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Barbie! Oh Noes!

 
 
 
Cheerful Charlie

Cheerful Charlie

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I have lived a long life paying no attention to Barbie. No all of a sudden we have the new Barbie movie. And the right wing loonies are losing their minds over this silly movie. Woke! Feminist! Man hating! Destroying American civilization! I am beginning to pay attention to the delicious and unhinged MAGAt Barbie hysteria. The delicious tears of helpless right wingers. Squeal louder right wing loonies!

Google right wing Barbie hysteria for more.
 
Oh my god. I just realized something.

In my spare bedroom - which used to be occupied by my daughter - on the top shelf in the closet, I have...Barbies.

Only a couple of them, but like some of her stuffed animals and a few other things I never got around to getting rid of them.

Is there like...a "woke" hotline I can call? Because I'm not going to be able to sleep at night knowing that I have such a radical leftist anti-American product in my home. I know this place doesn't do this often, but...pray for me. I may not survive this.
 
You know, in real life, women have to deal with this sort of shit all the time, right? It's like some guy will ask out some girl or woman because he thinks she's hot or hot enough--sufficiently feminine to get his motor running, so to speak but if he bothers to listen to her, it turns out, sooner or later, she says something that indicates she's not just some empty headed piece of plastic but has...brains as much as she has feelings. With any kind of luck, this happens on the first date although prior to the first date is much preferred.

I haven't seen Barbie (yet) but probably will. From what I read, it's not silly at all.
 
Cheerful Charlie said:
I have lived a long life paying no attention to Barbie. No all of a sudden we have the new Barbie movie. And the right wing loonies are losing their minds over this silly movie. Woke! Feminist! Man hating! Destroying American civilization! I am beginning to pay attention to the delicious and unhinged MAGAt Barbie hysteria. The delicious tears of helpless right wingers. Squeal louder right wing loonies!

Google right wing Barbie hysteria for more.
Click to expand...
I hate to nitpick but right wing loonies have already lost their minds.
 
I honestly don't know what the fuck is going on with this Barbie shit. It wasn't that many years ago that Barbie was the arch enemy of the feminist progressive left. Young, white and pretty with an exagerated, impossible figure that (supposedly) harmed young girls by giving them unrealistic body expectations and frequently dressed in the dreaded, upiquitous girl-indentifying pink and whose life is centered around fashion, parties, her convertible, the beach and hanging with her white, testicleless accessory boyfriend Ken. Then every couple of years or so, Mattel would throw feminists a bone and create a new "career Barbie" to make her an astronaut, teacher, nuclear scientist, etc. to "prove" that Barbie was not just a vacuous busty bimbo. Now, fast forward to 2023 and Barbie is becoming an icon of feminism now? And young girls are emulating Barbie's hyperfemininity (anyone see TikTok lately?) with apparent approval by the masses. And its the conservatives who hate Barbie now? What just happened here? Did I miss something? Doesn't anyone stick to their values anymore?
 
Years ago, (some) mothers agonized over whether to give their daughters Barbie dolls because they were overly sexualized (see Barbies from the 1960’s) and frankly based on a doll from a sex shop. Her wardrobe was aspirational and frankly impressive, with real buttons and tiny tiny zippers. Later she was… slightly less sexualized, with a younger Disneyfied face, prior to the Disney Princess dolls and zippers and buttons were replaced with snaps and velcro and a wardrobe that was almost exclusively pink—and marketed towards younger girls. All the different Barbie’s were to attempt to assuage any complicated feelings of guilt for succumbing to the intense pressure to buy one or ten because Barbie could no longer be an astronaut or doctor with a costume change—nope, you needed an entirely different doll set with all the appropriate cheap plastic accessories. This substituted for the expectation for children to actually use their imaginations, something that marketing had decided was entirely within their purview. The better to make profits, my dears.

With more mothers working, there was more disposable cash and much less time: It became easier to throw some cheap plastic toy at whining children. Few parents thought much about the dolls, just as few thought about the GI Joes or the transformers they bought their boy children or why some toys were ‘for girls’ and why some were ‘for boys.’ Astronaut Barbie was simply a marketing ploy to assuage parental guilt for parents who were already feeling guilty enough about all the hours they were working and all the quality time they were not spending with their kids and how there was never enough time/money/stuff abd too much plastic going to landfills or how stuff was being substituted for time and attention and affection and sleep and relaxation and hey, look! A new kind of screen to attract the kids’ attention and the parents’ attention, too and who cares if AI takes over what little free choice we think we have???!
 
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thebeave said:
Doesn't anyone stick to their values anymore?
Click to expand...
Hardly surprising. Anyone with long-term memory knows that conservatives have always let television pundits reinvent their supposed "traditional values" every ten years or so, and liberals never promised inflexibility to begin with.

The whole Barbie phenomenon is fueled by generational nostalgia, the "sides" are just doing different things with that nostalgia in accordance with their political ends. Republicans never did like the career Barbie thing, or the different skin color Barbies, or the slightly wider hipped Barbie, or wheelchair Barbie, or taking some time off from relationships to work on herself Barbie. To the Outraged Right, that was always "politically correct" (90s speak for "woke"), but a generation of girls (now adults with money to burn on movie tickets) grew up with that more liberated branding and now think of that era as peak Barbie, so they are no more willing than their brainlessly furious elders to consider their way of playing with her wrong. We have never not been fighting over Barbie; she symbolizes both womanhood and parenting, so there always have been and always will be bitter fights over her legacy. From her sex toy origins to every new year's desperate by Mattel to keep her relevant, there is always something to be freshly enraged about in Barbietopia.
 
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I am hearing that it is almost 4th wall breaking in talking way to much about "the message".

I really don't get it, it takes just a light sprinkling of message, to make an impact and then it does not build up resistance and resentment.

It is even better to do it without words, but with plot reversals doing the speaking. This way people don't even realize they are getting a message.

This heavy handed, overly verbal and repetitive messaging is making movies and shows a drag.

I would rather watch a movie against my values that did subtextual plot messaging than one I agreed with that was like a lecture.

Show don't tell, people.
 
Politesse said:
thebeave said:
Doesn't anyone stick to their values anymore?
Click to expand...
Hardly surprising. Anyone with long-term memory knows that conservatives have always let television pundits reinvent their supposed "traditional values" every ten years or so, and liberals never promised inflexibility to begin with.

The whole Barbie phenomenon is fueled by generational nostalgia, the "sides" are just doing different things with that nostalgia in accordance with their political ends. Republicans never did like the career Barbie thing, or the different skin color Barbies, or the slightly wider hipped Barbie, or wheelchair Barbie, or taking some time off from relationships to work on herself Barbie. To the Outraged Right, that was always "politically correct" (90s speak for "woke"), but a generation of girls (now adults with money to burn on movie tickets) grew up with that more liberated branding and now think of that era as peak Barbie, so they are no more willing than their brainlessly furious elders to consider their way of playing with her wrong. We have never not been fighting over Barbie; she symbolizes both womanhood and parenting, so there always have been and always will be bitter fights over her legacy. From her sex toy origins to every new year's desperate by Mattel to keep her relevant, there is always something to be freshly enraged about in Barbietopia.
Click to expand...
OMG, that link in your post was about the most god damned funny thing I've read all year! :LOL: Thanks for sharing that. I knew Barbie's history was a bit of a clusterfuck, but I had no idea it was that bad. I especially like the Oreo Barbie, the Giving Birth Barbie, Puberty Barbie and Computer Engineer Barbie. Those are such obviously bad ideas, it makes you wonder if people working at Mattel are truly dumb or there is a lot of trolling going on there.

Surprised to see that Trailer Trash Barbie didn't make the list. But I guess she's not officially Barbie "canon".

Trailer Trash Barbie
 
Reading a bit about this movie, it is a fantasy satire with teeth. In the Barbie Universe, the Barbies run everything. The president is a Barbie, supreme court justices are all Barbies, Barbies fill the Senate. Kens don't do much. The Kens plan a revolt which ultimately fails due to their incompetence. This movies was made to provoke the right wing crazies. And to provoke laughter. It is trolling on a big budget. And it is succeeding. The movie we need in the era of Trump, DeSantis, and right winged culture wars. The pink cult vs. The orange cult.
 
thebeave said:
I honestly don't know what the fuck is going on with this Barbie shit. It wasn't that many years ago that Barbie was the arch enemy of the feminist progressive left. Young, white and pretty with an exagerated, impossible figure that (supposedly) harmed young girls by giving them unrealistic body expectations and frequently dressed in the dreaded, upiquitous girl-indentifying pink and whose life is centered around fashion, parties, her convertible, the beach and hanging with her white, testicleless accessory boyfriend Ken. Then every couple of years or so, Mattel would throw feminists a bone and create a new "career Barbie" to make her an astronaut, teacher, nuclear scientist, etc. to "prove" that Barbie was not just a vacuous busty bimbo. Now, fast forward to 2023 and Barbie is becoming an icon of feminism now?
Click to expand...
I suppose it is like Black Panther, in its original microcosm of the Marvel universe that wasn't remotely like it was in the movie. It was adapted a couple times into something better and stronger. Some people seem to think that ideas can't be improved or made better, and we need to be stuck 30 years ago in time.
 
Cheerful Charlie said:
Reading a bit about this movie, it is a fantasy satire with teeth. In the Barbie Universe, the Barbies run everything. The president is a Barbie, supreme court justices are all Barbies, Barbies fill the Senate. Kens don't do much. The Kens plan a revolt which ultimately fails due to their incompetence. This movies was made to provoke the right wing crazies. And to provoke laughter. It is trolling on a big budget. And it is succeeding. The movie we need in the era of Trump, DeSantis, and right winged culture wars. The pink cult vs. The orange cult.
Click to expand...
Was there all the pants shitting by alt-righters when She-ra came out and was saving the hapless Bow who kept getting captured, like Teela did in He-Man?
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
thebeave said:
I honestly don't know what the fuck is going on with this Barbie shit. It wasn't that many years ago that Barbie was the arch enemy of the feminist progressive left. Young, white and pretty with an exagerated, impossible figure that (supposedly) harmed young girls by giving them unrealistic body expectations and frequently dressed in the dreaded, upiquitous girl-indentifying pink and whose life is centered around fashion, parties, her convertible, the beach and hanging with her white, testicleless accessory boyfriend Ken. Then every couple of years or so, Mattel would throw feminists a bone and create a new "career Barbie" to make her an astronaut, teacher, nuclear scientist, etc. to "prove" that Barbie was not just a vacuous busty bimbo. Now, fast forward to 2023 and Barbie is becoming an icon of feminism now?
Click to expand...
I suppose it is like Black Panther, in its original microcosm of the Marvel universe that wasn't remotely like it was in the movie. It was adapted a couple times into something better and stronger. Some people seem to think that ideas can't be improved or made better, and we need to be stuck 30 years ago in time.
Click to expand...
Fair enough. I admit I haven't been keeping up on the positive evolutionary change of the new Barbie of 2023 from the Barbie of, say, the 1960's and '70's. Can you expand on that? As I said in my original post, "I honestly don't know what the fuck is going on with this Barbie shit". Is the new Barbie a continuation and expansion upon the critique by feminists of the early days of Barbie, or has that early feminist view been discarded and we are now embracing something 180 degrees opposite of that? I'm not opposed to changes (positive ones, anyway), BTW.
 
I do remember a decade ago when Mattel gave us a Barbie doll that could speak. And could say "Math is hard!". This provoked a controversy as it was held to reinforce the concept women were dumb. Not a role model. That doll was quickly dropped. Mattel was put on notice that Barbie was not to be used to reinforce such cultural norms of an outdated era. Mattel seems to have at that point gotten the message.
 
repoman said:
I am hearing that it is almost 4th wall breaking in talking way to much about "the message".

I really don't get it, it takes just a light sprinkling of message, to make an impact and then it does not build up resistance and resentment.

It is even better to do it without words, but with plot reversals doing the speaking. This way people don't even realize they are getting a message.

This heavy handed, overly verbal and repetitive messaging is making movies and shows a drag.

I would rather watch a movie against my values that did subtextual plot messaging than one I agreed with that was like a lecture.

Show don't tell, people.
Click to expand...
Barbie has never been subtle.
 
Cheerful Charlie said:
I do remember a decade ago when Mattel gave us a Barbie doll that could speak. And could say "Math is hard!". This provoked a controversy as it was held to reinforce the concept women were dumb. Not a role model. That doll was quickly dropped. Mattel was put on notice that Barbie was not to be used to reinforce such cultural norms of an outdated era. Mattel seems to have at that point gotten the message.
Click to expand...
Yep. There was a classic episode on The Simpsons about this. From back in the days when Barbie was the scourge of the left, rather than the hero of the left as she (apparently) is now. One of their best episodes, actually:

 
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