19 thoughts on “Barbie”

  1. I watched it, and it was indeed horrifying.

    It had long dialogs and polemics that sounded like absolutely humorless angry feminist stand-up routines, or university lectures from a gender studies class taught by an irate lesbian communist who wants to castrate all males.

    The movie ends with now-human Barbie being dropped off by the real human protagonists in the show. The wife and daughter mock the husband, then Barbie gets out of the car and walks into a huge and beautiful building for the most important day of her new life. I was thinking she’d gotten an important job at Mattel headquarters.

    But she goes through the doors into an impressive lobby, walks up to the receptionist, and after the usual quick questions the receptionist asks who she’s there to see. Barbie beams and says “My gynecologist!”

    It’s a movie that belongs on a psychoanalyst’s couch, not in a theater.

    1. heh heh. George now you know what all the girls were playing pretend about when they were playing with their Barbie dolls by themselves in elementary school. It’s human and primal and it’s only a movie.*

      Haven’t seen it myself, probably Oppenheimer though. Having been a student of this topic since high school and having read both of Richard Rhodes books I may have a super prompt critical attitude. Will they let me in the theater if I bring my lucky screwdriver?

      1. Back in the day, when I was taking ice skating lessons, there was a forty-something school teacher in the adult group. She showed up at the skating rink and announced that she came back from the eye doctor and had trouble seeing because she had a distance prescription contact lens for one eye and a reading contact lens in the other eye.

        Middle-aged Barbie! Tall and slender but with greying hair, and with her goofie contact lense setup, she couldn’t see at any distance.

      2. Our left-wing high-school History teacher took his A.P. class to see the play “In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer.” This was oh-so-politically correct, focusing on the drama surrounding the hearing to have Oppenheimer’s security clearance revoked, with earlier aspects of Oppenheimer’s life told through reminiscences of the characters on stage.

        The play touched on the main themes, with Oppenheimer’s position that the A-bomb was powerful enough for deterrence of the Russians during the Cold War and the H-bomb being unnecessary, to Oppenheimer’s affair with a woman with Communist ties to Edward Teller “betraying” Oppenheimer by Teller testifying to the necessity of the H-bomb.

        The play had its Army-McCarthy Hearing-style “sir, have you no decency” moment when Oppenheimer was pressed for details of a night he spent “consoling” his mistress about some circumstance in her life and taking the “gentleman doesn’t talk of such things” line.

        I guess I had empathy for this when I saw the play when I was too innocent to envision a scenario where Dad was cheating on Mom and what my reaction might be. Today, my thinking is what kind of stupid person was Dr. Oppenheimer for being in a position of high level of responsibility for our national defense and then cheating on his wife, which showed both a lack of probity as well as a vulnerability to being to being blackmailed by the Soviets into revealing secrets, let alone his mistress being a flat-out commie. This is also the same level of cluelessness exhibited by Congressman Swalwell being indignant about Speaker McCarthy tossing him off the Intelligence Committee.

        At the time, my form of rebellion against “correct thinking” and being dragged to see this play was that I shared with my classmates that my sympathies were with Edward Teller, that we needed even bigger H-bombs to counter what the Soviets could be building. A high-school student in a very liberal-left community expressing sympathy for the nuclear arms race was very subversive indeed. Today, if I hold similar thoughts, I don’t disclose them to left-liberal friends.

        Reading Richard Rhodes was a good counter to the play inasmuch that it doesn’t offer a cartoon-villian portrayal of Teller and gives a more nuanced account behind the clearance revocation. Something tells me there is nothing I do not know disclosed in the movie.

        1. Reading Richard Rhodes was a good counter to the play inasmuch that it doesn’t offer a cartoon-[villain] portrayal of Teller and gives a more nuanced account behind the clearance revocation.

          To para-phrase Teller (I don’t have the exact quote handy), his key testimony to the Strauss committee was that he felt that the scientists at Los Alamos did not work with the same sense of urgency on the Super (the fission-fusion-fission or H-bomb and which was primarily the only reason Teller was there to begin with) as they had on the A-bomb. And the reason for that was because of the attitude Oppenheimer took towards it and how it influenced others. His remark to the committee was not that Oppenheimer was disloyal to his country but that his attitude was detrimental to getting the work finished on the Super which was also considered by at least the members on the committee as important to the country at the time. After that, as he was leaving he apologized to Oppenheimer saying he was sorry. To which Oppenheimer replied, “After what you just said in there, I don’t know what you mean.” Later on Norris Bradbury, who had become the director at Los Alamos replacing Oppenheimer when he had left for the Institute for Advanced Study, took Teller off the lead for the development of the working prototype H-bomb. Mainly because he kept changing directions constantly making it difficult for the engineers to make progress. Giving the job instead to Marshall Holloway. Teller bet Holloway a dollar that “Mike” would not work. There is no record if Teller welched on that bet.

    1. If you are asking how Barbie could have anything remotely to do with Oppenheimer, the version of history in this movie is that Barbie is a Communist with whom Oppenheimer has an affair, events leading to Oppenheimer humiliated for having his security clearance revoked?

    2. Don’t know where I saw this, maybe on the main Web page at the U, but the reigning Miss America, who happens to be enrolled in the Nuclear Engineering program, sees herself as being the star of the BarbieHeimer movie.

      How about the ending of this movie? Does Barbieheimer end her career in disgrace for cheating on Ken with a man with ties to Vladimir Putin?

  3. My theater was advertising on its marquee all week, “Barbie & Oppenheimer, July 21.”

    Now that’s a movie that sounds like fun!

      1. There is some controversy regarding Barbie being derivative of the German “Lilli” doll. I first heard this on NPR, along with the claim that Lilli was sold to men in tobacco shops, with the implication that the men would purchase this doll in order to have impure thoughts.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild_Lilli_doll

        I never knew what the Lilli doll looked like, maybe a “thicker” version of Barbie? Looking at Wikipedia, I had no idea of how a doll could be so glamarous and ever-so-German at the same time.

        1. Maybe it’s because they smoked her? In this where the phrase “Hair on Fire” originated?

          2. Doesn’t “impure thoughts” have any meaning to you? This doesn’t involve smoking. Or at least not until afterwards?

        2. The source for the claim as to why men purchased the Lilli doll came from the NPR story. It wasn’t explicit, only hinted at, but All Things Considered is supposed to be a family program.

          1. came from the NPR story. It wasn’t explicit, only hinted at, but All Things Considered is supposed to be a family program.

            The National Panhandlers on Radio could use your support to keep Delicious Dish on the air. Every episode is bran-new and an outstanding value for your tax dollars…

  4. Hollywood seldom makes movies that interest me enough to watch them for free, much less to induce me to pay money to see them. They would have to pay me to watch this movie. A lot, like Powerball numbers.

    1. Yep. Haven’t been to a cinema for years, and then it was with my kids because they won tickets to see Paddington or something.

  5. I only saw Drinkers video, but if his description of the opening is correct, and I believe it is (others would call him on it), then Ashley has a messed up idea of being a mom.

Comments are closed.