The Secret To Barbie s Success Is Nature
Barbie just isn t what the hyper-political minds of online punditry expected. It s hardly perfect. The male bashing is a little gratuitous. But the co-ed writing team of Gerwig and Noah Baumbach capture Barbie and capitalist, post-industrial America s very real struggle against nature without exactly taking a side. Men can be women, but women still have to make gynecology appointments.
It s a dangerous sense of indecision but it s one of which the film is almost unaware, as is the case with contemporary feminism s inability to grapple with, for instance, TERF-dom. The overarching theme of Barbie does not belong to a political party or cause. We d be kidding ourselves to think even most mainstream conservatives want, for instance, a workforce closed to women, a repealed 19th Amendment, or male-only credit cards. As Paglia says, We must honor the chthonian but not necessarily yield to it. This is the thrust of the Western pursuit.
Some argue that devolves inevitably into high-tech, genderless dystopia. Others, correctly as I see it, argue this will always be a tug-of-war between tech and nature, with tech at an often invisible, but important, disadvantage.
Emily Jashinsky. Smart, and cute.