Starts off really strong and fun.
The sets look incredible and its immersive. They had a really great message about body positivity and unrealistic expectations on women & I was all the way behind it.... Then rapidly spirals into a pure man hate / Women supremacy. Its obvious the writers have a huge chip on their shoulders.. It's messaging is so heavy handed it completely took me out of the movie & brings it from enjoyable to a drab 2 hour rant by an angry twitter blue user who think's women's rights is still in the 1800's.
They have this unreal take that you're set for life if you're a man and just get instant success. They think everything's better if you're a man (Guess what, it doesn't work that way. I'm told every day how I'm a bad person because I'm a man, and for only that.... Just like this movie does)...
Being preached at about why being a man is so bad for 2 hours does not make for a fun viewing experience.
It shows the glaring double standards of the current mainstream talking points.
This movie blindly preaches that "the world would be better if the shoe was on the other foot" and it comes across as tone deaf.
Its BAD all one gender "rules the world" but if its women, its A-OK!... which defeats the purpose of feminism.
Women getting equality, not supremacy.
call this a hot take but I think men and women should be equal..... but this movie thinks men don't even deserve a seat on Barbie world's court - that's insane.
Why is Patriarchy bad but Matriarchy good....????
Its either all bad or none of it is, and this man hating director needs to make up her mind.
@mattdeezly1996 The degree at which you missed the point of the movie is shocking. Men have run things since the beginning of time. During the middle of the movie, they showed how difficult it can be to be a young woman. Towards the end of the movie, it showed how difficult it can be to be a human. At certain points where men portrayed as.... well, the gender that has run the world? Yes, but why is that such a challenge to your masculinity? The movie didn't look down on men, it was trying to lift up people. Your review is proving the point of the movie. You need not feel threatened because a movie tried to show girls (or any human) that you can be more than you are.
@mattdeezly1996 If you think the point of the movie was "matriarchy good, patriarchy bad" then you really missed the point of the movie. It very clearly criticizes both, seeing the ills of being a man in a matriarchal world through Ken's eyes when he's in Barbieland, and the ills of being a woman in a patriarchal world through Barbie's eyes when she's in the "real world".
@robotsrebellion maybe if your head is so far up your own a** sure. You sound like you watched an entirely different movie. But I don't have time to argue with dumb f**ks who would give this garbage an 8/10
@adammorgan LFMAO! You can't be for real. It shit on men the entire movie. They were literally the butt of every joke .Its ok to like the movie and admit its anti-man. That's fine. Many people hate men full stop in 2023.
@adammorgan You sure are getting heated over this, I know its embarrassing to have L takes - but here's the thing. I don't want it to kiss up to men, I simply called it out for hating men blatantly. Its quite simple, but you don't seem to comprehend. If you don't like it, stop engaging with me.
@mattdeezly1996 And there it is, an "L" take. You're right - I should have just gone to Hannity to find out what I should think of the movie rather than one of the sheep.
@mattdeezly1996 You really weren't paying attention... 1) Michael Cera's character was a good guy the entire time, so no, not all the men were bad guys. 2) Barbie straight up apologized to Ken at the end because she recognized that she'd treated him badly in the past _and_ that the Kens were devalued in their society. She even had a whole speech about how the Kens should be their own people in their own right and not just be defined by their relationships with the Barbies! 'This is the opposite of the real world' is not the same thing as 'this is the better world'. Most of the jokes were pretty self-aware of that, IMO.<br />
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It honestly looks a bit like you're letting a victim complex blind you to this movie's values. Like: "They have this unreal take that you're set for life if you're a man and just get instant success." when they had a sequence where Ken tried and _failed_ to get a real world job just by being a man. He kept being told he needed degrees. It wasn't subtle.<br />
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As a final point, I hardly think the director thinks her film's message is some ~perfect depiction of feminism that single-handedly saves the world~ when the film poked fun at the idea of a piece of media being that self-important right from the start.
[9.2/10] There are parts of *Barbie* that aren’t for me. I am a guy. A “Ken” to use the film’s own lingo. I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman. I don't know what it’s like to face those challenges myself. So much of the film is about that experience, both the idealized version that Barbieland represents, and the sometimes harsh reality of it our unwitting doll protagonist crashes into in the real world. I can appreciate some of those things secondhand, and even be compelled by them, but they’re not going to resonate with me the same way they will for someone who’s been through it.
There are parts of *Barbie* that are very much for me as a guy. As someone whose high school Xanga page used to autoplay “Push” by Matchbox 20, some of the comedic tweaks of masculinity hit a little too close to home. I’ve waxed rhapsodic about *The Godfather* ad nauseam. I’ve played music “at” girls I liked. And more seriously, in my wayward youth, I treated romantic partners like a solution to my problems rather than ends unto themselves. The film’s playful jabs, and its more serious critiques, are on point, and will resonate even if you’re the target of them.
There are parts of *Barbie* that are for me as someone who simply appreciates when a film has a distinctive look and feel all its own. Director/co-writer/three-for-three visionary Greta Gerwig and her collaborators construct an incredible world for their title character. Translating a doll’s playspace for the big screen could easily go terribly awry. But their realization of Barbieland is stunning in how vibrant and creative it feels. Everything from the layout of Barbie’s neighborhood, to the movements of the characters, to the texture of the ground give this unique realm a tremendous sense of place. The details big and small are a brilliant example of how to blend the realism of modern film with the bizarre but endearing unreality of such a specific setting.
There are parts of *Barbie* that are for me as a lover of out there, postmodern camp. WIth that locale comes the wild cosmology of the film: a neat mishmash of a land of imagination crashing into the problems of modern life, of spritely cartoon characters finding unexpected cracks in their paradise, of goofy figures playing their roles to the hilt without a hint of irony, and of a wide-ranging satire that spoofs the gendered elements of society and the peculiar quirks of a toy box world at the same time. Bright colors, wild schemes, beachside battles, song-and-dance numbers, wide-eyed characters, undeniable weirdos, all wrapped in a candy-coated shell. If *Barbie* hadn't already dominated the box office, it would be destined to be a cult classic.
And as that box office take suggests, here are parts of *Barbie* that are for anyone. I’d argue they’re the most important parts. I may not know what it’s like to be a woman. But I know what it’s like to grow up. Beyond the gender critiques that swirl around the film, this is, first and foremost, a story about steadily realizing that the world is bigger, more challenging, and more complicated than the ones we perceived and imagined as children.
Through a nigh-magical bond with the young woman who played with her, our protagonist, Stereotypical Barbie, starts to think about death. She starts to feel existential dread. She deals with stress and fear and unease and even (gasp) cellulite. The most piercing aspect of Gerwig’s third feature is how it uses the doll’s awakening conceit to analogize both the humbling, terrifying broadening of perspective we get as we grow up, and the generational motion sickness we get from looking back at what enchanted us, what inspired us, when we were younger.
In that, *Barbie* is insightful. It is hilarious. It is delightful. It is inventive as all hell. And it is deeply profound.
What’s doubly impressive about all this is that the call is coming from inside the house. If Gerwig, for example, made a thinly-veiled “Malibu Stacy” movie, we’d praise it as subversive. Somehow, though, this is an official branded release that deconstructs and reconstructs the gender politics that Barbie reinforced and then evolved with, that satirizes the Mattel Corporation itself (headed here by one of Will Ferrell’s trademark manchildren characters), takes square aim at the patriarchy, and uses the existence of genitalia to symbolize self-actualization. To convince the powers that be to cosign such a transgressive take on a beloved icon is an achievement beyond the art itself.
How could the suits say no to talent like that though. With her Oscar-nominated pedigree, Gerwig brings the same reimagining virtuosity and millennial vanguard she showed off in *Little Women*. Margot Robbie simply *is* Barbie, embodying the blithely joyous icon, and then nailing the subtle and shattering changes that came as she slowly feels the weight of the world beyond her shores. Ryan Gosling nearly steals the show with his committedly weird, blithely blinkered, and yet somehow pathos-ridden take on Ken. Comedy vets like Kate McKinnon and Michael Cera bring wry laughs in perfect casting as “Weird Barbie” and just plain “Alan” respectively. And the diversity of the denizens in *Barbie*’s world is plus that aids in the sense that damn near everyone here is perfectly cast, no matter how big or small the role.
Despite its incredible successes, the film is not perfect. In places, it feels unfocused. *Barbie* strives to cover *a lot* of thematic ground in less than two hours. As a result, even though it remains stellar on a scene-to-scene basis, sometimes it comes off disjointed as a whole. While many of its criticisms are right on target, some feel like the male equivalent of “bitches be shoppin’”-style observations. That sense of caricature in some sequences fits the heightened tone of the film, but can seem comparatively shallow to the movie’s more incisive critiques and observations. Late in the film, those critiques and observations start arriving in what amounts to a few blunt spoken essays, rather than arising organically from the situation.
And yet, this is a film of great nuance. Despite the sense of Ken as a blithe, patriarchy promoting dope, the script has genuine sympathy for him, and even uses him to explore gendered marginalization in the context of Barbieland. It plays in the space of motherhood, examining the challenges and expectations that can drive parents and children apart but also the beauty and understanding that brings them back together. It manages to encompass nearly every part of the conversation *around* Barbie, while also internalizing them to one person’s journey of self-discovering in a way that feels surprisingly natural.
That comes from the sheer boldness and ambition of the story. A doll “malfunctioning” from her owner’s existential quandaries, barging into the real world and coming back shaken by it, with layers of meta commentary and Charlie Kaufman-esque recursive self-reflection, is a hell of a thing to try, let alone pull off with flying (mostly pink) colors the way Gerwig does.
What holds it all together is the way this story comes down to Barbie herself as a protagonist. After psychological tugs and troubles that are a metaphor for the growing, scary understanding we all develop over time, Barbie breaks down. She’s ready to give up in the face of it. She’s lifted up by someone who gives voice to the challenges and contradictions, but in the end, after this enlightenment, isn’t sure what she wants.
The conceit of making her creator a godlike figure, there to bless her and open doors for her, is one of the film’s canniest choices. In Rhea Perlman’s pitch perfect rendition of Barbie inventor Ruth Handler, Barbie has a mother, one who symbolizes the goal not just of feminism, but for all parents -- to try to make the lives of their children a little safer, a little kinder, a little better than theirs were.
So Ruth gives her child the gift of vision, a chance to see and feel the breadth of experiences that await her if she leaves the safety of Barbieland and a safe childhood view of the world, and trades it for the world of adulthood, with all of its terrors and pitfalls, but also a waterfall of joys, fellowship, and wonders. That closing sequence, set to Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?”, is the bravura crescendo of the film that surprised and moved me.
It is a cinematic showpiece to capture, well, life, and beyond that, the sublime, terrifying choice to embrace that complex array of experiences, good and bad, that await you. To accept that, to countenance the overwhelming scope of existence, knowing that it will overtake you and that it will end, is an act of profound courage, and a gobsmacking thing to successfully convey on the silver screen.
No matter who you are, you feel that plight. You feel that awe. You feel the spiritual catharsis of a doll who knowingly becomes a person, and scarier yet, a grown-up, with all that comes with both. You feel the hardship and hope of choosing to live in a messy and imperfect world and to be messy and imperfect. And that part of *Barbie* is for everyone.
The meanest thing I could say about this movie is ‘Has extreme Don’t Worry Darling energy’.
I have never seen a movie more desperate to justify itself. It’s trapped in this endless neurosis over what it is- a blockbuster Barbie movie in 2023 by an acclaimed art house director that is fun but also deep but also earnest but also self aware but also but also but also. Every point it raises it brings up a counterpoint to before the audience can, every frame is trying to prove it’s not just product but art. It’s never just Barbie. It’s never confident or even comfortable in its skin. You cannot for a second be immersed in Barbie because it’s not a story so much as a visual dissertation without a central thesis, it’s a student film riffing on the big dogs hoping it’s underdog audacity will carry it but given a budget in the millions. It so desperately wants you to like it, to know it’s in on the joke too.
Everythng is an ouroboros here: an endless loop of argument and counterarguement feeding itself. Isn’t it shitty how the Mattel boardroom is full of men? Ah, but isn’t it cool how Mattel’s acknowledged it with this niche? And it’ll mythologize Barbie’s creator but uh don’t worry she did tax evasion we know that, now let her impart into Barbie the experience of all women. Barbie helps women, Barbie hurts women, Barbie is told to be everything so isn’t she just like women, but it is better to be a creator than the idea, and in the end, hasn’t Barbie helped all these women? Oh uh why is this blonde white Barbie the centerpiece of it all and helping not only her diverse Barbie friends but a Hispanic woman and her daughter? Don’t worry we’ll have the daughter call her a white savior! But don’t worry we’ll have the mom say she’s not! It’s fascinating to watch, honestly. It’s a film that wants to prove to you so so bad that it works but it doesn’t and it knows it doesn’t and it knows you knows. It’s Gerta Gerwig wrestling with taking this job for an hour and a half.
The cast is more than game and able. Margot Robbie is doing her damndest to find the heart and soul in this role, and there’s one scene with an old lady near the end of the first act/beginning of the second that actually works, for just a moment, more than any of the big third act soliloquies or montages with emotional ballads. And as someone who’s seen Blade Runner 2049 and Drive, this is the best Ryan Gosling performance I’ve seen. The man commits and delivers a surprisingly compelling and entertaining antagonist. The movie can’t quite reconcile what he’s done with his ending, or tie it into the themes- is Ken letting go of Barbie and the need to define himself for or against her symbolizing the need for men to do the same, and if so, why play it so lightly and sympathetically?- but that’s not his fault. And the supporting cast are entertaining, but you just can’t have big laughs with a movie that feels like it’s constantly checking in the corner of its eye after every joke to see if you’re laughing, grin stuck in place. It’s not as funny or as smart as it wants to be, and the sad thing is, it feels like it knows that too.
There is some great set design, cinematography, dazzling choreography, popping colors, and some fun high points. But I can’t imagine many kids liking it. And we’ve seen how conservatives have taken this movie. And anyone’s who’s progressed beyond the politics of. Well. A feminist blockbuster Barbie movie will find it cloying or condescending or just incredibly basic. It’s aimed at a very specific crowd who will buy what it’s saying, the liberals who see corporate feminism as progress, who agree that it’s just about a little change sometimes, who are ready for something just a little more complex than a SNL sketch. I don’t regret seeing it, because I was deeply engaged the whole time seeing it struggle at war with itself, in pain for its whole existence. It’s not a boring movie by any means. It wants to say everything before the audience can say it first. It’s the endpoint of The Lego Movie and Enchanted- the corporations interrogating and justifying themselves, and the cracks in this formula are too large to ignore. It wants to be so much, and the attempt is as darkly mesmerizing as a fly thinking it can somehow and someway metamorphize into a butterfly and suffocating and struggling in its makeshift cocoon, but this is one Barbie that fundamentally just cannot break out of its box.
Damn, it must’ve took you longer to write this text than watching the movie itself. I think you went to see the movie with a hammer just to make sure you had a good reason to knock it down. It flatters you that you still gave it a 4, but let’s not forget that cinema is by all means just a form of art. All other statements are just extra layers that makes it hard these days to do something ‘right’. Sometimes things can be just ‘cool’ and ‘entertaining’. :wink:
Your comment is probably longer than it needs to be and I disagree that they knew the film was trying so hard to be all these things and failing. I’m pretty sure Greta and Margot believe that the film is perfect in its politics and its art and they probably think those two things go hand in hand.<br />
Apart from that you’ve given a reasonable rundown. It’s funny that the replies either think that you summed it up “perfectly” or they are attacking you personally without refuting anything you said.
[spoiler] The movie's message is very hypocritical because it claims to promote feminism but actually promotes female supremacy (women ruling over men, not the equality message that feminists tend to preach). The barbies getting their world back from the Kens is seen as fair and equal even though it is literally a matriarchy where the men are just there to entertain the women and don't even have their own houses. They switch from patriarchy to matriarchy but never mention it.
I am a very liberal person and I am completely for equality, but not female supremacy. And besides, if it was just a few references it would have been fine even then, but the problem is it is the film's main plot. The whole point of the movie is to lecture to men why they shouldn't be the ones in charge and make them appear as buffoons, as morons who can't do anything right, that's what I despise about this movie. The women are never portrayed as idiots except when they are in a brainwashed state, yet the movie claims to promote equality. That's the problem with radical feminists like the film's director (Greta Gerwig).
I guess next time, before I pay for movie tickets, I am going to actually read the critic reviews and make sure that the filmmaker is not a radical moron before I make my decision. This time, I just foolishly picked the movie based on the eye candy I saw in the trailer. And yes, the eye candy was there throughout the entire movie, but that's the only good thing about the movie, everything else was horrible. Ryan Gosling is a great actor but in this, he is portrayed as a weak spineless man, and the few times where he is portrayed as strong, it is only in a stereotypical way to make fun of him. If the movie really preached equality, it wouldn't be so focused on making the men appear as idiots or promoting a female dominated society, it is because of that kind of stuff that plenty of people (including some women) are against feminism. [/spoiler]
I completely understand wanting to tear down the patriarchal aspects of society or calling them out, but by replacing them with ideas of female supremacy, it makes the movie's message lose its credibility, because feminism tends to be about equality, not trading patriarchy for matriarchy, which doesn't even work in the real world. All matriarchal societies are either failures or they are stuck in a very undeveloped state and never make any progress. Also, there is a reason why some jobs are more male dominated than others, very few women want to work in construction, because it is dirty, it is a lot of heavy lifting, and it can lead to broken nails and even serious injuries.
@roveroppy A few feminists have fought to try to fix the system but because those problems only bother men and not women, most don't fight to fix it unless they can somehow benefit from it. Men's rights activists (MRA) are the ones who did the most good for the rights of fathers, but they are still heavily portrayed as misogynists or incels, which makes no sense, since they are just the male version of a feminist. Many feminists hate MRAs because fighting for men's rights leads to women losing some of their unfair privileges.<br />
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Most men are completely unaware of the fact that in first world countries, if they have kids with a woman, and end up breaking up with her, the best case scenario is they have the kids on the weekends, but that is only if they broke up on good terms, if she hates him, then she could make up lies about him so he gets no custody but still has to pay her a huge chunk of his salary in child support, that's the kind of stuff most feminists don't bother talking about. As for the institution of marriage, it costs thousands of dollars for the man to buy the engagement ring, then he has to pay tens of thousands on a wedding, and then lose half his stuff in a divorce and keep paying her for many years just to leave, on top of the money he has to give her so she can raise the kids with her new boyfriend. If men knew about that and the fact that more than half of marriages end in divorce, they would not get married and they would not have kids. In this day and age, you have more rights as a father if you pay for a surrogate mother and raise your children as a single father, then you can get a girlfriend and she will play the role of mother without any of the parental rights, because biologically, it's not her kids, that's how you fight the system and win as a man in this day and age. And since surrogate mothers can be upwards of 150 000$ in the west, the best thing to do is to go to a third world country where you will pay a few thousand dollars then fly back home with the baby. So far, at the age of 25, I'm not interested in having kids, but if I ever changed my mind later on, that is how I would do it, I wouldn't impregnate a western woman hoping everything works out unless she has a much higher income than me. By the way, that is the only way to win a divorce as a man, if she comes from a multi millionaire family and you come for a poor or middle class family, you are the one who will get the alimony and the most financial rewards but only if you do not sign a prenuptial agreement, if you do, then you are in a position of weakness because she can cuck you with no consequences.<br />
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Another great option is to move to a country like Thailand or the Philippines, where the women are traditional and will treat you with more respect than any western woman ever would, but the downside here is that if you want to leave, you have no parental rights over the children, since you're a foreigner.<br />
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By the way, people often wonder why so many fathers kidnap their own children, and the reason is because they cannot deal with the fact that they have to pay more than half their salary to their ex wife on top of losing half their money and resources only to watch their kids grow up with an often toxic stepfather who can abuse them. The biological father is put into a helpless position where he has no power so to fight the system, he breaks the law and tries to escape with his kid, which never works out because he always gets caught.
@melbournedh You're confusing self preservation for hate. Getting married as a man in this day and age is like putting your life savings into gambling with the reward being a loving family. Even though most of the people in my family never got divorced and my parents didn't either and my close friends' parents didn't either, it's not so much about the odds, but the consequences of failure, what it costs in terms of money and freedom most of all, the only ones who escape it are the ones rich enough to make proper use of prenups. When the average man tries it, he usually fails since it is not admissible in court.<br />
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I have a mother and a little sister that I love so don't try to guilt trip me, it's not going to work. I am a bisexual man and I feel absolutely no romantic attraction to anyone and I have been this way since forever. I still feel platonic and sexual attraction, I am still capable of loving someone just not being in love in the romantic sense so even if marriage didn't have those risks, I still wouldn't do it, just because in my mind, as someone who doesn't experience romantic attraction, it's not something that makes sense. I don't get attached to the people I have sex with, or to my friends, I enjoy what they provide them but I never get possessive, because of this, for many years I didn't even get what was the deal with cheating, which today I obviously know it's mainly about a betrayal of trust, and also the fact that most people feel possessive about their partner, like they own them in some way and are owned by them in a mutual consensual way, that is something I can never feel myself but can still somewhat understand it.<br />
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And yes, I am completely for equality but the world isn't. The problem with feminists is they complain men are privileged but won't acknowledge the fact that women are too. And although they claim to care about men's interests, in reality, very few of them do, and it can be seen in their actions and what they fight for when they go marching, the male feminists are treated with no respect, and are often viewed as infiltrators trying to cause chaos, because why would a man fight against his own interests? In the mind of many feminists, it just doesn't make sense, although they won't admit to it, to not lose credibility and to not appear misandrist.<br />
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In this day and age, people are so quick to call men looking out for their own interests misogynists, but what about women who hate men or want to kill all men, they are never called misandrists, although that is the proper terminology. If you ask feminists, they will tell you misandry isn't real, because if they actually were to admit to its existence, it could now be used against them.
@lazo I've combined and shortened your posts for you to make your points clearer:<br />
"I wanted to see a movie, so I chose one that made my penis tingly even though it is clearly marketed at women and especially girls. Instead of making me hard, I found out this movie used classic girls' toys as an entry point into a more serious topic. I was tricked into questioning my conservative values, and I'm unable to process my emotions to lead to fruitful discussion, instead I will allow it to turn into anger.<br />
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The messages in this movie were clearly broken down so that young girls could understand them, while doing their best to not turn off the easily bored. Everything was written carefully to be as explicitly explained to camera as possible to try and reduce the number of angry middle-aged men taking offence and writing bad comments online. These points did not work on me, because I was too angry to take in any of that nuance after approximately 20 minutes.<br />
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Also, I hold a number of clearly sexist and misogynist beliefs. I believe in 'old' feminism, but don't actually know what that is. I also think that MRAs are somehow 'exactly' the same, and not a cesspit of sexists, incels, and white supremacists. I needed you to know all this for some reason even though my argument would have been better if I had not revealed that I'd been radicalised online and was in need of intervention. <br />
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I would have been against this movie regardless of what its message was because my life is complicated and I'm trying to figure it out. Unfortunately, I'm looking in the wrong places for answers. It feels best for me right now that I take this confusion out on a movie, rather than addressing what is actually causing it."
@jackdoddy First of all, it always makes me laugh when people accuse me of being a conservative for looking out for my own self interest even though I actually vote liberal (not the liberal party but the quebecois party, which is french liberal in Canada basically since that is my first language), I especially do that because as a poor student, I need the money they are freely giving out, so being conservative would not benefit me financially. As for socially, as someone who is both bisexual and aromantic, it puts me in the LGBTQIA community which is liberal again, so calling me a conservative is really nonsensical.<br />
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Second, I didn't go watch the movie due to the looks of the actors, because as a 25 year old, my type tends to be people 21-25, not 33-42, no matter how good they look for their age, so I can guarantee you that I don't get turned on by looking at them and I don't picture them naked either, I'm just not into older people.<br />
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Third, putting MRAs in the same category as incels shows a clear lack of understanding of the different subsections of the manosphere, which most people don't even bother to research, including most journalists, which leads to a lot of misinformation. Just so we're clear, incels are virgins who blame their bad looks (mainly genetic traits) for their lack of success with women and the advice that is often prescribed to them of improving their personality or taking a shower tends to not work because their inceldom is often due to a mental disorder like autism, or just being too socially isolated to even make decent friends in the real world, so most of their friends are often like them. They are a byproduct of their environment, most not a threat to society just not in a happy state, which is why they often sound hateful, it is not because they are hateful that nobody wants them but because nobody wants them that they are hateful. Still a hard to grasp concept for most people who seem to never struggle at making friends or dating throughout their life.<br />
I have never identified myself as an incel because I have never been hateful like them, but as someone with high functioning autism, I have dealt with similar issues, although I am not a virgin and actually have a body count of 5, not to brag.<br />
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Other popular subsections of the manosphere are mgtow, pickup artists, and men's rights activists (MRA), and again, each of those are a different thing, each view women as a form of antagonist but most don't express hate in the way that incels do, they just view women as the enemy which is bad yes, but makes them completely unwilling to commit acts of violence against them, hence why every terrorist attack was committed by an incel, and not any other subsection of the manosphere.<br />
For a quick runthrough, MRA are men fighting for the injustices done against men in the modern world (unfair divorce laws, child custody laws, child support costs, no fault divorce, domestic violence bias and so on), they often do good in the issues that they fight for and thanks to them, men have earned better child custody rights over the years, but tend to lower the importance of women's issues, mainly because feminists don't care about men's issues, so that's their way of getting revenge.<br />
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MGTOW are men who are aware of the injustices against men but instead of trying to fight a broken system and risking ruining their reputation, getting cancelled and losing their job, they choose to just walk away altogether, often only from the injustices, not women completely. They may still date and have a romantic relationship but they avoid marriage, they don't have kids and they don't cohabitate (depending on the common law marriage laws wherein some states treat couples who cohabitate as if they were married and the guy has to pay his ex alimony to get her to leave).<br />
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Pickup artists are just men who date specifically to hookup with women and sometimes to form purely sexual relationships like friends with benefits, they don't see women as antagonists at all, but some of them do use manipulation tactics and lie about who they are to seem more interesting, some are completely honest though, it really depends. Most of them only do it as a phase during their 20s, (like how some women do with their hoe phase) and then they get married and live a pretty normal life.<br />
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As for putting white supremacists in the same category as the manosphere, that doesn't make any sense, since every single one of those communities is not based on race, except maybe the black pill community, where they focus heavily on looks, this is like the incel community but weaponizing looks theory to become more attractive, often leading to self improvement in the looks department, often just losing weight and gaining muscle, and dressing better and skin care, but sometimes also drastic measures like plastic surgery. Like white supremacists, they often tend to rank white men as better looking than everyone else, and have a lot of racist prejudices, but they are the only ones who fit into that category, them and incels. Also, I did notice some very small communities in mgtow who were black supremacists, but no white supremacists.<br />
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Finally, for the mentioned subtext, there is none, I mean the director clearly shows her position in every scene, using feminism as an excuse to spew as much misandry as possible without any negative repercussions. If you talk to a real feminist though, you'll quickly realize that they don't really think like that, but like I said earlier, the movement is still focused more on women's issues, often neglecting men's issues, which are definitely a thing, but rarely mentioned. Some feminists in the past did do some good at helping men though.<br />
A thing that the movie did not portray is the fact that the patriarchy puts men at a disadvantage by giving them specific traditional roles based on gender, like the draft, doing more manual labor, not talking about their problems.<br />
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The truth that most feminists are aware is that the enemy is the old patriarchal system of the nuclear family, and while some of it is gone, a lot of it still remains. But for the few radical feminists like Greta Gerwig, the enemy is men as a whole, even though the ones who are guilty for making that system died over a hundred years ago.<br />
My problem with the movie is not that it has feminist talking points, but that it shoves in people's faces misandrist beliefs and presents them as facts rather than opinions. And it acts as if revenge is better than actually fixing the system, by doing a complete role reversal, which is not at all what feminists are after.<br />
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So basically, if you did your research on these issues, you would not be so misinformed about those topics. It's easy to look at the big picture and start pointing fingers, but it takes more deliberate effort to actually put in the hours and find out what is actually true, rather than just blindly believing what a headline says. I tend to look at all the sides, and I never take sides, that is how I remain unbiased.
@lazo For someone who doesn't hold any conservative beliefs, you certainly like to repeat them word-for-word.<br />
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I understand the manosphere very well, following right-wing/grifting/conspiracy theorist/etc groups, particularly online, is of particular interest to me. Knowing about the 'manosphere' and the apparent differences between different sects is, funnily enough, a red flag in and of itself. It's hard enough keeping the worms out of my brain as an outsider studying the inside, let alone as an insider.<br />
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I hope you find your way out. The concept of 'MRA' is so vague and claimed by so many different groups, that it is nearly meaningless. The only thing all of these groups have in common is misogyny. If you're interested in actual discussions of gender politics you need to be able to have it removed from activist and pilled rabbit holes. You're a Barbie living in Barbie world right now. The study of feminism has far more useful and interesting things to learn _on behalf_ of the rights of men than I have seen from anything from that MRA sphere you're in. A not insignificant chunk of feminism is about helping men understand what has been done to us by 'patriarchy', and how developing better systems in society we can help ourselves in the process. <br />
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I would say a point of this movie might be to trigger exactly the thoughts you're having now, but you're just not in the right place to take them one step further right now. Step one is to not let that pill slip further down your throat.
@jackdoddy That's a lot of words to say absolutely nothing, you have given no arguments, nothing to prove what you believe in and nothing to prove that what I am saying is misogynistic. By the way, just so we're clear, the things I have learned can make life a whole lot easier but at the same time, I think for a typical person who experiences romantic attraction, living the single life forever wouldn't work because they would get lonely pretty fast. In my case though, I have always been happy on my own, and although I don't hate people, I get overwhelmed when I spend too much time with other people. Many would boil this down to just simple introversion but no, it is so much more. I don't experience romantic attraction and although I experience sexual attraction, sex is not something I need to be happy. I mean I have had it in the past and it was nothing special. People keep saying that if you do it with someone you love, then it's different but I personally have never fallen in love with anyone, a big part of it is the fact that I am autistic, so my interests matter more.<br />
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But let's say I was normal, I still wouldn't get married, but I would play it in the smart MGTOW way of avoiding any legal entanglements and just trying to date without getting the court system involved, by not getting married, not having kids and not cohabitating, but since I'm not interested in getting a girlfriend, I'm not even going to do that but I very well could.<br />
The red pill's dating strategy is to juggle multiple friends with benefits, like the bad boys often do. For most bad boys, it is an innate dating strategy that they didn't have to learn anywhere, they were just born to be that way, or in some cases, influenced by their environment but the red pill is essentially, guys who are overly nice who struggle with women, who turn the tables in their favour by learning how to act like a bad boy and they first achieve this by looking the part by building an impressive physique and it is a very effective method, hence why Reddit quarantined that community, because they didn't want men to get these tools, because naive innocent men were being taught to lie to their partner to get laid more, and society doesn't want that. Women used to have their own female dating strategy subreddit and seemed to be untouchable but eventually they got banned too, I guess Reddit doesn't discriminate towards one gender more than another unlike Twitch.<br />
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As for feminism, I'm not arguing against everything they stand for, but simply stating the fact that most don't fight for men's interests, although they hypocritically claim to do so, because they don't want to lose face when facing criticism and especially when going up against people who despise their movement. It is a movement built on lies, not all of it, but a big part of it is, like the wage gap, which has been debunked so many times, men put in more hours, work harder jobs so they make more money, with the exception of women who manage to dedicate their entire lives to their career by either choosing to not have kids or by getting a stay at home husband to do that for them. Plenty of government programs exist to give financial support to women in need but none for men, and I could go on and on but I won't.<br />
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Personally, I don't identify as a MRA or part of the manosphere in the slightest and anyways, it is pretty much dead, since it had been banished from every major platform including reddit and youtube, but its ideas live on and continue to benefit the lives of the men who were blessed by it. Back when I was 17, I was the typical overly nice guy brainwashed by romantic comedies to believe in the Disney idea of romance, and I had no clue about the risks of settling down in the 21st century as a man, and also no clue as to how to attract women, which, as I came to find out years later, boils down mainly to either having good looks (face, hair, physique, height, and so on) or having money or majoring in something that will give the man a high income job in the near future. Every man that I know who is in a relationship with a woman, I can identify exactly what made her attracted to him, and nearly every single time, it's his career. It is never his personality. His kindness does factor in but it is not the main factor that attracts her, it is just an expectation.<br />
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The only women I have ever had a chance with were those who were very short because with my height of 6'4", plenty of them have unrealistic standards of wanting a man much taller than themselves, and there were also those who were very tall and desperate to get with a tall man, but those who were in the middle in terms of height were often less interested. And anyways, like I said, it was never something I felt I needed, so the motivation for me to pursue them in that way just isn't there, although my potential for dating is actually very high and constantly increasing as I keep improving both my looks and income.
Barbie was fun and legit had feminism and the patriarchy at it's core but sometimes was a bit heavy-handed for even me, but that part wasn't targeted for me and that's ok, and I think a huge amount of people will love it. Although honestly wasn't as kid friendly as I was expecting akin to The Lego Movie, with a lot more real world issues presented.
I think the highlights are the sets and visuals by Rodrigo Prieto, Greta Gerwig as director and Margot Robbie in the lead role, reminding everyone why she's so amazing after a couple of recent box office duds.
The fact that I used to have a housemate that used to sing an acoustic version of “Push” by Matchbox Twenty to girls had me laughing a lot. I'll tell you The Godfather is a great movie, but you can go and watch it yourself :P
I think there will be a very vocal minority that will hate this movie, and a large amount of people that will vocally defend it. While I did think there was 1-2 occasions the messaging was a bit too strong I can also happily accept that for some people it will be amazing to hear it put so bluntly. I also really think that a lot of the vocal people that hate this movie, might also be represented in this movie and might lack the self-awareness of that fact.
A strong movie and while I think Oppenheimer was the better "Film" of the Barbenheimer combo, I think Barbie will be more memorable to it's target audience.
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