you hate alice . No i dont. yeah . u despise her u complain constantly about how vapid and annoying she is. You hate her. it’s pitiful , how u wont stop making fun of her stupid little podcast. Let Her Have The Podcast. i don’t know what ur talking about. U hate listen. To her podcast. wait…. what???? and u made a swear on our lives not to tell anyone. Jordan is that true??? i like your podcast alice :) what is ur podcast about ? hanging out with your smartest and funniest friend . (jordan groans) Did you just…. Groan??? no. when i said “hanging out with your smartest and funniest friend” 🙄 oh my god LIKE THAT. LIKE thAT Fuck! YOU JUST DID IT AGAIN. NO I DIDNT. First of all, A PODCAST TAKES A LOT OF WORK OK . you have to organize the guests u have to do a google calendar and and and you Build a following IT TAKES A LONG FUCKING TIME .AND IVE BEEN WORKING ON IT FOR A WHILE OKAY . and then… let me say THAT NOBODYLIKESYOU. OKAY. NOOOOOOOOOBODY LIKES YOU NOBODY LIKES YOU do you know when ur drunk and u cry to me “Ohhhh im afraid nobody likes me coz im mean and a bitch and i suck!” well you do OKAY you fucking Suckk and i only hang out with u out of pity and the suffocating weight of our shared history And That is all… ANDDDDD youre just sooooo in love with your RAGS to riches narrative like ur the only fucking person in the world who didnt come from money , You know what??? Ur parents. are Upper. Middle. Class. no theyre not. jordan…. they are. They teach. at a university. it’s public . Oh… my god OH MY GOD i mean. no wonder sophie od’d… Who could date a fucking Spreadsheet with a superiority complex . its like. you’re such a BI- (GUNSHOT) OWW. What the fuck??? what the Fuck jordan??? oh my god ARE U SERIOUS?? Did u just fuckinf shoot me??? No. U FUCKJGN SHOT MEEE . WITH A GUNNNNN!!!!! No i didnt shoot u :( YOU FUCKING MURDERED THEM U FREAK . UR THE MURDERERRRRRRRR I KNEW JT I KNEW IT . YOURESUCH A BITCH UR SUCH A FUCKING BITCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i didnt murder anybody:( YES YOU DID. JORDAN put the gun down IVE NEVER BEEN SHOT BEFOREEEEE IT REALLY FUCKING HURTS
[ID: A letterboxd review for Barbie 2023 from mordred: “As a trans woman, there’s this thing where a cis woman will try to school you about feminism. Basic stuff, 101, barebones, and you nod your head going “mhm, mhm, yep, uh huh” cuz if you try to make the conversation more nuanced and say that you’re well read about feminism, there’s a fifty fifty chance they’ll converse with you normally, or freak out that you’re a “violent male” speaking over them. And as they go, the tones they take, the words they chose, start to make you feel like they dont see you as a woman. They never overtly say it, cuz that’s frowned upon, but they say all the right words to both insult you, yet make you seem insane for saying they are insulting you. That’s how this movie felt to watch for me.
Having a cast like Kate McKinnon and Margot “I want to meet JK Rowling” Robbie doesn’t explicitly make this movie transphobic. But, it constantly hammers the basics of feminism in and never introduces nuances. “Look! Patriarchy! Isn’t Ken funny! Look, Barbie’s a real woman now, so she’s going to a gynecologist!” There’s a joke in the middle of the movie, where a Mattel board member says “I’m a man with no power, does that make me a woman?” And, on the surface, that doesn’t seem transphobic. But, also, this is how transphobes talk about us. That’s how they think we are. And, in a movie that defined womanhood by going to a gynecologist office, how can I really be sure it’s not a transphobic jab? Hari Nef’s appearance does nothing to ease my concern.
There’s another thing that irked me in this movie. At the start when Barbie starts getting “imperfections,” one of her problems is she has a tiny bit of cellulite. Which, whatever! We’re at the start of the journey, a lessen is going to be learned! Except, it really never gets addressed. When the mom (her name escapes me, she leaves no impression) is waking the Barbie’s up and telling them what a woman is, she says something to the effect of “a woman has to try to be thin but can’t call it thin they call it healthy.” And, it’s like, yeah that’s true. But it doesn’t actually address the previous issue with cellulite. It feels like, “Women are supposed to desire thinness, but the real problem is we have to call it healthy.” At no point is it really said that it’s ok to just be fat. And, i hear you, “There were fat Barbies!” There were conventionally attractive fat Barbies, sure, who played no real role other than background Barbie to help elevate the main Barbie.
And, that’s another thing. Everyone in this movie is conventionally attractive. “Barbies are conventionally attractive!” OK, but we’re making a statement about feminism and we can’t get a single person that looks….ordinary? Their trans woman they got is literally a fucking model, can’t let her be too mannish i guess! Or, “weird Barbie” who is supposed to be weird and ugly or whatever is just Kate McKinnon (ugh) with a haircut. She is still conventionally attractive. This is like those movies from the 90s where a ugly girl is just ugly cuz she has glasses on (which they joke about in the movie go figure). And, the movie decides to get meta and point this exact thing out. When Barbie is freaking out and calling herself ugly, the narrator (who i want to point out hasn’t been heard from for the last hour) jokes about how they shouldn’t have casted Margot Robbie to call herself ugly. Which, setting how tired I am of meta comedy aside for a moment, then why the fuck did you have her do that?! You realize the contradiction, so don’t do it! Or better yet, address the issue! Put ordinary looking people in the movie! Make the teenager not need to be caked up in makeup! I’m not anti makeup but just let her be a teen! Let the non-Barbies just be normal people (Will Ferrell doesn’t count, no one can live up to THAT beauty standard!) You realize there’s an issue, so why not address it!
This movie just gives off such a harsh conservative vibe to me. That scene when they introduce the teen and she tears into Barbie and calls her a “fascist,” that feels like how conservatives talk about left leaning people. Like she’s some kind of caricature. And, this combined with the gynecologist ending and everything else, it just doesn’t feel like a true leftist of any kind wrote this.
What was that antisemitism thing Will Ferrell did? Were we supposed to laugh at it? Was it a joke? Cuz if so then it just feels……I’m not getting into it.
And, I’m sure people reading this are tired of my ranting, so here’s some stuff just about the film making aspect:
The movie looks good. The colors pop really nice. I love how when they zoom out the actors are replaced with dolls, it’s a very neat touch. I think Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling did good jobs acting their roles. I don’t care for the music outside of a Ken number towards the end. Most of the comedy fell flat on me, except for Ken putting on two pairs of sunglasses, that got an audible laugh. The narrator made no sense to me. She was there for 10 minutes to do jarring exposition dumps and then doesn’t pop up again until the aforementioned zinger, and that’s it. She’s no where through out the rest. Just don’t have her. Everyone knows what a fucking Barbie is. Show, don’t tell.
I wish the mom and daughter had more time. They needed to be fleshed out. Their characters are hollow, barely archetypes. Neither actually had a real character arc. Just “Barbie’s real? Guess our problems aren’t anymore!”
A scene i really liked, and am glad I saw the movie for was at the end when Barbie walks into the void with Ruth and Barbie asks for permission to be human. I think Ruth’s speech, Margot Robbie’s acting, and everything else about this scene made it fantastic. It had a big Serial Experiments Lain vibe (albeit, not as smart as Lain). It was very emotional, but then it’s followed by Barbie going to a gynecologist cuz she’s a real woman now (puke).
My biggest problem with this movie, the jarring detail i have kinda tiptoed around is, this is a Mattel product. Mattel owns Barbie, Mattel approved of this script, the Mattel company in movie is made to look silly, but ultimately want to do good. Mattel and Barbie have been criticized for sexism for decades. This is not new. It’s feminism 101. But, Mattel putting out this movie just serves to say, “haha yeah we used to be sexist, huh? It’s ok we’re feminist now, buy our dolls!” It’s a fucking commercial using the concept of feminism to get people to buy their kids dolls. It’s just bonkers to me. Some parent is going to go home thinking getting their kid a Barbie will be a good, girl inspiring move!
As a trans woman, I have a weird relationship with feminism. I’m expected to identify as a feminist when feminism has been an excuse for racism, transphobia, homophobia, fatphobia and etc since it’s creation. Yeah, patriarchy sucks, yeah I want the liberation of women. But, it’s hard for me to want to be a feminist when all the mainstream feminism i see is bigoted or unnuanced. If someone came out of that movie having learned something or feeling Inspired, that’s great i guess. I’m just left wondering what slur Margot Robbie wants to call me.” /End ID.]
I think one of the worst things a story can be is unproblematic.
Nothing makes a story more unreadable than being able to see the author squirm apologetically for the story they actually want to write—wringing their hands and imploring the reader please, please don’t be mad, I know it’s ideologically questionable but I need you to not be mad at me!
For example: a Good King™️. It’s one thing for a story to present a fictional monarchy and ask me to root for it. It’s another thing for a story to say, hey, I know what you’re thinking—but don’t worry! I can justify this premise! I have introduced a lot of convoluted self-aware political justifications for why my king is good and likable without actually asking any risky ideological questions! These characters aren’t actually problematic! Don’t be mad at me!
Commit to the bit. Apologetic, defensive writing designed to bypass obvious criticisms often winds up offending me far more than stories that are just kind of surface-level problematic. If I’m gonna be a hater you cannot stop me; the more you insist that a character is actually a good oil tycoon because of all these exceptional situations and beyond my reproach, the more I resent you and hate your stupid book.
the sad/funny/fucked up irony is that the more an author seems desperate to create unproblematic worldbuilding and unobjectionable characters who have all the right attitudes, the more likely it is that they’ve inadvertently created some hideous implications far worse than simply writing about characters who aren’t right about everything
like great! now you’ve just reinvented ecofascism or made racism true or made proxy medieval Europe less xenophobic by, uh, removing the Jews
there is so much intellectual cowardice in feminist critique of media right now. whenever people say something neutral or negative about a work that is openly attempting to be feminist and/or appeal to women in its marketing and messaging, there’s always someone who says “it’s not that deep! can’t women just have casual interests? why does everything have to be a scathing satire or radical thinkpiece? why can’t you let people like things? why can’t you watch another movie?”
shutting down every criticism of a film, show, or book by saying it’s not that deep is not the winning argument you think it is. women artists and art about women deserve to be taken seriously. when the directors and writers are dropping quotes about their show or movie invoking imagery of the bible or evil queens or whatever they are implicitly telling us to take them seriously. they position their work as worthy of literary examination. so give them the decency of that.
to glorify symbolism and metaphors and other storytelling techniques when they succeed and then say “it’s not that serious” in response to any negative criticism is peak hypocrisy. there’s nothing wrong with liking a movie or appreciating the craft of it. and some movies really are just made for shits and gigs. but you as a consumer should at least be consistent in your analysis of what you think the work is trying to do, understanding the context of how it positions itself and how it’s received, and not being surprised or offended when people come at it with a strong opinion.
