#[[ I'm in my barbie/ken era as a nonbinary person ]]

[chthonine]

I bought a "bimbo" jacket(fluffy pink n long sleeved) and all I need in my lift is wrio wearing one bc sigewinne made him wear it

[roseofblogging]

I've now seen Barbie twice and Oppenheimer once. They both left me with a lot of thoughts. It's also interesting how this cultural moment has got us comparing them due to releasing on the same day despite how different they are.

But not for the reasons we thought!!!

And I have my own thoughts!

I mean, yes, I knew going into Oppenheimer I was going to leave feeling heavy. I'm no expert on World War II history (I focused my history studies on the Cold War, and specifically Central/Eastern Europe), but we know the US bombed Japan, changing Japan forever. I've also watched the original Godzilla film in Japanese, Grave of the Fireflies, and plenty of other films focused on Japan's response to that traumatic and horrible experience. I can't shake all of that going into Oppenheimer.

I've seen some responses that the biopic goes too easy on Oppenheimer and the US, and while I never expected the film to have a specific anti-war bent (that would have been at odds with the person the film this is centering), it really effectively communicates the weight of the US possessing weapons of mass destruction. The pounding of the auditorium steps after the successful Trinity test, the shots of Oppenheimer imagining the audience dying as well as him stepping onto and breaking a charred body, the cacophony of cheers and terrified screams and stomping, and just...it was so, so much. I felt myself folding into myself, just so overwhelmed. It's such a good scene that carries through that emotional weight for the rest of the movie as Oppenheimer transitions into strongly advising against creating the hydrogen bomb in a race with the USSR. Not to mention all of the tension that underlies all US politics post-WWII in the era of McCarthyism, which still influences us today. Oppenheimer is not an easy film to watch.

But it's also strangely dreamy. Oppenheimer was a man who was wrapped more in ideas than in people themselves, and there are so many unreal, beautiful shots of particles, ripples on water, etc. There are also plenty of awesome (in the old sense of the word) shots of violence and impact from the atomic bomb.

Oppenheimer as a film is both complicated in how it portrays a complicated man, but it's also pretty straightforward in its morals and messaging, whereas Barbie hit me in ways I wasn't really expecting.

Barbie starts off incredibly dreamlike, and it sells the fantasy of Barbieland very well. The willingness to commit to the bit is one of the film's strengths in how it depicts that world (and then Kendom). But the movie, in my opinion, becomes less about Gender and more about our place in the world. Yeah, you can look at that through a gendered lens (both for the Barbies and for the Kens), but it's Margot Robbie's Barbie who decides to become a Creator, a Dreamer and not the Idea that others make. There's actually something very powerful about being an idea, but people will always be more complicated than ideas (maybe that's Oppenheimer the character's issue with women?). On her first foray into the Real World, Barbie sees that things are nowhere near as sunny as she expected. Women are of course not treated well, but even beyond that, from her spot at the bus stop, she sees a couple fighting, kids playing, two men laughing together in joy, and a person in intense concentration, ambiguous to me as to whether he's reading something and focusing or grappling with a heavy decision internally. The complexity of the world hits her as a tear rolls down her cheek (and mine!!!).

When I talk to people about Barbie, we all have such different thoughts on the film--especially for us women, nonbinary people, and both trans men and trans women. The doll is such a huge part of our culture and impacted us in different ways. Barbie has a complicated history that Greta Gerwig actually does a pretty good job of addressing. The Oppenheimer movie does not particularly look at the atomic bomb and its history with the same level of complexity; rather, Oppenheimer himself pivots from singlemindedly leading the research and creation of the bomb "for science" to then later singlemindedly protesting the hydrogen bomb. Yes, it shows him as a human capable of changing his mind, but doesn't get into the more specific nuances of it. He's first very for the atomic bomb and then very against the hydrogen bomb. Barbie, on the other hand, represents SO MUCH. Femininity both as power and as critique. Being everything (all of the different Barbies as a group) vs being one thing (Barbie as an individual, the character; made for a specific idea). Barbie as the trappings of gender roles vs. Barbie as uplifting. Barbie is everything, good and bad.

Yeah, there are issues with both films. Oppenheimer has some very weak dialogue, and Oppenheimer himself is, uh...problematic, as we say? Barbie has pretty paper thin Feminism 101. It never gets into how capitalism specifically impacts feminism and seeks to uphold gender roles and gendered expectations. It's definitely not Marxist, h aha. (But I also never expected it to tackle that. After all, it's still produced by Warner Bros and Mattel.)

I didn't expect Oppenheimer to be so dreamlike. And I definitely didn't expect Barbie to give me so many emotions about mothers and daughters and becoming your own person, going beyond the story made for you. That's what made me cry in Barbie during the final montage of childhood memories from all the staff/cast members on the project.