I don
I saw the movie. Barbie Land is initially faux woke. It's a fake world in a fake movie. The barbies live in a virtual matriarchy premised on barbie inspiring women's accomplishments in the real world. For ppl who think there is a message, they are deranged. It is clear the Barbies are clueless. Next, Barbie and Ken go to the real world and Ken sees patriarchical features and successes of men. He runs back to Barbie land to start a MRA revolution. It's fucking silly and humorous. It's a fucking movie. Then, Barbie goes back to Barbie land and undoes Ken's revolution, but she comes back "enlightened" to the contradictions of female identity and successes in the real world. So they are a matriarchy again, sort of, but Ken is also heard and men are being nominated to federal circuit judge positions just not Supreme Court yet. It's an obvious parody to real world history but in reverse. There's way more to the movie than political structure absurdity that conservatives scream about. I've just focused on that part in the post. Also, did I mention it's a silly movie that only morons or propagandists would take seriously?
I think you must not have listened to America Ferrera's speech then. I'm linking it here. I'd copy and paste the whole thing but I don't want to violate any copyright rules (even tho this is widely available on many media outlets:
It took 30 takes to get, and Ferrera and Greta Gerwig spent months revising it.
www.elle.com
Every single word rang true and that's for me, an older middle class woman who never was a fan of Barbie. I can only imagine if you start throwing in poverty, being queer or not white, abused, dyslexic, disabled, etc. Or just underpaid and overworked, with or without kids but kids adds a whole lot of different layers to it all because still, however the kids turn out, it's the mom's fault, 100%.
I don't see that in conflict with what he said. It reminds me of Ginsburg's SCOTUS being all women being a shocking thought when it was all male for close to two hundred years.
And that's the problem. I like Don but he sees this as 'fake.' It's real. It's reality for every single girl and woman you or anyone else knows --at least in the US and I suspect in most of the Western world. Some have internalized it more than others to the extent that they don't even question it anymore. Think about it. Think about the maternal mortality rate in the US. Think about Serena Williams and Torie Bowie whose names most of us know and the many, many women whose names we don't know.
It's just not your reality.
We are discussing a movie in which faux feminists created a matriarchy. If you think that is real or proclaim it to be real, you are feeding into conservative paranoia. Feminism is about equality, not matriarchy. This was a movie and it was a comedy and like all comedies, it has some serious tidbits and moments but it remains a work of fiction. This monologue was one step away from one of those serious kind of moments in a comedy when a monologue happens as a crowd gathers around and then one guy starts clapping and it's the impetus for more clapping by the crowd. These are usually quite good and meaningful monologues but still fiction, even if meaningful.
Sure, I am a man who saw the movie and my wife is a woman who saw the movie and she thinks the whole bruhaha is ridiculous. Identity politics doesn't trump logic here, though. It's the content of the message and whether it is logical, not the color or gender of the person saying it. In this particular case of the fictional speech inside a fictional movie, yeah, sure there are bits of truth and seriousness, but there is also hyperbole meant as expression in a backdrop of comedy. Hyperbole remains hyperbole, even if there are rampant society and cultural biases against women. It is not 100% the woman's fault in our culture, even if the woman does most often get the short-end of the stick. For example, both Trump's parents are blamed for how he is raised. And Trump himself is blamed for how his spoiled children ended up. I got some blame myself as a stay-at-home dad for being flexible with my son during the pandemic during his school hours for letting him be more independent. Both parents get some blame some of the time. You are quoting a movie. A movie.
We live in a society of hyper-privilege where people have time to debate the Barbie movie. The Barbie movie and most of the people debating haven't even seen it! In the real world, there are institutional powers and patriarchal features literally killing females, trans persons, and minorities. Most recently a store owner was killed because she had a pride flag outside the store. The things that conservative institutions want to implement are that bad. Their clarion call right now is that the Barbie movie is feminist propaganda to brainwash young girls into forming a matriarchy and this is classic projection because we know they want the Make America Great Again patriarchy as they push back on freedoms for women.
I think it is important to tell them how absurd they are and not to validate their nightmares with hyperbolic language, including promoting the fictional work as reality.