When Oppenheimer and Barbie were released in July 2023 I knew instantly which one I wanted to see. With anticipation, I waited for Oppenheimer to become available locally in Ajijic, Mexico where I live. I saw it as soon as possible and it lived up to my expectations.

I was puzzled why anyone would want to see Barbie.

My initial reaction began to change when my friend Linda Joy Stone published her article MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH BARBIE AND MEETING THE FEMININE DEITY. Recently Linda told me she has seen Barbie a second time and enjoyed it even more. 

With the Barbie movie off the charts, which I just saw and loved for its campiness and sweet message for Barbie and Ken to accept their ordinariness and autonomy, I thought I’d share an essay that I wrote around 2005 at 55 years old.

I began to notice that Barbie was causing quite a buzz and I began noticing and reading articles about the film by writers I highly respected.

The Barbie Movie Review Diametric

by BJ Campbell - Handwaving Freakoutery

So when the Barbie Movie came out, I figured I’d just skip it and read what my friends thought. I now present to you two sets of commentary on The Barbie Movie’s cultural messaging as perceived by two interesting people.

Finally, I was honestly really surprised at how much I enjoyed the ride. I definitely rolled my eyes at some stuff, but most of the time it was a fun movie full of bright colours and cartoon nonsense and funny jokes. I loved the Ken Fight. I loved all the jokes about how they’re dumb dolls that do doll things. It was funny every single time. And of course, I enjoyed the many homages to the way kids actually play with toys – little girls don’t brush Barbie’s hair and tell her she’s pretty. They set her on fire, cut her hair off, draw on her, and throw her off balconies. Given enough time, all barbies become Weird Barbies.

Castrated Utopias: What Barbie and Oppenheimer reveal about our sexual politics

by Alexander Beiner

This article includes a picture of Ken Wilber as a Ken Doll.

As Barbie and Oppenheimer end their cinematic runs, they leave behind one of the strangest memes of recent times: Barbenheimer. But beyond the glaring polarity between the two films, what really drove the meme and created such a powerful cultural moment?

Barbie is one of the most interesting films to come out of Hollywood in some time. It’s a strange phenomenon; a feminist initiation myth that critiques, sometimes with joyful nuance, capitalism and patriarchy, but which is paradoxically designed to sell a corporation’s product. Instead of a film we might read an ideology into, it’s a film woven around an existing ideology: feminism. However, the vision of the feminism it champions is what makes it particularly interesting.

The success of Barbenheimer, and particularly Barbie, might provide us with some of the cultural energy to open a new phase in that conversation. A conversation that takes us toward a new reality in which the feminine is no longer devalued and dominated, and the masculine is no longer castrated and blamed for all the world’s ills. A world that can embrace the fluidity of gender identity without needing to discard essential qualities that make us who we are. A vibrant dance between two opposites, full of passion and intrigue, mystery and love, separation and union.

Barbie's New Age Genius

by Geoff Gallinger - Creekmasons Content Collective (new to me)

I am a fragile man. Highly—almost desperately—well-meaning. Incredibly insecure. Enduringly unsure whether I’m worthy of love. “I’m just Ken,” as Ryan Gosling sings in the Barbie movie. Perhaps, like Ken, I’d even be in danger of being radicalized nearer to borderline Incel territory were I not a happily married simp.

But, despite these character traits exposing me to feeling drained and vaguely nauseated after the succession of final act sack-taps that the Barbie movie delivered, I actually think it’s more than worth a watch. 

"Sincere Irony" Barbie

by Lyman Pascal

What is post-postmodern art? Think of… Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie.

The film might just be a positionless, extended advertisement for a commercial product (my mother’s opinion) or it might be something closer to a complex metamodern superposition of coherent pluralistic realities. In the latter case, a generous interpretation, we might claim that this moving picture show exhibits sincere irony. (Don’t worry, we’ll define that in the next section.)

My proposal, therefore, is to keep Ken’s double sunglasses in mind. When you take off one pair there is still a layer of shade to remove. And when you think you have peeked below the hood, and glimpsed the ideological message of the film relative to its overt content, there may still be another important layer to remove before you encounter the true face of things.

Barbie starts to grow toward real humanity as she confronts the uncertainty of death… These hint at the metamodern moral of the film. It tells us — in the language of the phallic feminine of commercial hypermodernity — about how to make contact with reality.

This last comment is, in my opinion, one of the most significant. I noticed this theme emerge in the movies I watched. Thank you, Lyman, for highlighting it.

From Wikipedia, 

As of August 19, 2023, Oppenheimer has grossed $285.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $432.6 million in other territories,  for a worldwide total of $717.8 million.

As of August 20, 2023, Barbie has grossed $567.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $711.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $1.279 billion.

Make no mistake, I enjoyed Barbie. But I enjoyed these articles more. Consequently, many people will probably see me as strange and I am fine with that.

I am delighted that my friend Claudia Dommaschk has published a Barbie essay! She makes some important points in her wonderful edgy style. 

You go girl!

...I am deeply disappointed in the way she decides to resolve this problem of male objectification and what is later identified in the movie as the patriarchy.

The movie doesn’t seem to offer men and women a way through the complexity of sexual politics. 

The movie does not solve the problem of toxic masculinity or toxic femininity because, at this point in time, there are no comprehensive solutions. However, metamodernism is a better approach than modernism or postmodernism to ending the battle of the sexes. Many voices having difficult conversations while seeking collective wisdom may get us there sometime in the distant future.