{"id":4456,"date":"2023-07-27T02:50:03","date_gmt":"2023-07-27T02:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=4456"},"modified":"2023-07-27T02:59:21","modified_gmt":"2023-07-27T02:59:21","slug":"the-new-barbie-movie-paints-a-miserable-world-for-young-girls-its-not-one-i-want-to-live-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=4456","title":{"rendered":"The New \u2018Barbie\u2019 Movie Paints a Miserable World for Young Girls; It\u2019s Not One I Want to Live in"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/barbie-movie-review\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"barbie<\/p>\n

The new Barbie movie paints a miserable world for young girls. It\u2019s not one I want to live in.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I finally broke down and went to see the new \u201cBarbie\u201d movie. First, I read Ben Shapiro\u2019s scathing review and read the elite, liberal media articles mocking of his scathing review. I really have no interest in the movie, but you can\u2019t write a review about something you don\u2019t see.<\/p>\n

I tried to go into the movie with an open mind, although I refused to join the hordes of women and young girls (preteens, teens, etc.) decked out in hot pink. A friend of mine said, \u201cDoes everything have to be political?\u201d In other words, can\u2019t people just enjoy a movie without it bogging down in our country\u2019s divisive culture wars? Sure, I said, but this movie is trying to SEND a cultural message, and it\u2019s doing it to kids. So it\u2019s fair game that we analyze that message.<\/p>\n

The movie was worse than I expected. Sure, it\u2019s well-crafted, a sugar-high Candy Crush or Candyland type world of fantasy and satire, with Oscar-worthy acting by lead Margot Robbie, great sets, and snappy dialogue. The movie muddles its message at the end, making it somewhat confusing what it\u2019s trying to say. It comes around to the right message at the end, that women should be able to be whatever they want, including a mother.<\/p>\n

The problem is that it puts down men to get there, and it never corrects that<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Why are we supposed to be celebrating a movie that tells little girls that all men are sexist, superfluous jerks? <\/span><\/p>\n

For most of the movie, \u201cBarbie\u201d creates a miserable world for young girls, where men are figures of ridicule who are not necessary or worthy of any admiration. There is not a single admirable man in the movie. It\u2019s not a world that I want to live in. It\u2019s also divorced from actual reality.<\/p>\n

The movie has two worlds; there\u2019s \u201cBarbieland,\u201d painted as a female-led utopia, where everything is plastic and perfect, no one has cellulite, everyone is happy all of the time, and, as Barbie notes, men are \u201csuperfluous\u201d jokes. And then there\u2019s the \u201creal world,\u201d which is painted as a patriarchal nightmare dominated by catcalling, sexist he-men. There is no in between. There is no \u201cworld\u201d where men and women interact with mutual respect and recognition that each gender gains something from the other.<\/p>\n

The movie opens with a scene of young girls in a desert smashing baby dolls as it informs viewers that, until \u201cBarbie\u201d came along with her many careers, little girls were forced to play with baby dolls and role play as mothers. This is painted as such a horrific thought that the baby dolls end up with their heads smashed to bits on rocks. I\u2019d call that an abortion analogy, but the liberal, elite media would go wild on me. A woman is the president in \u201cBarbie Land,\u201d and the Supreme Court is made up of women too. For all the female power, though, it\u2019s a pretty cold, plastic world.<\/p>\n

There is a mother in the \u201creal world\u201d who looks tired, frumpy and exhausted and confesses how hard it is running around after kids.<\/p>\n

Ken is painted in \u201cBarbieland\u201d as an effete, de-masculinized, basically castrated figure, who is powerless, stereotyped, and mocked by Barbie, whose affections he is desperate to get. He gets his worth through Barbie\u2019s attention. Barbie rejects him throughout the entire movie, rendering him pathetic and declaring, \u201cKen is totally superfluous.\u201d<\/p>\n

He fares no better in the \u201creal world,\u201d where he prances around drunk on patriarchy, excited about horses and trucks and thinking he can get a job just because he\u2019s a man. The real world is described as a place where \u201cmen rule, literally,\u201d and Ken even chooses a book on the origins of patriarchy from a school shelf. Then he returns to Barbieland, and promptly starts turning it into Kenland, and the other Barbies end up subservient to the Ken dolls and brainwashed. Both worlds are miserable extremes.<\/p>\n

At one point, Barbie even tells Ken, \u201cI don\u2019t want you here. It\u2019s Barbie\u2019s dream house, not Ken\u2019s dream house.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the message the movie gives to young girls. Prioritizing the \u201cI.\u201d There is no \u201cthey\u201d or \u201cwe\u201d in this movie. There is no \u201ctheir<\/em> dream house.\u201d Men exist as characters of ridicule. That doesn\u2019t mean the movie doesn\u2019t have funny moments. When all of the Kens strum away at their guitars thinking the eye-rolling Barbies will love their songs, who can\u2019t relate?<\/p>\n

My idea of a dream, utopian world, is different. It\u2019s one where men and women both feel valued, and where they thrive together in equality. Empowering women doesn\u2019t mean men need to lose their power.<\/p>\n

In my dream world, men and women enter into loving relationships, and they create loving families. Sure, if you don\u2019t want to have kids, that\u2019s a choice some people make. However, the messaging in this movie reminds me of the messaging in the \u201980s, when women were encouraged to be so career-focused that some waited too long to have families, and now they\u2019re bitterly regretting it.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want a world where men are stereotyped and devalued. At least on the right and in the Midwest where I live, they generally are not. I also don\u2019t want a world where gender is eradicated; the movie avoids that trend, at least.<\/p>\n

I think the world is better with men in it, and many women appreciate and find masculinity attractive. It\u2019s not something we should make fun of, discourage or depress.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s great when women have a career (I\u2019d be bored without intellectual stimulation and have always had one) but being a mother is a cherished gift that is unparalleled on this earth (I\u2019m one of those too).<\/p>\n

Newsflash to the \u201cBarbie\u201d writers, but, in the real world, the U.S. Supreme Court has four women, a woman is vice president and, until recently, a woman was Speaker of the House. In contrast to the warped, unrealistic sexist \u201creal world\u201d in \u201cBarbie,\u201d there\u2019s an argument that men are the ones who are degraded today. Women now outnumber men<\/a> in the U.S. college-educated labor force, for example. More than three-fourths <\/a>of suicides are among men, to cite another example.<\/p>\n

A healthy society devalues neither.<\/p>\n

Is there some sexism in the \u201creal world\u201d today? Sure. There\u2019s some. I\u2019ve rarely had a female boss in any of my professions, for example, and I\u2019ve felt sometimes that I have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously. I\u2019ve been objectified and sexualized when men are not. However, I generally feel that women today have the power to create their own paths, whether that\u2019s becoming a mom, having a career, or, hopefully, both. The movie nominally makes this point toward the end, when it inundates the viewer with images of mothers and daughters, and showcases a mother and daughter who befriend Barbie, and argues suddenly that women can be anything they want, but that\u2019s after it spent almost two hours convincing us that Ken and all men are misogynistic idiots, and women are better off without them.<\/p>\n

I played with Barbies as a kid. However, in contrast to the movie, I imaginatively pretended Barbie had a career,\u00a0 but also that she found true love with Ken. I liked that dual fantasy. I also enjoyed putting her in pretty clothes. She was just part of my imaginative childhood. I also created a stand to sell my mother back her old magazines from the basement, forced my poor brother to play school when he was done with school, and wrote a 28-page crime novel in fourth grade.<\/p>\n

I never once considered smashing the heads of baby dolls or considered Ken to be \u201csuperfluous.\u201d That would never have entered my mind, but this movie is planting in the minds of many impressionable girls that men are superfluous morons.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tempting to praise the \u201cBarbie\u201d movie for, at least, recognizing that binary gender exists, except it falls into the trap of old-school feminists who believed empowering women means disempowering men. It doesn\u2019t. Men and women have different power; masculine and feminine energy are different, and they should be able to not only exist side-by-side but also build one another.<\/p>\n

Barbie is gender on steroids. I did laugh when they tried to negate the criticism that she is a \u201cwhite savior\u201d character with a subtle aside. I remember the days when feminists hated Barbie because she was white, blonde, and too thin. Interesting, then, that they picked \u201cstereotypical Barbie\u201d as the protagonist.<\/p>\n

By denigrating men and trying to convince impressionable young girls that they\u2019d be better off without them or without babies, I think \u201cBarbie\u201d is painting a crass and damaging picture of a real world I wouldn\u2019t want to live in and don\u2019t believe exists. Well, it\u2019s the world as seen through the \u201cwoke\u201d \u201cfeminist\u201d viewpoint admired by the left, I suppose, and maybe it exists in liberal enclaves on the coasts. There\u2019s an entirely different reality out here in the Heartland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/barbie-movie-review\/ The new Barbie movie paints a miserable world for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":4458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-right-now"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4456"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4459,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456\/revisions\/4459"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}