what a complete gender/ power reversal would look like, but by the end of the film shows us some of the shortcomings of that world, regardless of which gender holds the power. We see so many people calling it "man-hating" when, in fact, it's only showing us how women are treated in reality and that it is problematic (which is too uncomfortable for many).
Agree. Barbie actually apologizes to Ken for treating him like an accessory. How many thousands of movies have shown men treating women like accessories, and never even thinking about apologizing? We applaud them as heroes as they ignore/mistreat/belittle/objectify women left and right. It never even occurs to the hero that there's anything wrong with his behavior. Of course this happens in the real world too. Any guy who thinks Barbie is man-bashing must be blind to the reality of man-woman dynamics the movie is inverting.
@@aravindr740 have we had a women president? Even one?
@@cicihoustonsudholt1452 Not in America, but we've had multiple women prime ministers.
@jakubrejak1114 OK. Not in America. We are severely lacking in women in leadership positions. Also, having "several" women in these roles usually means they occupy a very small percentage of these positions, which is far from equal, let alone having the advantage.
@@cicihoustonsudholt1452 Well, of course. I'm simply saying in some places progress has been made.
I've seen people, who are likely just skeptical of everything, who are saying that "Barbenheimer" was manufactured by the studios, and I think that may be more insane than any conspiracy theory I've ever heard. No marketing team could create this. Don Draper and Peggy Olson fusing and going Super Sayan wouldn't have the advertising power level to create "Barbenheimer."
Everything about Barbenheimer feels like an echo of March 2020 when Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing dropped on the same day. Two completely totally different properties, dropping on the same day, marketing themselves very differently, built to create very different feelings and experiences for the audience. And both were massively successful, ended up having mutual fans of both properties, and then came the immediate flood of memes and family art combining the properties in an organic viral fad that is the stuff that marketing teams dream of.
And people back then thought it was totally manufactured as well.
The best part about all of this is that releasing Barbie on the same day was actually supposed to hurt Oppenheimer’s box office, at least from what I hear. After Christopher Nolan left Warner Bros., they intentionally scheduled the release of Barbie to be on the same day as a “screw you”. Unfortunately, this ended up creating the best possible advertising campaign Oppenheimer could have received, especially when Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie posed with tickets for it.
@@samuelbarber6177 yeah, it's kind of stupid, because which fan of Oppenheimer would normally watch barbie and vice versa, so linking the two just asked for it
@@minestar2247 ah, you’d be surprised. After all, they are both major releases by acclaimed directors.
I bet $1000 we actually do get a studio trying to intentionally manufacture something like this only for it to crash and burn, or at least not catch on *nearly* as much as barbenheimer or doom crossing did
Honestly I'm surprised how successful Oppenheimer is. I didn't expect a biography/historical film to be such a box office success.
Nolan + Murphy clear ig
@PillarofGarbage I think that it helps that Oppenheimer is a legitimately interesting and conflicting figure in history. His personal life, his feeling and motivations (before, during, and after the Manhattan Project), and how he handles all this are messy and contradictory at times. He may not have been a household name, but he, and his complexity, were know enough that word of mouth _before_ the movie was able to combine with the Nolan and Murphy effects to really pull out all the stops.
As I type this, it shows another parallel to Barbie in that way. She well know and polarizing enough of a figure to make for an interesting movie, but not a substantial one. Then throw in the draw of what Gerwig, Robbie, and Gosling could all add. Another unexpected but understandable wining combination.
I think that's because it's not a "written by the Estate"-"look at how great this person was and revel in their glory" kind of biographical movie.
There are multiple reasons but the brand name recognition of Christopher Nolan along with the exclusive IMAX 70mm showings of it that doesn't come all that often also played a quite significant role in Oppenheimer becoming a box office success. In fact, Oppenheimer probably benefitted the most from the Barbenheimer phenomenon because you had a lot of people who wouldn't normally take a chance on a Christopher Nolan film and it's cryptic nonlinear storytelling without it be wrapped into the double feature with Barbie.
@@ajiththomas2465 I detinitely agree that it beneffited the most. Barbie was already on track to do well, especially given the fun vibe it gave off (even if it had a lot if messages going on and an unsatisfying end to me).
I still can't believe Nolan made a 3hr movie about how Ben Affleck was created. Affleck is indeed the bomb.
But Casey is in the movie. Casey came before Ben?
Fantoms like a mofo, dude above me didnt get the jay and silent bob strike back ref clearly
And both attack American ideological supremacy. Consumerism and how we entwine it with "radicalism" and raw American power and our psychosis around it.
The Oppenheimer interpretation is funny given that in the movie after being humiliated by Oppenheimer and the rest of the scientists, Edward Teller makes an even bigger bomb.
I got a kick out of how the only time a male in Barbieland shows any competence is when Alan, the only man who has rejected toxic masculinity, kicks the ass of a dozen Kens. Not sure how he was able to do that, but i thought it really highlighted how the Kens are turning to the shallow trappings of masculinity for validation in the face of their own inadequacy
Barbie is for me about not needing to be greater or an ideal, but at least to be human and flawed. Oppenheimer also learns this lesson, even if too late so stop the bomb or save his face, having a very human reaction to the arms race.
After doing my own barbie->oppenheimer double feature I brought this up in the women's restroom. I felt like there was a lot of commentary on the patriarchy itself in Oppenheimer, the insidious lure of "legacy", and the way oppenheimer himself viewed the supporting people in his life with a shallow interest. This was a fantastic essay!
I haven't seen Oppenheimer, but I just saw Barbie. It was so good! It was creative, funny, clever, gorgeous, and all around great! It's currently my third favorite movie of the year, only behind Beau Is Afraid and Fool's Paradise.
I liked both films, but who'd have guessed that a movie about a Barbie doll would be more political than the story of the man who invented the atomic bomb?
I would argue Barbie is more social then political. It usually gets political through interpretation and criticism though
@@joshuacampbell1625 The pr and what the hell with the virtnam , taiwan and their conflict with china makes it mor political i think .
Barbie itself was a socio-political icon
@@joshuacampbell1625 Most of the time when people talk about "politics in movies" they're actually talking about social commentary or just themes.
Welp, that's the internet for ya!
They say he felt guilty for the rest of his life but the United States government was like that's your problem.
Really enjoyed this. Intertext is one of my favourite things and I do like how reading them together patches up some of the issues I had with Barbie's feminism (I like the sum up here of Barbieland as a sort of examination of how patriarchy and misogyny get internalised, I have some issues with what I see as some confused theory and a very individualist view of liberation that doesn't seem to go anywhere at the end, but I think setting internalisation as the thing it's looking at works well with these, as it makes Barbie's process a story about decolonising her mind). I'll admit I haven't got around to Oppenheimer, yet, but I generally enjoyed Barbie. I'm just a bit of a theory nerd and have a hard time turning off the 'No you don't understand, x actually plays into patriarchy' part of my brain.
Always good to get an endorsement from a theory nerd!
On the surface it looks like Barbie is a movie about gender and Oppenheimer is not, but this is actually a great example of how deeply woven these social ideas like gender are into everything, and it's just invisible when it blends in with what you have been taught to expect.
What a video!!!!!! I'm never gonna forget this one, tooo good👏🏽👏🏽🔥👏🏽🔥👏🏽🔥👏🏽🔥👏🏽🔥👏🏽
These movies might as well have been a joint DVD release the way nobody mentions one without the other 🥴
I find it interesting that the three most talked about movies right now are Barbie Oppenheimer and sounds of freedom, and regardless of your opinion about them all, I find it interesting that they all sort of have the same theme at their root: awful powerful men and the awful women that support them are awful and we should all do something about it.
Actually, they are trying NOT
to talk about Sound Of Freedom.
I haven't seen either of them yet (waiting until the theaters will be less crowded) but I'm really excited to watch both, and this video afterward!
Don’t have anything to add - just thought this was a fantastic video and I’m definitely subscribing!
Thank you, glad you enjoyed!
I don't always agree with your analysis or conclusions (not referring to this video in particular, I've just never commented before...) But i don't think anyone could accuse you of not having well thought out and well articulated ideas.
Exactly the phenomenon analysis I was hoping for. Thank you.
everyone is going to try and replicate this movement. I just hope they do it under themes.
Got to be the first time in history that anyone has said the word Barbie and Foucault o in the same.
Crazy to think that both movies are making huge successes in the box office and finically during the Hollywood strike and Hollywood itself is shut down due to the strike with both the writers and actors guild.
And it’s crazy to think that both movies are outperforming other blockbuster tent poles like Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible. Heck, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 made only about 850 million in its entire run and Barbie has made almost that in under two weeks.
Okay, Oppenheimer hasn’t yet outperformed Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, but the fact that they’re even in the same league (a far greater success for Oppenheimer given its smaller budget) is real impressive.
🔥Reading one with the other can illuminate both. 🔥
Overall good analysis, but something of a nitpick - the Barbies are not rendered subservient by exposure to the contradictory feminine under patriarchy, but by exposure _to patriarchy_ itself. The Barbies and Kens react differently to exposure to the real world because the specific model of patriarchy was imported, and under patriarchy men and women are expected to react differently.
It was enlightenment to the contradictory nature of femininity under patriarchy that _freed_ the Barbies from the brainwashing, as bringing attention to the cognitive dissonance jarred them from the hypnotic state.
I think our disagreement is a grammatical one. The quote is, 'By giving voice to the cognitive dissonance required to be a woman under the patriarchy, you robbed it of its power!'
I think you're taking the 'it' whose power is robbed to be patriarchy, while I'm taking 'it' to be that cognitive dissonance itself. In my interpretation, that cognitive dissonance (while undoubtedly an _aspect_ of patriarchy) is the immediate cause of the Barbies' subservience, and the removal of its power through this voicing is what awakens them.
I don't think there's a _right_ answer here, mind, just that we're seeing the film slightly differently as a result of this sentence's unclear construction.
@@PillarofGarbage That interpretation does make sense, especially since the Barbies still needed to carry out their plan to regain their political power from the patriarchy.
Treating it as a component of the patriarchy I think satisfies my original comment, too, making exposure to the dissonance a more specific but not different thing from exposure to the patriarchy. And then bringing it from subconscious to conscious undermined that particular component.
Thanks for the response. :)
Great video, any chance of some further dives into these films?
it’s looking likely I’ll be releasing another Barbie video (of sorts)
Perhaps one looking more into the discourse around the film
A top quality and thought provoking analysis.
I hadn't thought about how the Kens taking over Barbieland is like patriarchy encroaching on childhood imagination. Dang, that makes the whole movie feel different to me. I really want to go and watch these films again and view them through the lens of masculinity just to see where it leads me.
There are men and horses in both movies, but I prefer Oppenheimer.😊
I think its so interesting that barbieland funktions as a mirror to the real world. Girls will only play with barbies in a gender neutral way once society treats girls in a gender neutral way, and so barbieland reflexts those experiences. At least that's my interpretation and i think that's a cool metatextual thing
This was such a good reflection
So we went full Doom Crossing those movies, didn't we?
Yep
I feel like we should definitely thank Meme pages on helping spread the existence of these movies fr. It was just free marketing at that point
Not sure what to say beyond “excellently put”.
Thank you!
I wonder if Ben Shapiro still has any water inside of his because that was an awful lot of tears.
no one in the Shapiro family has any bodily moisture
@@PillarofGarbage Dr Mrs Shapiro dryer than a nuclear detonation vict- ok i probably shouldn't make that joke
I dunno, he is more fragile than a sculpture made of water. And I don’t mean of ice, I mean actual water.
The artistic-cultural movement you talk about in 5:58 (Picasso, etc) isn't modernism. Modernism equals to art nouveau (1890s-1920s) . The movement you describe is avanguarde (inside you hace surrealism, cubism, expressionism, futurism) and is set in 1930s-1940s. Maybe in USA is called modernism and is a kind of cultural shock. In Spain, specially in Catalonia Art Nouveau (which yes, it is a term quite stated in Europe) is literally translated as Modernism and in the rest of Europe too is quite set the term Avanguarde to the arts and the culture shift in the final 1920's-1930's..
It annoys when people say "intentionality" when they mean "intention." They use it as a pretentious way to say an ordinary thing; meanwhile the actual meaning of the word "intentionality" is very different.
3:23 you’re forgetting that at the end of the movie they addresses the imbalance by saying it was unfair of them to not allow the Kens to contribute more to society in Barbieland and they give them positions of power and encourage the Kens to be their own men. That imbalance of power was necessary to the plot as it facilitated Ken’s takeover, but also is a reflection of how women once existed in the world, and how we had to fight for power. It’s kinda the whole point of the movie…
Doesn't that voiceover end by saying something along the lines of 'maybe eventually the Kens will even reach the level of power women hold in _our_ world'? If so, it doesn't really seem like true equality is on the cards.
@PillarofGarbage We live in a world where up to about 100 years most women had one role in society. Our toys reflected that. Ruth Handler said no more. The world mostly caters to men. Even the way medicine is made, for example.
Even though "We mothers stand still so that our daughters can look back and see how far they've come." There ia still a lot road.
The Kens will have true equality in Barbieland when women have true equality in the real world.
But hey, stereotypical Barbie was created to have no end, so was Ken.
Do you think Barbie got so many career because Mattel came up with the idea? There was probably a lot research done and a lot little girls and women who dressed stereotypical Barbie into all those things.
Buy yourself a Ken doll and dress it into what you want to become.
@@clarapilier matriarchys exist now in places on earth ~ also they existed in ancient tymes when men did not understand how babys were made as in their role in that ~ once they did they pulled women off the magic birth pedestal & subjugated them ~
I believe it to be kind to show men these movies though I believe an alternative must be given which really hasn't been shown
To be fair the government probably wouldn’t have just let him stop the project even if he wanted to.
Oppy could have walked out, or joined with the voices recommending it’s use, etc.
But yeah, from our perspective, either way the bomb’s getting finished (and dropped).
From the atomic bomb made by Oppenheimer, Godzilla the King of Monsters was born.
Yes, and the giant ants from Them! and so many other movie mutants. Oppenheimer actually gave birth to the creature feature.
I didn't get a chance to see the double feature due to traveling :( I'm sad
One of the most interesting deeper takes on Barbenheimer that I’ve seen. A couple of notes: Oppenheimer is a dramatization of REAL historically, globally, existentially significant events; it is NOT an abstract fictional exploration of ‘ideas.’ All of the characters were REAL; its geopolitics were REAL; its sexual politics were REAL. And they all have relevance to the way things actually are today. The pivotal feature of the US-Saudi relationship to Iran is nuclear containment of Iran.India and Pakistan, mortal enemies with an intractable religious and border dispute both have nukes. North Korea routinely launches missiles over Japan to demonstrate its nuclear reach. Putin has invaded Ukraine and threatened nuclear war in face of the West’s fighting back. Because of how the USSR collapsed into Russia, there is the threat of a nuclear dirty bomb anywhere anytime. The last lines of the film are about how Oppenheimer and FDR’s Manhattan Project did IN FACT unleash a metaphorical chain reaction, aspects of which are described above. In your analysis, you have focused on real-ity to the exclusion of the REAL. Perhaps you were led there by Barbie because Barbie is a film that deals only in real-ity, with not a single thought to the real. But, to do a truly meaningful analysis of the two films together, one has to start from the frame of the REAL.
One thing about the world of Barbie really confused me. So apparently, according to the movie, the world of Barbieland is based on the idea of Barbie, with BL and the real world interconnected in some way. So does that mean that every single idea in the world of the film has their own universe? Not just Toy Brands, but like...basic everyday ideas? Is there like a microwave world, a lightbulb world, or whatnot? And if not, and Barbie is the only thing like this, why? What makes Barbie so special as to be the only idea with its own world? Maybe I'm overthinking this, but it's still an interesting question I haven't seen anyone else bring up.
Thanks!
Beautiful video 🥲👏
Thanks for the video
To bad it made Japan uncomfortable. I'm being serious.
A bit unrelated, but I adore that thumbnail
There's no debate - Barbie first. It's Barbenheimer not Oppenarbie
This was my order but I’ve since realised Opp>Barb would have been the better watch order!
@@PillarofGarbagelol fair enough, I just did not want to sit through a 3 hour movie THEN another. Felt better to do 2 hours then 3
Oppenheimer shows how to destroy a world.
Barbie shows how to build a world.
No wonder the cast loved eachothers works ❤
Well
Done
Sir!
It's official, marketing department's have weaponized meme culture... again..
98% of original TH-cam "content" is amateurish garbage. This is not. Highly enjoyable and thought provoking. Thank you!
solid vid
The Barbocracy is good because of the Barbiturates?
As for Oppenheimer, fascism is not merely nor primarily the return to tradition. It is reaction to working class revolution. Oppenheimer is explicit on this: its a movie that exposes working class organization and communism, and how they interacted with the avant garde in the arts, and with the new physics. But of course: in a Western world without revolution, and therefore with war, imperialism is there to take over the new physics. No matter what Oppenheimer or anyone else thinks, a nuclear bomb will be detonated, and it will necessarily start a new arms race. Reducing this to "masculinity" is to lack an understanding of the impersonal oppressions of imperialism due to the mute compulsion of capital.
I’m not claiming the things discussed in this video make up all or most of the fascist mindset - merely that they are aspects of it.
Barbenheimer is the same as Oppenheimer except the bombs are pink. Or was it Ken had competition from a dude named Robert who wants to drop a bomb on Japanese toy makers.
I like realistic/not realistic cool things.
letsgoooo
Ah yes Barbeinheimer was the first movies I had seen in the cinema in a long time. I have to admit even if I enjoyed both movies I liked Oppenheimer most. Barbie was a fun film but they really hit us over the head whit the message in the third act. and I am not sure I approve of flipping the gender roles why not have equality Barbie president Barbie doctors/judges but also Ken doctors and in other important roles. Equality
I think the Ken's continued inequality at the end of Barbie is part of the point. This newly "enlightened" society went from being a total matriarchy . . . to a mainly matriarchy with some male representation. One of the final lines of the film is, "And finally, the Kens had *almost* as many rights as the women in our world have." It's poking fun at the fact that our society likes to push people from asking for more, "Look how far we've come," "It was worse XX years ago," "What do you want *more* rights than *us*?" completely ignoring the continued disparity between genders.
It's not about Barbieland Good Kendom Bad, it's they're both deeply flawed and letting go of what we're used to isn't as easy as becoming "enlightened" to what [insert gender] goes through. It's only until we acknowledge each other's struggle with empathy--but also acknowledge that there *is* still a power imbalance--that we can actually fix shit.
One parallel between Barbie and Oppenheimer I realized, is that both movies are about objects that impacted the world in some way.
The Barbie movie is a subtle critique of values made without empathy or introspection and their inherent danger and value while also the ken subplot acts as the empathetic situational straw man for men to place themselves in female shoes. Ken isn't a male empowering roll, he serves as a stand in for someone to understand the dangers of the oppressed attempting to fix their oppression with what they have known: oppression. Reversing the roles here does give some understanding to the core message but denies the core message that the roles themselves are made up. All in all the barbie movie In my opinion was a cinematic success in terms of themes and narrative. When I see ken trying to create a benign patriarchy in response to a semi benign yet oppressive Matriarchy I think of my sister being told she couldn't get approved for a truck by a dude who was summarily fired from his dealership. Trucks and society are unisex and the answer to oppression should be stopping oppression. Also Ken wearing a woman's coat is like Rosey the riveter wearing Overalls and it's hella kickass. Oppenheimer was mid, I already know I'd enable nuclear war to prove I'm masculine,
Him quoting that, "Now I am become death..." is apparantly merely myth, though it's definitely more poetic than the truth.
EDIT: When the bomb goes off successfully, I should have specified.
There is a recording of Oppenheimer giving a speech about the Trinity test and he says it
The myth is that he coined it, not that he said it. It's attributed to him even though he was quoting.
@@MisBabbleshe translated it from the Sanskrit sacred scripture. It's his own translation.
I should have specified that he didn't say it when the bomb went off. My bad.
@@SIZModig he said he thought it but not said it aloud. It was in a 1965 interview.
Barbie was hypocritical though, because Barbie didn't get with Ken at the end (and I'm gay). It's like The Little Mermaid without Prince Eric, Winnie the Pooh without Piglet, Bert without Ernie. The whole point was that he loves her, but then she gives that bs of "you have to find yourself without me", and in top of it, then they don't even get legislative voice in the Barbieland legal system, it's a very disgusting kinda thing, and why's Allen the only guy not being a literal pos cuz sexist writting? Is Allen supposed to be the gay one? Cuz that feels pretty messed uo, what message are they sending, "the gay ones are good, but weak and easily controlled"?
Oppenheimer's infidelity in his marriage, and his marginalization of his wife's career to support his own aspirations also support this reading of his motivations, of his need to prove his masculinity. That said, i think it misses the mark to say Oppenheimer is seeking comfort in tradition. He flirts with radical leftist political ideology in firm repudiation of traditional power structures and values. He ultimately rejects communism because he is intelligent enough to see the contradictions (even if he supports many of the same causes), making him a bit of a noncomformist within the noncomformists. His interest in eastern philosophy is another example of him looking beyond his society's traditions.
I also think its reductionist to boil down his desire to build the bomb to a masculinity. That may be part of it, but there's also a healthy amount of scientific curiosity. And anyone who's ever invested significant time in a project has a personal investment in seeing it completed, especially after dedicating years of one's life. Definitely an interesting reading of the movie though!
Me not writeing ok is modernist?
Behol, I have become communism, destroyer of minds and humanity.
15:40
I believe Barbie Isnt very realistic to the actual barbie like they never showed when ken Left barbie and was gay in the 80s
The understanding of Barbie was way off the mark. It pounts out men and women are reciprocally completing one by the other. It is Mary Harrington's " Reactionary Feminism".
Women and men want and need each other for their innate sexuality and complementality.
One of the most unintentionally questionable elements of Barbie's gender essentialism is that, when you really break it down, this movie is AGGRESSIVELY heteronormative
But the Nazis weren't Fascists. The Japanese might be viewed as aligned with Fascism because the cult of martialism was seen as perhaps the core to their culture, a core that WAS their sense of themaelves..
I'm Nazi-ing any of these movies.
I thought before watching Barbienheimmer that the common figure of these two movies was Marie Curie. I still stand for my point
Imagine being an anti woke idiot saying Guardians vol 3 was woke while not being able to detect Barbie as being woke. Even though Barbie was far more “woke” than say Guardians of the Galaxy vol 3
It's funny how this movie is being praised by feminists and hated by the male reviewers who have been suffering under a decade of the Mary Sue trash Hollywood has been regurgitating.
Barbenheimer was a perfect sales pitch as both are high end psychological and philisophical movies. While Oppenheimer was a look into quantum physics and mutually assured destruction not just the obvious global implications but going to war with others careers, Barbie was a GENIUS quantum philisophical movie that completely 💩s on Feminism, woke culture, the alpha-self absorbed glamour women and jocks while most surprisingly, utterly 💩ing on Mattel itself. It also subliminally goes directly at CAA which in this movie Mattel represents, brilliantly likening the Entertainers "created" and "marketed" as nothing more than a product. And when one dares to try to leave their realm created for them and be a "normal human being", they hunt her down and try to re-box her. (think Brittany Spears) The only flaw was the 3rd act when they beat you over the head with the patriarchy having taken over Barbieland and how the Barbie's must "deprogram them" from an existence they don't seem to have a problem with. But this is acutally a clear indictment on feminism as well. In fact, near the very end of the movie, they straight out claim that patriarchy is just a made up thing to be basically a coping mechanism. Also, the "real world" is not really the real world as one can plainly see, but another indictment of feminism and how feminists constantly portray men that are supposed to be in the real world, in the movies they create. Over the top, female fiction.
The exact end of the movie is also interesting as you see the mother clearly treating her husband EXACTLY how she was complaining about how men supposedly treat women; belittling them, talking down to them, etc. Another scathing indictment on feminists. And in the end, Barbie leaves to become a real woman... anti-woke direct attack here... a real woman who goes to see a gynecologist for the first time... because... SHE NOW HAS A VAGINA. She is a real woman. Absolutely brilliant work from Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach (who I had no clue who they were). But it caused me to immediately rent LADY BIRD which was another very good movie deeply psychological and philisophical. And I will pretty soon watch Frances Ha as well as Gerwig has truly impressed me. For me it is an 8 out of 10 and would have been a 9 if not for the bludgening tool they used in the third act regarding the patriarchy, even though it was a intended humiliation of the feminist concept. It did however echo some historical moments of Earth history of men being manipulated by their women to go to war against each other. Or say John The Baptist's death at the manipulating from Herodias and her daughter. Feminists complain about the historical patriarchy but never mention that many women held considerable power over their men through such manipulation.
Interesting video but I have to say, it seems like you really drink deeply of the misandry Kool-Aid. Two things occurred to me while watching your video. First, asking men to reject their innate masculinity, is sort of like asking birds not to fly. And second, morality, without God, is monstrosity.
What's that last bit supposed to mean?
My only problem with the Barbie movie is its feminism lol. It's the sort of shallow one that only focuses on the gender aspect of an individual without considering how class and race play a role in the social make-up of a person. This mainstream, non-intersectional feminism has been plaguing our society for the past decade and I think is the reason why so many people have a massive gripe with feminism in general. In their eyes, Barbie's feminism is the only type of feminism and because of how anti-men it appears, they refuse to really take into account and appreciate the massive strides that wider feminism has made in progressing our culture and improving women's lives.
At the end of the movie, the Barbieocracy is reinstated and the Kens are relegated back to their original position of being mere accessories to the Barbies. This, in my opinion, even though it was only supposed to be a silly commentary on our Real World society, undermines the message of men being negatively impacted by the patriarchy and also why I think most anti-SJW types left the movie with a bad taste in their mouths. Had it handled its feminism with more deft and mindfulness, Barbie could've definitely made a much more massive impact on our culture and the way we think and discuss gender roles in society.
(sorry if this appears to be incoherent. I'm still wrestling with my thoughts on Barbie and what to think of it and etc lol)
I don't get how a man can watch that movie and not be offended
I know, right? Oppenheimer really hates the bros.
Why is masculinity considered the sin of Oppenheimer in this video? From my viewing, it looked more like the yearning to fit in with the status quo of “for America” rather than anything gendered.
I feel like Pillar uses the term masculinity as a replacement for things like “tradition”, “pursuit of power”, and “status quo” in this video. Nothing Oppenheimer does that Pillar considers a fault has anything to do with him being male, so why use that term?I know he doesn’t think men are just like this naturally since the entire point of this op ed was to refute that, so why use this term referring to simply existing as male interchangeably with all these bad things?
My opinion is, I think using these gendered terms is only harmful when you actually mean more abstract things that have nothing to do with gender. I’m taking Pillar’s advice and “not playing the game” of referring to non gendered ideas as gendered, and I think we and Pillar should do the same.
In the movie, Oppenheimer is shown to have multple mistresses, to be ready to ridiculize his friends, colleagues, and allies at any moment for his own gain, and his ego can't really let the project go when Germany lose the war.
Those three things are generally seen as toxic masculinity traits. I think Pillar's analysis is quite interesting and, tbh, nails some idea that I've could not organize vis-a-vis the themes of/in Oppenheimer.
The crux of the reason is that exchange with Jean. An emotionally struggling Oppy tries to kill his professor, who he likes, after being humiliated in front of his peers (not a connection I make in the video, but consider the similarity here to America’s school shooter problem). The offered solution by Jean the psychoanalyst is ‘git sum’. He does, and this ‘solution’ is where the film gives us that famous bomb quote.
Later sections of the film don’t ever spell out why Oppy chose to support the finishing/use of the bomb when many colleagues no longer do. It seems he doesn’t even know himself (something that _is_ spelled out for us). Considering the above, the way the film almost literally affixes Oppy’s identity as the bomb-detonator (i.e. I am become death…) to his manhood (i.e. penis), I think the masculinity angle I take here is an answer to that question, and an interpretation more widely, that the film endorses (at least partially).
As for why I chose this topic to talk about in this video… it’s a Barbenheimer video, not an Oppenheimer video, and that’s (imo) the angle that dovetails best with Barbie’s themes.
Feel free to disagree with my reading (or the importance I’ve ascribed to it) but I’m sure you can agree that the basic idea is largely supported by the film.
@@Drake5607 I understand that’s what those traits are seen as, but putting those under the blanket of the word “masculinity” suddenly stamps the idea that all of these traits are just what being a man is. I’m asking a simple question of why use that terminology when there are already better, non gendered terms that even your example used? (ego, unfaithful cheating, self-interest)
@@norsehorse84 It's not "masculinity" it's "toxic masculinity"... Both words, together, it's kinda of important.
Society push those "ideals" on men (not really on women); that's a problem (for both men and women)!
@@PillarofGarbage I’m not refuting the ideas you mention, at least abstractly, aren’t in the film. I’m only wondering why you tied these ideas to a gendered premise when these are negative traits that everyone can show.
If the only reason you brought gendered terms is to tie it with Barbie, then I think either you should’ve went more abstract and talked about status quo and the need to fit in over simply calling all the negative traits “masculinity”, or the tie in with Barbie and Oppenheimer was manufactured by you essentially putting a square peg of Barbie’s more gendered themes in the round hole of Oppenheimer’s generally non gendered themes.
Either way, it looks like you’re trying to play the gender game by the rules of society (I.e. this particular trait is seen as a masculine trait, therefore I too will call it masculine instead of what it actually is) rather than breaking away from this terminology like you claim we should at the end.
this video is boring!
You've gotta be the only person who will think that!!
I agree with you.
I just hope nolan never does a sex scene again