{"id":15155,"date":"2024-01-26T07:07:08","date_gmt":"2024-01-26T15:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=15155"},"modified":"2024-01-26T07:07:10","modified_gmt":"2024-01-26T15:07:10","slug":"barbie-is-bad-there-i-said-it-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=15155","title":{"rendered":"“\u2018Barbie\u2019 Is Bad. There, I Said It.”, the New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0Pamela Paul<\/a>, Opinion, Jan. 24, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can all agree 2023 was a good year for the movies. Critically and commercially, several movies did well, and\u00a0only one<\/a>\u00a0of those successes took place within the Marvel cinematic universe. Even the 10 Oscar\u00a0nominees<\/a>\u00a0for best picture, announced on Tuesday, included nine actually good films.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Against
Credit…Illustration by Sam Whitney\/The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Is it safe now to call \u201cBarbie\u201d the outlier? Can I say that, despite winsome leads and likable elements, it didn\u2019t cohere or accomplish anything interesting, without being written off as a) mean, b) old, c) hateful or d) humorless?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every once in a while, a movie is so broadly anticipated, so welcomed, so celebrated that to disparage it feels like a deliberate provocation. After \u201cBarbie\u201d so buoyantly lifted<\/a> box office figures, any criticism felt like a willful dismissal of the need to make Hollywood solvent after a season of hell. And it felt like a political statement. Disliking \u201cBarbie\u201d meant either dismissing the power of The Patriarchy or dismissing Modern Feminism. You were either anti-feminist or too feminist or just not the right kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Few dared rain<\/a> on Barbie\u2019s hot pink parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who openly hated it mostly did so for reasons having\u00a0to do<\/a>with what it \u201cstood for<\/a>.\u201d They abhorred its (oddly anachronistic) third-wave feminist politics. They despised its commercialism and dreaded the prospect of\u00a0future films<\/a>\u00a0about Mattel properties like Barney and American Girl dolls. They hated the idea of a movie about a sexualized pinup-shaped doll whose toy laptop or Working Woman (\u201cI really talk!<\/a>\u201d) packaging couldn\u2019t hide the stereotypes under the outfit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those who hailed it, there was a manic quality to the \u201cBarbie\u201d enthusiasm, less an \u201cI enjoyed\u201d and more of an \u201cI endorse.\u201d How fabulous its consumer-friendly politics, its I-can\u2019t-believe-they-let-us-do-this micro-subversions, its prepackaged combo of gentle satire and you-go-girl gumption. They loved it for reclaiming dolls and Bazooka-gum pink, its Rainbow Magic<\/a> diversity, its smug assurance that everything contained within was legitimately feminist\/female\/fine. They approved of the fact that Weird Barbie\u2019s quirks could X out Stereotypical Barbie\u2019s perfection on some unspoken political balance sheet. That by being everything to everyone, a plastic doll could validate every child\u2019s own unique and irrepressible individuality. To each her own Barbie!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now there is a new Barbie cause to rally around: the Great Oscar Snub<\/a> and what it all means \u2014 and why it is wrong. Neither Margot Robbie nor Greta Gerwig<\/a> was nominated for her most prominent role: best actress or best director, respectively. \u201cHow is that even possible<\/a>?\u201d one TV host exclaimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo many, the snubbing of the pair further validated the film\u2019s message about how difficult it can be for women to succeed in \u2014and be recognized for <\/em>\u2014 their contributions in a society saturated by sexism,\u201d CNN explained<\/a>. Ryan Gosling, nominated as best supporting actor for his role as Ken, issued a statement<\/a> denouncing the snubs and hailing his colleagues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But hold on. Didn\u2019t another woman, Justine Triet, get nominated for best director (for \u201cAnatomy of a Fall\u201d)? As for \u201cBarbie,\u201d didn\u2019t Gerwig herself get nominated for best adapted screenplay and the always sublime America Ferrera get nominated for best supporting actress? A record three of the best picture nominees were directed by women<\/a>. It\u2019s not as if women were shut out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every time a woman fails to win an accolade doesn\u2019t mean failure for womanhood. Surely women aren\u2019t so pitiable as to need a participation certificate every time we try. We\u2019re well beyond the point where a female artist can\u2019t be criticized on the merits and can\u2019t be expected to handle it as well as any man. (Which means it still hurts like hell for either sex \u2014 but not because of their sex.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margot Robbie had far less to do in \u201cBarbie\u201d than she did in \u201cI, Tonya,\u201d for which she justifiably got an Oscar nod<\/a>. In this movie, she was charming and utterly fine, but that doesn\u2019t make it a rare dramatic achievement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With \u201cBarbie,\u201d Gerwig upped her commercial game from acclaimed art house to bona fide blockbuster. She was demonstrably ambitious in her conception of what could have been an all-out disaster. She got people to go back to the movies. All of these are successes worthy of celebration. But they are not the same as directing a good film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surely it is possible to criticize \u201cBarbie\u201d as a creative endeavor. To state that despite its overstuffed playroom aesthetic and musical glaze, the movie was boring. There were no recognizable human characters, something four \u201cToy Story\u201d movies have shown can be done in a movie populated by toys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were no actual stakes, no plot to follow in any real or pretend world that remotely made sense. In lieu of genuine laughs, there were only winking ha-has at a single joke improbably stretched into a feature-length movie. The result produced the forced jollity of a room in which the audience is strenuously urged to \u201csing along now!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few reviewers had the gall to call it. The New York Post\u00a0described it as<\/a>\u00a0\u201cexhausting\u201d and a \u201cself-absorbed and overwrought disappointment,\u201d a judgment for which the reviewer was likely shunned as a houseguest for the remaining summer season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our culture of fandoms, hashtags, TikTok sensations, semi-ironic Instagrammable cosplay, embedded anonymous reviews, sponsored endorsements and online grass-roots marketing campaigns, not every critical opinion is a deliberate commentary on the culture or the virtue-signaling of an open letter. Sometimes an opinion isn\u2019t some kind of performance or signifier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a crucial difference between liking the idea of a movie and liking the movie itself. Just as you could like \u201cJaws\u201d without wanting to instigate a decades-long paranoia about shark attacks, you can dislike \u201cBarbie\u201d without hating on women. Sometimes a movie is just a movie. And sometimes, alas, not a good on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Pamela Paul, Opinion, Jan. 24, 2024 We can all agree 2023 was a good year for the movies. Critically and commercially, several movies did well, and\u00a0only one\u00a0of those successes took place within the Marvel cinematic universe. Even the 10 Oscar\u00a0nominees\u00a0for best picture, announced on Tuesday, included nine actually good films. Is it safe now to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15155"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15156,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15155\/revisions\/15156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}