Why do Republicans hate the Barbie movie?

This is The Guardian.

Moviegoers flocked to cinemas last weekend for the highly anticipated release of two of the year's biggest films, Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig's Barbie.

Barbenheimer, as fans have dubbed it, enjoying the biggest box office weekend since the pandemic and even soaring past big screen hits like Super Mario Brothers and Spider-man.

Gerwig made history as her cinematic reinvention of Mattel's most famous toy became the biggest debut ever for a film directed by a woman. But not everyone was delighted with this modern portrayal of a cultural icon. This movie is a flaming piece of dog.

Piled atop an entire dumpster on fire, piled atop a landfill filled with dogs, it is one of the.

Worst movies I've ever seen. Conservative senators, congressmen, right-wing commentators have been slamming the movie. Some going as far as burning Barbie dolls on YouTube for being, among other things, too woke anti-men. And even get this Chinese propaganda. So why do Republicans hate Barbie? Is the outrage real, or is it just another example of politics waging a culture war with one side trying to rally its base? I'm Jonathan Friedland, columnist at The Guardian, and this is Politics Weekly America.

I was an enormous Barbie fan up until I was, you know, about 10 or 11 years old I had.

A number of barbies. Amanda Marcotte is a senior politics writer at the progressive opinion website Salon, and the author of the book Troll Nation, which looks at why the right fell in line with Donald Trump. Now, for anyone who hasn't seen the movie yet, do not worry, there won't be any.

Major Barbie spoilers In this episode, my favorite was Barbie and the Rockers Barbie.

Of the sort of feminist critique of Barbie, like, Was this unironic Barbie fandom on your part?

I've always, like a lot of feminists, felt conflicted about Barbie. I think it's always been a little complicated, especially for people my age. On one hand, yes, there's no doubt that Barbie has these unreachable body standards, literally by any human standard. On the other hand, there's also no doubt that in the 80s, especially, Barbie was held out as this toy. That showed girls that they could be whatever they wanted, literally, the ads would be girls can be anything they want, you know, astronauts, rock stars, anything, etc. etc.

That iteration of Barbie, where she could do all these different things, and there was different professional versions of Barbie. That was the second wave, wasn't? It? Wasn't that, in reaction to the initial criticism of the doll, that it was, you know, a very traditional, limited view of women.

And what they could do, it really was. But it's surprising how quickly that happened. Because the Barbie came out, I think in the 50s or 60s, and when the second wave of feminism happened, they really targeted Barbie. And the owners of Mattel were like, Okay, and they changed the doll fairly early. Like, my aunt's only about seven years older than me, and she had a bunch of barbies from the 70s that I would play with. And they were also, I think, you know, a little bit more liberated than that kind of 1950s ideal of femininity.

So it moved on, all right. So look, now it's a movie. It is part of one half of the duo of two massive films of the summer, jointly dubbed Barbenheimer. If you'd had to guess in advance which one was going to become a core celeb of the American right, I think most people would have put money on Oppenheimer. The story of the father of the nuclear bomb. The film is quite critical of the United States.

Right is less interested in these kind of heady discussions about national and international politics and big moral questions about war and peace. And they're way, way more into identity politics, and particularly into anti-feminism. As both a kind of way to get their existing base revved up and angry. And also as a recruitment strategy. For young men, which is like the only place they can have any growth at all, is like young white men. And so stirring up a lot of girls. Having a good time seems like very obvious to me that that was what they were going to do. I'm genuinely surprised that they aren't lashing out at Taylor Swift for having this big concert series that has been so successful this year.

Give them time, is my response on that one, but it's an amazing, so interesting. You'd have called it in advance, you'd have thought that. In today's American right-wing politics, feminism is more central to the message than you know. The creation of a nuclear bomb without giving away any spoilers about the story. We don't want to do that. Let's get into some of, let's drill down into some of these criticisms that have been offered. And I think sort of leading the pack of the anti-Barbie movement has been the conservative commentator and sort of, you know, social media star Ben Shapiro.

The actual argument the movie is making is that if women enjoy men, it's because they have been brainwashed by the patriarch. And they make this message explicit in just a few minutes in the film, and when I say a few minutes, I mean several years, because this film took years off my life. It is long, it is boring, and it's terrible.

Who, incredibly, launched a 43-minute video denouncing the film and culminating in a bit of a stunt. Why don't you tell us what the stunt was and what his argument is?

Yeah, he set a bunch of barbies and Ken's on fire.

And also that they could have belonged. I mean, that's a waste of perfectly good, functional toys now burned to make a point, but what was the point he was making?

He was angry that the movie had a feminist message, which he, of course, called anti-male.

Anti-man, anti-masculinity. The way that they get immunity is by learning to hate the men that you got, That's the way that they have to learn to hit men. Okay, so, Ken?

Besides, it's not obviously like there's no. This has always been a lie that the right trots out about feminists that they're anti-male. But it's one that's extremely effective. Because a lot of men mistake having their privilege criticized with having their manhood criticized their gender identity, their their, their very existence. And I think if you put any logic to it in the slightest bit, it falls apart. But I fully admit that a lot of people, a lot of men, are feeling threatened because they have defined their gender in terms of their privilege and their superiority over women.

Which is a lie and a fiction. And let's just talk about some of the specifics, because they range beyond, just, you know, the feminist grievance he had with the film, or the grievance with the film's feminism. Rather, uh, he thought the jokes were a little too risque, that they were a little sort of on the edge for, uh, for a movie that's aimed at little girls. He thought there was a so he had a bit of an issue with the casting of a Black woman as president.

We have Black female President Barbie, because this, of course, the greatest of all possible worlds of Kamala Harris, the Barbie version is, is the President of the United States.

What more can you tell us about what was on his chart sheet?

Yeah, and obviously another thing that is driving them nuts is that one of the actors hired to play a barbie in the movie is trans. And this has been turned into a, you know, a claim that they're doing trans propaganda at children.

One of the barbies is a trans barbie, and this is treated totally normally as though this is a female barbie. With a voice, again, deeper than my own.

It's a little like the anti-Disney attack, right? Like the American right has this whole narrative where certain brands they consider traditional and somehow belonging to them, including Mattel, Disney. When they adjust to the times, I think there's this like angry outrage from the right. And they're not really kind of understanding why things are changing. It's not that they're woke or that Disney or Mattel is like trying to be progressive.

Disney.

Response was, she was, like, a little bit more explicit about the fact that it felt like a sense of betrayal. That Barbie is supposed to be, in her words, traditional and uphold, you know, traditional wife, traditional mother, which is just, you know, a code word for, again, second class citizen. And she claimed that she wasn't against barbies, like having feminist barbies, but there just also needs to be traditional barbies in the mix, which is an incoherent thing. Because this isn't about personal choices necessarily, it's about what your rights and privileges as a human are. And also it's missing kind of the point of what Greta Gerwig is doing with the movie, which is, you know, setting up Barbie Land. Is this fantastical matriarchy that is in opposition to the real world that women live in. And this isn't just about flattering the sensibilities of women who want to believe that it's okay to accept second class status in their own communities.

And it was a surprise coming from Ginger Gates because she'd actually turned up for the on the Barbie red carpet for the opening of the film alongside her husband. So people thought she was going to be supported, but she had a very particular issue with Ryan Gosling.

Who plays Ken in the film? Yeah, she said. He was low t. I pointed out in my response that barbies are made of silicone and plastic and they do not have estrogen, testosterone or any hormones. Actually, you know, no adrenaline, no, nothing, yeah.

And Pete, you know, this is all part of the gag of the film. But she thought that he was insufficiently, I suppose, yeah, driven with testosterone, lack of masculinity they were looking for in the film, but that's obviously part of the gag. I mean, you know, the the slogan they're selling the film on, I think, is, you know, you know, she's Barbie, she's fabulous.

He's just Ken, yeah, and that's, I will say, does get to sort of. What the objection Conservatives have to the film is because the fantasy Barbie land is replicating kind of the fantasy girlhood. Where before you know that you live in a sexist world that is often just oppressing women. Girls can kind of play this game where women are the ones who get to do everything. To be the star, to get all the ambition, to get all the jobs, and men just are the support system.

Support men. And, and, you know, we said at the start that this is now where a lot of conservative politics is located. In these battles over, uh, you know, culture, war issues and that national security, the kinds of that was, you know, used to be the sort of meat and drink. For Republicans is no longer some one of their central preoccupations, despite that, two Republican senators have seen in the film. Something which passed most viewers by which relates to the United States is ongoing global competition with China. Now just tell us what it was in the film that Senators Marsha Blackburn and Ted Cruz saw that they took great exception to. There's a Map.

In the movie, that has, I think, nine dash lines, and this was taken as secretive Chinese propaganda.

This is really designed for the eyes of the Chinese censors, and they're trying to kiss up to the.

Chinese Communist Party. Just to explain to people. There is a map in the film which shows the nine dash line, which China uses to assert its claim of control over the South China Sea. I mean it, uh, Cruz and Blackburn seriously suggesting this was dropped into the film, and I know. The government of the Philippines have also objected to it, saying they're not. They're going to sort of airbrush that bit out because that clashes with their view of the region. I mean, is the suggestion, seriously, that, you know, Ted Cruz? Is he seriously thinking this was done in order?

To advocate for China. I don't think Ted Cruz seriously thinks anything that he says. I think he likes to keep his base in a startup paranoid mindset. So that they are giving him money that they are all riled up to sort of support the GOP without actually asking hard questions about why they're doing this and what they're getting out of it. It is a symptom of how the Republican Party is increasingly relying on these fake culture war, these incidents, these conspiracy theories and just outright disinformation. In order to sort of control their base voters and kind of keep them from having any kind of relationship to the real world. That might make them start asking questions about what they're doing with their vote, what they're doing with their money.

I should say, just in case anyone is looking this up frantically, the map in question is not exactly a sort of accurate bit of cartography. It also depicts England as bordering Asia, and England has a crown on top. There's a whole lot of other things that people have picked up on and objected to. Fox News hosts saying, Why would they let our little girls have anything anymore? Your argument here is that this actually works to a larger Republican sort of approach to their constituency. Which is to constantly sort of alienate them from and detach them from the majority of Americans. Even to take something which is just an enjoyable summer movie and say you can't enjoy this. Because somehow you are, as I think the word you use is alienation, you're alienated from the rest of American life.

The main reason they're going after the Barbie movie is it's a hit, right? As I point out in the piece, Greta Gerwig's previous smaller films, including Little Women, also have these feminist themes. And you did not see this like kind of national temper tantrum from Republicans? But Barbie is like a legitimate hit. It's a mainstream thing and so when they do this kind of thing, they're trying to tell their base you are not part of the mainstream.

Imagine somebody on the right making would be, I think, as follows. Which is, it's not us who are pushing this constituency of people away from the culture, rather, that culture had moved away from that constituency of people. And this was a theme I heard a lot covering the 2016 campaign, where the Trump support was from people who, yes, didn't like the political establishment and the media. But they would often mention Hollywood, and they would often say supporters of Trump. They would say, you go to any movie now, and people like me, the people you're interviewing, would say, you know, the white man from the middle of the country. We are either depicted as stupid or as the kind of villain that, you know. I remember somebody telling me that, you know, you go to a movie now, if it's especially like, you take your kid to a movie. The minute a kind of middle-aged white guy appears, you know, that guy is going to, in the end be the baddie in the film. That was their sort of critique.

I mean, first of all, that's ridiculous. Look at the look at most movies, like it's actually kind of like Indiana Jones. Like, you can be an 80 year old white guy and you're still an action hero. Like that will never be available to women, so no.

It is for them, yeah. And I was struck by a line in your piece where you said that. The upshot of this might be that all it does is it succeeds in making that hypothetical sort of Trump voting. Fox News viewer You know, their kids and grandkids will want to come visit less often, you know? In other words, if you're raging against a summer movie, you're getting detached even not just from the rest of the culture, but even perhaps people in your own family. But I just wanted before we talk about how this might play out, even in politics, and obviously these politicians are leading this, and we've mentioned some of their names. Are we even in talking about this? In a way proving to the likes of Ben Shapiro and Ted Cruz? Why this works as a tactic?

Know, my book is called Troll Nation for this reason, I'm fascinated by trolling as a political tactic. And that's really what this is. And it works. Because, yeah, they trigger the liberals, they get people outraged, they get attention for it.

Let's pivot away, just specific, away from Barbie itself to the constituency that in a way has been turning out to Barbie in huge numbers, which is women. And as voters. And one thing that's been really noticeable is the American landscape politically, since the Dobbs decision, which overturned the Roe v. Wade constitutional protection of the right to an abortion. Since then, in every electoral contest, broadly speaking, Democrats have, and people who are pro-abortion rights have prevailed, more or less.

Are on the wrong side of that gender gap. Yes, I think that what we're seeing is that the Dobbs decision awakened a sleeping giant. One of the things that people really don't understand about the original Roe v. Wade decision is it wasn't just about abortion. Though. That is extremely important for women's health care, it was also a signal to women across the country that we own our bodies.

What does the Barbie Row and the Barbie wars that are currently being fought tell us about 2024 in two areas? I mean, one, do you think that we are going to be looking at a sort of widest ever gender gap in Republican and Democratic voting in 2024? And second, do you think that the kinds of issues that have been stirred up with this spat about Barbie are going to feature in the 2024 campaign? I'm thinking obviously of feminism and the kind of women's rights issues that we've talked about. But also the trans issue, which you mentioned, which comes up in this film because of the inclusion of a trans actor.

I think as much as Joe Biden and the Democrats don't want it to be, unfortunately, it will be, let me correct, that they do want it to be about abortion. I think that they would rather these culture war issues still be second banana to economic issues. But one of the things about the economy improving, which it definitely is, is that makes it kind of boring. And it creates even more of a vacuum for these culture war issues to sort of fill in.

AMANDA We always do ask our guests a what else? question, something completely different. This is a world away from Barbieland. Hunter Biden, the son of the president. We reported on the podcast a few weeks back that there had been a plea, a deal arranged, which would see him not go to prison over a couple of charges. Instead. That deal fell apart on Wednesday when he ended up having to plead not guilty to tax charges after a federal judge in Delaware said that she would need more time to look over the deal that had been struck between Hunter Biden and federal prosecutors, which would have allowed him to plead guilty but avoid a felony gun charge.

Fallen apart. What is frustrating to me is that this isn't a story. What Donald Trump does as a crime is a story. What Rudy Giuliani does as a crime is a story. Because those people are trying to get the reins of government, they're trying to get power.

No, no, no, and again, no. Well, that's a good and clear answer. We've gone from Babylon to Biden, and potentially back again, people will be seeing that movie.

Thanks for having me.

And that is all from me for this week. Do make sure to listen in next week for a Politics Weekly America special. And it really is special. As the civil rights activist, the Reverend Al Sharpton joins me to talk about 60 years since the 1963 March on Washington, when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous.

This is The Guardian.