I agree with most of your response, however, I don’t think that any of the folks who contributed to the $100 million are thinking people. Devastating for humanity, but true. Thank you. As a fellow writer, having had even the semblance of an exchange with you has made my day and possibly my week.
This was SO GOOD and so incredibly important. I think Barbie placed the word 'patriarchy' into our modern vernacular more than any other mainstream media piece before, but you nailed it in this essay. This bit was SO good: "Capitalism, by its very design, is adept at co-opting movements, at turning dissent into dollars. It is a system that can celebrate the idea of feminism, so long as it remains profitable. Within the system, Barbie is joyous and entertaining. But we must recognize the difference between how it appears to create progress versus actual, substantive change."
Barbie allowed so many feminists better access to understand the oppressive structures they live within, but you're right when you say a lot of that fell into harmful WW feminism that isn't intersectional and it sure didn't drive forward the community aspect of anti-patriarchal work. It was nice to hear a critique on the patriarchy, but to pretend it was anything more than scratching the service is the very thing that WW feminism does: Celebrates progress until that progress threatens our own relationship to white-supremacist capitalistic patriarchal benefits.
Makes me think of a recent Rebecca Stevens A. piece where she discussed the fall-off of WW feminism after 2021 in the anti-racism space, hoping the collective trauma would catalyze real change but once again WW feminism was challenged with the way it was also contributing to patriarchal structures and unwilling to disengage with the privileges that come along with that. It really is so heartbreaking to think that out of our deep desire for belonging, the patriarchy has only equipped us with ways to further alienate each other -- but of course, that's the point, huh?
Great writing, my goodness, Frederick! Thank you for sharing your words and thoughts with us.
You always do such an incredible job of taking situations and putting words to them that as I’m reading I’m thinking OMG YES - I.e. so many ppl looking for validation through the Oscar’s to prove the point of the movie. Also the notion of expecting a movie about feminism while operating in a misogynist business owned by males is another example. Thank you Fred, I’m always grateful for your work
This is a great point, thank you. And I felt this was the case with The Whale... It was extremely divisive, and the bigger bodied culture critics that I follow completely excoriated it. In the wider film landscape, I can barely think of one film with a bigger person in a lead role, where they're taken seriously, respected, and their weight isn't the sole focus. More often, they're occasionally cast as a supporting actor in a comedy and are strictly there for the comic relief... I think on its own The Whale was moving and tragic, and we saw and felt Brendon Fraser's humanity (even if the script itself seemed to encourage the idea that he was "grotesque"). But I know many bigger bodied people found it awful and I cannot speak for their experience.
In my view The Whale was carrying enormous expectations it couldn't meet: to represent the lives and experiences of all bigger bodied people, because they are never the focus of sincere storytelling; and in focusing on a more extreme end of the spectrum, it was charged with stereotyping the lives of big people as miserable ones. Clearly another group that would really appreciate having more than rare and very one-dimensional representation
I haven't seen the Barbie movie, but you've just confirmed all the reasons I haven't. Being a working class woman, I consider myself a feminist, but have never felt comfortable in feminist circles. Class discomfort, I think.
Try reading Thomas Sowell's Discrimination and Disparities, and then maybe you will learn how foolish you look. You are not anti-racist: you are seeding it. America knows better. Malcolm X knew better too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alrxnLK9AxA
"The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way. The liberal is more deceitful, more hypocritical, than the conservative. Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the negro’s friend and benefactor. And by winning the friendship and support of the negro, the white liberal is able to use the negro as a pawn or a weapon, in this political football game that is constantly raging between the white liberals and the white conservatives. The American negro is nothing but a political football, and the white liberals control this ball, through tricks or tokenism, false promises of integration and civil rights. In this game of deceiving and using the American negro, the white liberals have complete cooperation of the negro civil rights leaders who sell our people out for a few crumbs of token recognition, token gains, token progress. "
White liberals exploit black suffering to seed racism against white people. How can that not work out well? LOL
Pardon my oversimplification. I am a fan of simple. It reaches more people. The gift of this film is not entertainment. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Mattel did not write this film. That the artists who crafted it used Mattel to fund it, does not take value away from what it has achieved. No thinking person walked away uttering, “I’m gonna go buy some Barbies! Mattel is a lovely company that cares about equality.” The masses will do what they always have. I witnessed first hand… young white educated men saying, “I don’t want to watch that! It questions the patriarch.” It sure does mf.
I wasn’t quite sure whether you were shitting on Barbie or celebrating it and then realized that you were doing both. Your thinking is brilliant. If I could just get someone to synthesize it into something that doesn’t require a masters degree in English to ingest. Not a dig.
I agree with most of your response, however, I don’t think that any of the folks who contributed to the $100 million are thinking people. Devastating for humanity, but true. Thank you. As a fellow writer, having had even the semblance of an exchange with you has made my day and possibly my week.
This was SO GOOD and so incredibly important. I think Barbie placed the word 'patriarchy' into our modern vernacular more than any other mainstream media piece before, but you nailed it in this essay. This bit was SO good: "Capitalism, by its very design, is adept at co-opting movements, at turning dissent into dollars. It is a system that can celebrate the idea of feminism, so long as it remains profitable. Within the system, Barbie is joyous and entertaining. But we must recognize the difference between how it appears to create progress versus actual, substantive change."
Barbie allowed so many feminists better access to understand the oppressive structures they live within, but you're right when you say a lot of that fell into harmful WW feminism that isn't intersectional and it sure didn't drive forward the community aspect of anti-patriarchal work. It was nice to hear a critique on the patriarchy, but to pretend it was anything more than scratching the service is the very thing that WW feminism does: Celebrates progress until that progress threatens our own relationship to white-supremacist capitalistic patriarchal benefits.
Makes me think of a recent Rebecca Stevens A. piece where she discussed the fall-off of WW feminism after 2021 in the anti-racism space, hoping the collective trauma would catalyze real change but once again WW feminism was challenged with the way it was also contributing to patriarchal structures and unwilling to disengage with the privileges that come along with that. It really is so heartbreaking to think that out of our deep desire for belonging, the patriarchy has only equipped us with ways to further alienate each other -- but of course, that's the point, huh?
Great writing, my goodness, Frederick! Thank you for sharing your words and thoughts with us.
You always do such an incredible job of taking situations and putting words to them that as I’m reading I’m thinking OMG YES - I.e. so many ppl looking for validation through the Oscar’s to prove the point of the movie. Also the notion of expecting a movie about feminism while operating in a misogynist business owned by males is another example. Thank you Fred, I’m always grateful for your work
This is a great point, thank you. And I felt this was the case with The Whale... It was extremely divisive, and the bigger bodied culture critics that I follow completely excoriated it. In the wider film landscape, I can barely think of one film with a bigger person in a lead role, where they're taken seriously, respected, and their weight isn't the sole focus. More often, they're occasionally cast as a supporting actor in a comedy and are strictly there for the comic relief... I think on its own The Whale was moving and tragic, and we saw and felt Brendon Fraser's humanity (even if the script itself seemed to encourage the idea that he was "grotesque"). But I know many bigger bodied people found it awful and I cannot speak for their experience.
In my view The Whale was carrying enormous expectations it couldn't meet: to represent the lives and experiences of all bigger bodied people, because they are never the focus of sincere storytelling; and in focusing on a more extreme end of the spectrum, it was charged with stereotyping the lives of big people as miserable ones. Clearly another group that would really appreciate having more than rare and very one-dimensional representation
I haven't seen the Barbie movie, but you've just confirmed all the reasons I haven't. Being a working class woman, I consider myself a feminist, but have never felt comfortable in feminist circles. Class discomfort, I think.
Truly incredible piece of writing! Changes a lot of my perspectives! Thank you!
Try reading Thomas Sowell's Discrimination and Disparities, and then maybe you will learn how foolish you look. You are not anti-racist: you are seeding it. America knows better. Malcolm X knew better too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alrxnLK9AxA
"The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way. The liberal is more deceitful, more hypocritical, than the conservative. Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the negro’s friend and benefactor. And by winning the friendship and support of the negro, the white liberal is able to use the negro as a pawn or a weapon, in this political football game that is constantly raging between the white liberals and the white conservatives. The American negro is nothing but a political football, and the white liberals control this ball, through tricks or tokenism, false promises of integration and civil rights. In this game of deceiving and using the American negro, the white liberals have complete cooperation of the negro civil rights leaders who sell our people out for a few crumbs of token recognition, token gains, token progress. "
White liberals exploit black suffering to seed racism against white people. How can that not work out well? LOL
Pardon my oversimplification. I am a fan of simple. It reaches more people. The gift of this film is not entertainment. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Mattel did not write this film. That the artists who crafted it used Mattel to fund it, does not take value away from what it has achieved. No thinking person walked away uttering, “I’m gonna go buy some Barbies! Mattel is a lovely company that cares about equality.” The masses will do what they always have. I witnessed first hand… young white educated men saying, “I don’t want to watch that! It questions the patriarch.” It sure does mf.
I wasn’t quite sure whether you were shitting on Barbie or celebrating it and then realized that you were doing both. Your thinking is brilliant. If I could just get someone to synthesize it into something that doesn’t require a masters degree in English to ingest. Not a dig.