How predictable was it that the new Barbie film would be a vehicle for the worst anti-man prejudices of the modern era, with every male character either an idiot, bigot or loser? Sarah Vine gives her verdict in the Mail, saying that she feels sorry “for those who subscribe to this nonsense — and for the young men growing up in a world that tells them they’re worthless”. Here’s an excerpt.
Every one of the screens in the place had been commandeered by Barbie. I took my daughter Bea, 20, with me — partly because she’d nagged me half to death about coming, partly as an unsullied Gen Z counterpoint to my grumpy mummy stance on Barbie.
Despite the tagline — “If you hate Barbie, this is the film for you” — I didn’t really think I was likely to be the target audience. And so it transpired. She loved every second; me, not so much.
My main criticism, actually, has nothing to do with the subject matter. Barbie or no Barbie, it’s not intrinsically that good a film. It’s uneven, disjointed, the plot makes no real sense — and the dead hand of corporate America weighs heavily upon it.
For sure, Mattel is superficially mocked in the shape of a bumbling CEO and his be-suited sidekicks. But the opening scene, in which a group of little girls smash their boring ‘old‑fashioned’ dolls’ heads in, with alarming violence, at the appearance of their Barbie messiah, is actually quite sinister. As is the appearance of the ‘ghost’ of Ruth Handler, Barbie’s inventor, as some sort of God-like figure.
But my main objection is that Barbie is not really a film about Barbie at all. It’s one hour and 54 minutes of extended misandry, dressed up with a few fun dance routines and one or two (granted fairly decent) jokes.
It’s a deeply anti-man movie, an extension of all that TikTok feminism that paints any form of masculinity — other than the most anodyne — as toxic and predatory, and frames women’s liberation not as a movement based on achieving equality between the sexes but as a cultural revenge vehicle designed to write men out of the story altogether.
Every male character is either an idiot, a bigot or a sad, rather pathetic loser. If the roles were reversed, and a male director made a film about how all women were hysterical, neurotic, gold-digging witches, it would be denounced — quite rightly — as deeply offensive and sexist.
In a nutshell, Barbie and Ken set off on an adventure to the real world to discover the source of Barbie’s sudden and uncharacteristic anxiety. Barbie gets a nasty shock — she’s not as universally popular as she imagined. Ken, on the other hand, has a tremendous time, plugging into the macho culture of LA and discovering that there is such a thing called the ‘patriarchy’.
He then turns into a ‘real man’ (again, sketched in the most one‑dimensional of clichés), goes back to Barbie Land, organises the equivalent of an incel uprising (quite literally, given Ken’s lack of tackle) — and brainwashes all the Barbies into becoming his willing slaves. Strong Andrew Tate vibes, put it that way.
Queen Barbie, a.k.a. Margot Robbie, must then mobilise a counter-revolution, which she does with the help of her human friends — mother and daughter duo Gloria and Sasha. Using their Barbie wiles, they put the Kens back in their boxes. The film ends with her checking into a gynaecology clinic, presumably so she can become a ‘real’ woman.
It only goes to further confirm the infamous double standards of woke culture, where despite the railing against ‘oppressive’ stereotypes, all the worst stereotypes are levelled at any demographic group (men, white people, older people, etc.) seen as falling into the facile ‘privileged’ class.
Worth reading in full.
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Don’t care, I’ll never watch the shyte!
Sure and it’s healthy not to get drawn into this stuff too much. However the problem is the cancerous effect on our youth is still multiplying. So in a wider sense, some action needs to be taken.
I prefer actions that find opportunities:
All the films that are doing best, it seems, are resolutely un-woke. Maybe a bank which states it will take customers of any political persuasion should open up. The Daily Wire are doing great stuff with streaming content – documentaries and some more films in the pipeline. Rumble are attracting ever more content producers, because they are so concerned about the randomness of YouTube bans and demonetisation. Twitter is now paying content creators, and it seems now successfully attracting increasing numbers because of this coupled with its anti censorship stance. Jeremy Boring did a great job establishing a competitor to Harry’s Razor’s when they released a ridiculous anti-customer woke rant advert. He has taken a huge chunk of their market share in the US and also produced one of the greatest adverts ever.
Oh and let’s not forget this website – the Daily Sceptic. It appears to have established itself and I hope finances are doing well.
So there are many reasons to be hopeful but we need to work harder to find new opportunities, because the tide, though showing signs of turning, is not yet turned.
Politics, like nature itself abhorrs a vacuum. But vacuums are loved by entrepreneurs. It is pure opportunity. Such is the power of the free market that they are trying to destroy.
..me either Dinger..just the description here had my brain dribbling out of my ears!!!
I DO care. I have two adult sons – fortunately born before the anti white male propaganda really kicked off.
If they were children or even young teenagers now, I’d be seriously concerned about the messages they were constantly getting.
Most TV ads only feature simpering, dimwitted effeminate men unless they are black
Yep it’s been like that for years. There are even a couple of black man YouTuber’s I’ve seen drawing attention to it and laughing at how ridiculous it is (and also slightly offended by the implication they “need the cultural help” – but only slightly offended, because they are of the right politics so are made of sterner stuff).
We are without doubt living in one sick world today.. or should I say sick Western world. All playing out as planned to bring about the West’s ultimate destruction.No stone is being left unturned, every institution undermined and destroyed.. bit by bit..
Nothing like this happens in a vacuum.. its not a spontaneous idea.. every Western country is effected in the same way at the same time as if by magic. Its not magic of course, its been long in the planning.
So who’s going to name the planners ????
Me….. Neo-Bolsheviks
Kalergi Plan…
The 8 genders of the Talmud……..
Talmudic.. Everything that is happening now is Talmudic.
Palestine has come home….
Ukraine… Zelensky… Puppet for the same people..was not placed by the CIA
When it’s released in China, it is called “Baizuo”, rather than “Barbie” and billed as a comedy.
Sounds pretty much like every other major Hollywood movie from the past 10 years at least.
I was pointing out this misandry back in the 1990s. I was reviewing films for the the local paper and had to sit through ‘chick flicks’ so other people didn’t have to. Overwhelmingly, they involved the noble female protagonist in a relationship with a cheating wealthy man and her group of female friends all in relationships with weak, lying, scheming men as the women all support each other when they ditch said cheating, weak, lying, scheming men. It was particularly noticeable in films such as The First Wives Club and Waiting to Exhale.
You see the attitude in the wider sphere now. In 2000, I flatshared with some girls. One was a complete misandrist. She hated men, used them for recreational sex, then went out of her way to break them. It wasn’t enough to dump them. She was incredibly unpleasant to me: she said it wasn’t personal, but she didn’t want to live with a man because it meant she couldn’t express herself as a woman.
Another woman I flat-shared with reduced her boyfriend to alcoholism with a steady campaign of niggles and undermining him. Many women now consider men little more than animals. If a man upsets a woman, it’s Patriarchy and misogyny. If a woman upsets a man and he retorts, he’s a ‘stalker’.
The media bears much responsibility for this. This has been a deliberate – and successful – campaign across many years. I bring up her name often, although I’m not an objectivist, but Ayn Rand said back in the 1950s that the aim of the modern left was to destroy the strong, independent man, because once they’d done that, they could seize control. And they have done so. There’s such a cultural and legal quagmire around men that it’s almost impossible to function. For a man in the modern workplace, it’s a minefield where one false accusation, or one ill-placed remark that was fine last week, but not this week, can lose you your job, your reputation and your career. That’s before all the additional policies against ‘microaggressions’ and ‘white supremacist’ ideologies come into play.
In essence, everyone, male and female is being tied up in legal knots and men in particular are getting hit right now. It’ll hit women just as hard once men have been broken.
This Barbie film is just one of many, but it’s an example of how ‘they’ are going after our children. The film sounds like merde. I hope it tanks.
Your last point is significant. One might consider the eradication of “Manhood” to be a project of (some) women. But now we find the deliberate elimination of “Womanhood,” and it’s not by males biting back, but by some new category who are neither men nor women.
And so it is the elimination of the very God-given duality of humanity that is the strategic enemy of – whoever. And perhaps NeilofWatford has it right in drawing a comparison with the elimination of real Christians.
Destroy the creation, and you can sideline the Creator. Maybe that enables you to play God, but to play God is not to be him.
It makes me think of Tiberius- and Caligula-era Rome. Decadence, hedonism and a fear throughout society that ‘they’ can come for you anytime!
I agree with a lot of what you say….there has certainly been a ‘feminisation’ of men that has gone beyond what most women, like me, ever thought about when we were just trying for some workplace equality back in the 70’ and 80’s….
The whole thing, as John says in his comment, has gone off the rails now..in one way or another and includes men women and children…
I certainly couldn’t go back into the workplace..I’d be sacked within 24 hours!!
Don’t know if people have seen this story….an 18 year old girl in the USA joining up, and finding she has to shower and sleep with two ‘transitioning women’….!!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12311291/Female-military-recruit-18-considered-quitting-forced-shower-transgender-women-not-undergone-medical-reassignment-surgery-afraid-complain-case-harmed-career.html
I also posted this a couple of days ago in the forum..it’s a good interview with Andrew Tate and Tucker Carlson….and is well worth a watch….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFP37Biip8Q
They’re already hitting women ….. we are being “cancelled” as a sex.
I must confessc I havent seen Barbie (yet!), but have observed every Christian portrayed on telly is much the same.
Well, waddayaexpect? There is no real purpose for men, especially young men, in our society. The best they can really hope for is being offspring of a sufficiently well-to-do family that they can fake something for a long while while spending other people’s money and all they usually end up as is some guy (among a dozen others) playing the clown for a bunch of relaxedly bored young women in the hope to catch one out when she’s drunk enough to score with her. It’s just missing the other half of the picture: There’s no real purpose for women, especially young women, either and they’re – on balance – exactly as stupid and superficial as their male counterparts. Hedonism hell to each other and in the meantime, let’s have some comedy!
NB: This is hyberbolically cynic and paints only a part of the picture but one which occurs often enough in a world where sixtysomething people pride themselves in never having grown up, ie, not having learnt anything since they were about 16, just a little worn off over time.
I think Pearl Davis has some interesting things to listen to about the subject You can tell by the reaction of a certain group that she’s over the target…
I am surprised that a certain Californian princess wasn’t chosen for a leading role.
Not fat enough, black enough or gay enough so they’ve had to stick with a privileged white australian!
The word faggot would have fitted the headline alliteratively.
Of course, Warner Bros.. Polish Jews….
Don’t know if anyone has seen Sound Of Freedom yet….but my brother tells me it’s very good..
It’s apparently got the ‘critics’ in a flap, calling it crap, crap, a conspiracy theory, far right and Q Anon etc etc….so if they hate it so much, it might be the one to go and see?
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230718-unlikely-hit-sound-of-freedom-opens-new-front-in-us-culture-wars