Hey everybody,
First of all, Happy New Year to everyone reading!
I hope that you all had wonderful and safe celebrations to ring in successful and fulfilling years. As you can see, I’m already hard at work on my annual resolution of trying to publish more content to the substack. I’d like to stick to twice a month for this whole year; after all, as nice as it would be to just wait around and be inspired to write mid-tier bullshit, the truth is that just isn’t fair to my subscribers who expect and deserve their mediocrity on a more regular schedule, so keep an eye out for more frequent inbox pings from me. This time, however, I am feeling inspired to post, because I just watched Barbie (a little late to the party, but just in time for the Golden Globes), and boy I gotta say I thought it was really good.
That’s really it, honestly, as far as my quality assessment of the movie. I’m not totally pink-pilled–there are some parts that dragged or could have been trimmed further to suit my tastes like any movie–but in general I really liked it and thought it was really good.
I do my best not to read intentionally infuriating culture war shit, so I was only vaguely aware of the various criticisms the film faced from Andrew Tate and other Tatillators on the internet and beyond. However, as much as I hate to agree with a sentiment that is often used to justify objectionable content, I do think it’s nearly impossible to make meaningful art or allegory without some of your elements going awry and contributing to arguments that run contrary to your message. That being said, I do understand how some folks mostly of a certain demographic (straight/white/heterosexual/cisgender/male) could take some umbrage at some of the jokes or even some of the non-jokes the film makes. However, the thing is, I AM that demographic, and speaking as a SWHCM, I honestly felt considered and spoken to by this movie more than many that I’ve seen. Here’s a brief listicle to explain why:
We need more I’m Kenough storylines out there.
One of the things that I’m sure a lot of boys didn’t like about the movie was that it goes on at great length about the patriarchy and the struggles women face navigating it. The film’s pivotal monologue is all about this, and even watching at home with just my wife and three female cats I could practically hear creatine shits percolating like campfire coffee. “If a movie had a two minute long monologue about how hard and thankless it is to be a man, it’d never theaters something blah imagined consequences,” a man might say, the Fight Club DVD in his TV stand looking on accusingly. The truth is, there are just so many movies about what it really means to be a man and how hard and thankless it is, movies where they don’t need a two minute monologue because it’s the entire film. I grew up watching a lot of movies like this, and while most of them preach things like courage or character or self-sacrifice (all great things), there weren’t a lot of movies out there that told you that whatever you are, in and of yourself, is valid and full and worth consideration. In fact, a lot of little boys of my demographic learn the opposite lesson, that we need to strive and become, and that doing so is met with a reward of either companionship or fulfillment, so when you end up with neither it’s very easy to trick yourself into believing you were cheated. “I’m Kenough” isn’t just a dope poncho tagline, it’s a philosophy that a lot of little boys would benefit from learning earlier on. Considering this is a movie about what it means to be a woman, I really appreciate the fact that they included such a rich side plot that spoke to me so deeply, considering they didn’t have to.
Why was Ken so upset in the first place?
I obviously can’t speak for any women at all, ever, but I can imagine some might have been upset with the fact that the movie specifically brings up the animosity that women feel or are expected to feel towards each other, while the men are ultimately all goofy and friendly (even their massive fight devolves into a big ass-grabbing session). While I can attest that no fight between mostly nude men can go longer than seventeen minutes (our gymnasium record anyway) without breaking into song, I also think the movie did a good job of portraying the negative influence men can have on each other’s sense of self-worth. Ryan Gosling Ken is clearly missing something inside, just like Margot Robbie Barbie, but by assuming that she is the thing he’s missing, he deprives himself of both self discovery and self love. Rather than support him the way the Barbies all support her on her journey, all the Kens do is dig at Ryan Gosling Ken, implying he’s worthless without Barbie’s affection. From a very superficial perspective, the Kens are all fun loving goofballs with no real malice in them, but below the surface, they all harbor deep insecurities and feelings of inadequacy that, absent of a discernible cause, they attribute to lack of outward affection, leading to a commodification of that affection that only compounds the issue.
That feeling of not being spoken to directly? Hold onto that.
Don’t get me wrong, fellas, there were times when I was keenly aware that this movie was explicitly speaking not to me, or even was speaking explicitly about me (as in capital-M Men). Those moments did feel a little weird. I’m not talking about the excellent douchebag male behavior montage near the end; that felt like it was more for the men in the audience than any other part of the movie, but rather smaller moments that just were meant to resonate on other frequencies. For example, a good female friend pointed out the scene where Barbie sees an old woman on a park bench and tells her she’s beautiful. That scene was touching to me too, but my friend told me that she felt it really was meant to resonate with the women in the audience, and I can believe that. That’s a good thing. Absorbing art and ideas made in good faith will broaden your mind, especially when it wasn’t meant to speak to you in the first place. You do some of your best self learning and soul growing when you find yourself in a non-you-shaped box and have to figure out how best to contour your dimensions to it. That is not to say that you should fundamentally change, but circumstances like that show you how you can move, take and make space, find comfort or safety you might not have found had you stayed rigid.
Well, those are a few of the reasons I liked Barbie aside from the funny enjoyable movieness of it all, and I thought it’d be fun to start off the year (especially an election year) with a positive substack about stuff I liked.
Hope this one finds you well, and that the next one finds more of you even better.