Barbie and the Bomb

This is not a movie review

My sister was six years younger than me. When I was 12, she was six. And although I didn’t pay a lot of attention to her likes and dislikes as a young girl, I’m certain she was not a Barbie kid. My sister leaned more toward Etch-A-Sketch, and later softball, Donnie Osmond, and in her teens, cigarettes and beer. None of those things are Barbie-esque. I knew about Barbie in those middle years of the 1960s, who couldn’t, but I had no close association with the iconic doll,

Now, I can’t get away from it.

The new movie is everywhere. Reviews, trailers, interviews, and on and on. It’s hard to miss. And now it’s finally in theaters. Despite positive reviews, the movie is not for me. No interest. To me it’s another attempt by Hollywood to force themes and messages on an audience. Symbolism. Metaphor. Barbie wakes up to the world, becomes a feminist, realizes the real world is for her taking, and tries to change society through pop-song yuck, over-the-top design, and campy dialogue. I know, I haven’t seen the movie. But I have seen the trailers, and that’s enough, thank you.

This is not a review. It’s not meant to be. Don’t claim to be qualified. Instead, this is a criticism of American culture. Remember the Lego movie? Please. Now we are getting another commercial for another toy? Okay, you say, the movie is more than that, apparently. Still, you don’t think Mattel loved this idea from the get-go and will make zillions? At least in part, this is a movie to sell merchandise, Capitalism always loves a film tied to sales.

There is another movie I do want to see. Oppenheimer. The subject interests me. It’s a solid story based on real events about the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb., and although I’m certain there’s a Hollywood-fed message in this film about how humankind is determined to kill itself, what you won’t find in Oppenheimer is a dance number. This clearly makes it a better film for me.

These two movies are symbols of our strange and twisted American culture. We are obsessed with sexism, materialism, and the altruistic nonsense of how we can all see the light and change for the better—the theme of the Barbie movie. And at the same time, we are overwhelmed by the destructive nature of mankind even when it’s attempting to find a way to end all destruction Humankind has always, in some way, been attempting to destroy itself—the overall message, it seems, of Oppenheimer. More than anything else, it’s a horror film. Combine these two movies out in theaters together and there’s the strangest of our culture. We are frightened that we have the capability to blow ourselves to smithereens but are thrilled that we can do it while dressed in pink.

There is an incredible amount of buzz surrounding these movies, including lots of talk on social media about turning these two summer releases into a kind of go-to-the-movies mashup. It’s called Barbenheimer. Marketers on Etsy are selling t-shirts, a disturbing and odd combo of Barbie and the bomb. The idea is to wear them and then embark on a double-feature day, seeing Oppenheimer and Barbie back-to-back. The question is which one goes first. Do you get all warm and fuzzy and then nuke the planet, or do you nuke the planet and then feel good that Barbie has discovered what it really means to be an American woman?

Of course, she’ll have to live out her days on a desolate and scorched Earth, but, hey, she’ll look good, right?

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David W. Berner is the author of several books of award-winning personal narrative and fiction.