Barbie

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, just jumping in with a quick announcement, a very exciting one. In addition to the shows that you'll hear, Jamie and I plug on this episode for our upcoming Shrek Tannic tour, we just added a show in Dublin on May twenty ninth. We will be at the Irish Film Institute and we are covering Titanic. So come to that show that we were finally able to confirm in Dublin. We're so excited for it. And then, speaking of Dublin, come to my birthday show. I'm doing a stand up comedy show with me and local comedians on my birthday on May seventeenth, also in Dublin. That show is at Hysteria Comedy Club. Tickets to both shows, as well as tickets for all of the other shows on this tour, can be found at Linktree Slash Bechtel Cast.

00:00:52
Speaker 2: Enjoy the episode on the bich Doodcast.

00:00:55
Speaker 3: The questions ask if movies have women and are discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zephim vest start changing.

00:01:07
Speaker 2: With the Bechdel Cast.

00:01:09
Speaker 1: Hi, Barbie Caitlin, Hi, Barbie, Jamie and Hi, Barbie listeners.

00:01:15
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for tuning in. This is the Bechdel Cast. My name is Barbie Jamie Loftus.

00:01:21
Speaker 1: And my name is Barbie Caitlin Durante. And this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel Test as a jumping off point. And this is a special episode because we went on tour covering the Barbie Movie. We went to a bunch of cities. What you're about to hear shortly is the live show that we did. We this is the audio from the Sacramento show we recorded.

00:01:50
Speaker 2: This tour was such a blast we've in the past. I mean, let's let's get into it. Folks. You know, you're our family, your emergency contacts and vice versa. So yeah, we were really excited to do the Barbie Show live. This is sort of our first time doing We did a five city tour, but we only covered two movies and most of them were Barbie. And it was a really cool experience because I feel like we got the opportunity to build out I mean, I feel like a lot of the time with the live episodes, we've built out an episode, but this time we got to build out a show and like it was just such a blast. We went to San Francisco's, Sacramento, Dallas, Austin, and San Diego. Four out of five of those cities were the first time that we were going and meeting folks, and it was just truly the best, And I mean it was just really cool to see, you know, like a real sense of camaraderie among Bachtel cast listeners. We had a lot of people dressing up like just we come out of live performance and most of the time we're cooped up in our homes intensely discussing film and it's fun discourse and then it's just like really fun and freeing and nice to do that with the people who listen to this show. So if you attended any of these shows, thank you so much for coming. Barbies. Chances are that we talk to you personally because we are we enjoy doing that. It's really fun and quite frankly, I just like to see everyone's little outfits they're wearing. To quote the Will Ferrell character I hate in this movie in the least creepy way possible. Yes, but this was a blast, and so this is our one of our live shows. If you enjoy the vibe you're picking up and you happen to live in the UK, well, guess what good news. We're going on tour in the UK. We sure are.

00:03:54
Speaker 1: At the time of this recording. We have shows booked in late May in London, Oxford, Manchester and Edinburgh. So if you live in or near any of those places, or also if you just kind of live like anywhere to do like a little good trip. Yeah, if you want to do a little trip, we're taking a trip, so you should too, So come see us live in the UK. Tickets for those shows are at link Tree, Slash, specdel Cast And we're so excited because we're covering Titanic and Shrek.

00:04:34
Speaker 2: The Shrek Tannic tour is going to go really hard, So if you can be there, highly recommended that you be there. Yeah, and yeah, again, thanks to everyone who came out to the Barbie tour, and you know, thank you to all of the venues that hosted us. We're posting the episode from STAB Comedy Theater and Sacramento, but there were so many wonderful places that hosted us along the way. And yeah, so without further ado, we present to you of Barbie Movie episode the beck Delcast. Oh my goodness, Hi Barbie, Hi Barbie. How I like how quickly the Barbie shows get corny, like they just have to be. You're like, we're just pushing through it. We gotta do it. How is everybody? Thanks for coming? Thank you for coming? Hell, yeah, we're really about to be here because we're doing two shows back to back. So we're doing I guess it's like the Margot Robbie wearing pink.

00:05:34
Speaker 1: Yes, we just took our kuayludes with the ninety the ninety minute release, and so by the time that show starts, we're gonna be so fucked up.

00:05:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna pass out in the middle of the show. We're gonna be crawling around. Anyways, we're going to talk about Barbie. So uh, okay, we'll do the free applause thing first. Give it up if you've ever listened to our show, Okay, give it up. If you have not and you're being dragged here against your wall, Okay, we have some people that's okay. At the safe space. Usually we are not able to make eye contact with all. Yeah, So like if we do it's not personal. It's just kind of like, there's nowhere to look. Who has seen the Barbie movie?

00:06:22
Speaker 1: Round of applause?

00:06:26
Speaker 2: Did anyone not see it? Whoa wow? People in San Francisco last night who didn't know who we were hadn't seen Barbie but still like wandered in and could not account for why like it was and they still loved the shows. I mean did they? I don't know. It was hard to say. But you know, whoever that man was, I'm rooting for him. I would never root for a man true Eli ship. Okay, so well we'll kind of get right into it. So Caitlin, Yeah, I know you've seen the Barbie movie. It's true. Oh. One of my favorite parts of the movie is when Easter races the Godfather and he's like, oh, yeah, the Godfather? Right? Oh is this the Godfather? Just like one of my favorite line reads every But Okay, so I know you've seen the movie. What is your history with Barbies in general?

00:07:32
Speaker 1: I did play with them. Brave brave of me to say, yes, I had a handful as a kid. I mostly made them have sex with each other. I had horny Barbies. I also like probably played with them in other contexts, but I don't remember that. And then after a while, I was like sort of out growing or I felt like I was outgrowing barbies. But I had a sister.

00:07:58
Speaker 2: She's still alive. I have a sister.

00:08:02
Speaker 1: She's three years younger than me, and so she was still in her barbie playing phase, and like, I don't know, just kind of like out of obligation, I would still play with her. But I was like, I'm too old for this, I'm too cool for this. So I turned so many of my barbies into weird barbies. I would chop off all their hair, I would paint them with nail polish. I would pop off their heads, their limbs, like I was just destroying the hell out of them and having a blast.

00:08:24
Speaker 2: That's real older sibling behavior. This is just mensing.

00:08:29
Speaker 1: What about you, what's your barbie history and experience.

00:08:33
Speaker 2: I've been preparing for this episode my whole life. Hi, I liked barbies when I was a kid. I like had a million cousins, so most of my barbies were handed me downs from them. And then my mom did that thing where she like, we didn't have any money, and yet she went into credit card debt, getting barbies I couldn't touch, and then she'd be like, this is going to pay for your college and you're like, they shockingly are still at her house. They have accomplished nothing. But yeah, my mom was a doll collector and I really liked dolls, but I couldn't like, I don't know. It was like the thing, especially when I hit middle school, I wouldn't let myself just like something. I had to turn it into like I had to intellectualize it, right, So I was thank you, but like I was like, oh, it's not that I like the movie Titanic because it's a perfect movie. I actually am really into naval history.

00:09:31
Speaker 4: So it just kind of intersects with this interest I have, and so I weirdly know a lot about naval history to cover up for the fact that I and it's similar with Barbie's.

00:09:42
Speaker 2: I didn't want to just be like I like playing with dolls. I was like, it's actually an anthropological history of American play things. And You're like, oh, what the fuck was she talking about?

00:09:50
Speaker 1: You know, how how did it feel when you released yourself from that need to and then you could just be like, I like what I like?

00:09:57
Speaker 2: I think you?

00:09:58
Speaker 1: Uh, well, no, I don't know. Sorry, this just became a therapy section.

00:10:05
Speaker 2: I think when I let lose, I let to lose, and then people were coming over to the apartment and they were like, it's too many dolls, you know. They were like, put some we're being watched, you know. But I also went through the phase and and you know, I don't think I was wrong to do this, but I think they went in middle school. I went through the phase where I wrote the Mattel Corporational letter. Oh yeah, I gone onto Microsoft word and I had a thing or two to say about the body standards that Marbie encouraged.

00:10:35
Speaker 1: With Clippy, like are you writing a letter?

00:10:39
Speaker 2: Clippy was like, hey, Jamie, I support you fight the power feminist icon and ally Clippy, I let's hope so God. But yeah, non binary icon, Clippy, it's true. But yeah, I like wrote a strongly worded letter and then returned to my Barbies to play so, you know, child or full of shit? But yeah, I loved Barbie. I have a couple of slides to this effect. I also saw did anyone watch the Barbie animated movies? Yeah? One person? Yeah, you were either like my I didn't because they were like, mostly there's me and my dolls. I'm actually this is me on ludes and I was kind of intersects with the second, but yeah, this is me on ludes with all my handmaidown dolls. And then I want to share some of my favorite haunted Barbies that I've learned about in preparing for this episode. We could go to the next slide. This is Chuck E Cheese Barbie. We have two of them.

00:11:41
Speaker 1: My god, I know.

00:11:44
Speaker 2: Isn't she great? She's wearing a Canadian tucks to go to Chuck E Cheese alone. I can get behind that. Next slide is Rosie Rosie o'donald Barbie. You have to love it, you have to support it. I have her at home. So that's my history with Barbie. Right.

00:12:06
Speaker 1: Should we talk about the movie?

00:12:07
Speaker 2: I guess yeah we should. It's Caitlin's famous recap.

00:12:12
Speaker 1: Oh right, Okay. The Barbie Movie opens on a reference to two thousand and one A Space Odyssey, where narrator Helen Mirren explains that for a long time, dolls were always baby dolls, meaning that the little kids who played with them could only ever play it being like mother or parent, until Barbie dolls came along and changed everything because Barbie she's got money, she's got a house, she's got a car, she's got a career.

00:12:53
Speaker 2: They girl boss her right away. I love how it's like it starts with this really funny parody and then it immediately goes to amercial. You're just like, all right, this is what the movie is. I think it's so funny. And I've seen so many i don't know, like kind of twitter pilled criticisms. They're like, this movie's so corporated, it's a commercial. I'm like, yeah, it's a Barbie movie. Yeah, what are you taking about? And then they're like, I'm gonna go watch Fast and Furious, which is definitely not a commercial.

00:13:23
Speaker 1: All right, Yes, okay, So Barbie she's got it all. She can be anything, which means that women can be anything and all the problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved, or at least that's what the Barbie's in Barbie Land think. And so we cut to barbieland we meet Margo Robbie as stereotypical Barbie. She's perfect, she lives in her dream house. She has so many Barbie friends, some of them are played by Isa Ray Alexander Ship, Emma Mackie to name a few. That's what I wrote down in my notes.

00:14:00
Speaker 2: Brave, thank you, and we already we get the foot shot right away and immediately we're just like Quentin Tarantino dead in a ditch. I was like, Wow, a footshot that is also moving the plot forward.

00:14:15
Speaker 5: This wasn't that hard, wouldn't be because when Quentina what did I say when when Quentin Tarantino showed this very actor's foot in a different movie.

00:14:32
Speaker 1: Aka, Once upon a Time in Hollywood?

00:14:34
Speaker 2: It was for It was for no reason's whole. Yeah. Anyways, I was like, Wow, the Wiki feet community really won with that one. We checked Margaret Robbie's Wiki feet on stage last night because I just like to keep up with the community, and she has the first perfect score I've ever seen. Wow. Fine, you don't have to pretend to care. It's fine. I thought it was interesting and we can move on.

00:15:03
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, So Barbie gets ready for her day.

00:15:06
Speaker 2: She heads to.

00:15:07
Speaker 1: Beach because that's where the that's where the Ken's hang out because Ken's job is beach of his beach.

00:15:17
Speaker 2: And we meet.

00:15:18
Speaker 1: Ryan Gosling Ken, who is stereotypical Barbie's boyfriend. We meet some other Kens as well as Alan played by Michael Sarah shut out Alan. He's an ally.

00:15:32
Speaker 2: He's an Alan and he's an Ally. It's a perfect Barbie archival. They're like, remember this guy, he just wore Ken's clothes for a couple of years. I didn't know about Alan until the movie. Have you heard of him? Heard of him?

00:15:48
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:15:48
Speaker 2: But now I can never forget. He stands at the edge of my bed. I have sleep, per.

00:15:58
Speaker 1: Okay, So Ryan Gosling Ken is very insecure and all of his worth is entirely at attached to how much Barbie likes him and how much attention she pays to him. Then she invites him to her party that night, where all the Barbiees and all the Kens are dancing and it's a great time until Barbie says, do you guys ever think about dying? And everyone's like what?

00:16:25
Speaker 2: But but they do know what dying dying is? Who told them?

00:16:31
Speaker 1: Who told them? They also know what genitals are and that they don't have them, And that makes you think how they know about that?

00:16:39
Speaker 2: Yeah? I don't know, I would let Yeah, they're aware of a lot of complexity, but they're wilfully ignorant of it. Sure, so it is like not too different from our world in that way.

00:16:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So this is the start of some weird things happening for Barbie, Like she steps out of her high heels and her FeCO flat instead of staying in like tiptoe shape. So Barbie goes to Weird Barbie played by Kate McKinnon to see what's going on, and Weird Barbie tells her that there's a rift between Barbieland and the real world and whoever is playing with her in the real world must be sad and is projecting that sadness onto Barbie. So Barbie has to go into the real world to fix it. So she leaves Barbieland via various modes of transportation and a very fun montage, but she realizes that Ken has stowed away with her and wants to come, and she reluctantly lets him tag along. Then they arrive in Los Angeles. Ever heard of it?

00:17:45
Speaker 5: They have?

00:17:45
Speaker 2: We have, That's why she said that.

00:17:50
Speaker 1: And they notice that things seem to be reversed where it's men who have all the power and privilege and opportunity in this world and when and have very little of those things. Barbie sets out to find the girl who's playing with her, and she sees visions of a girl playing with Barbie's. Then the girl becomes a teen and she has a difficult relationship.

00:18:12
Speaker 2: With her mom.

00:18:14
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Ken is walking around Century City and he discovers patriarchy and horses.

00:18:23
Speaker 2: I really the images to represent patriarchy are really it's like, you know, patriarchy, Three Sylvesters, Still, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Minnie Fridge, yup yup horse telling a woman to go away, And you're like, all right, it's a I really love that. You know, it's feminism one on one, but even it resonates, I mean, it works. This also begins a split in the movie that continues throughout, which is that Ken is doing something fun and funny and Barbie is elsewhere crying. This Yes, this becomes a big theme through the movie. And sometimes I'm like, we gotta we gotta like, cunt this lady a break. Oh my god, she's weeping seriously and she's not. I'm not judging her for that. Bad things keep happening to her. It's too close to home.

00:19:17
Speaker 1: I have mixed feelings because it's like, yes, I also cry under the patriarchy all the time, but I also have fun.

00:19:26
Speaker 2: I also horse. It's like major horse girl erasure when you think about it. Yeah, you know why doesn't Barbie love horse? Horse? Barbie famously loves horse. Hello, she's a Barbie. Barbie loves horse. And then that American girl do all loves horse? Wait? Which one, Felicity?

00:19:46
Speaker 1: Someone else said it for three people?

00:19:51
Speaker 2: Okay, we have some bas I was a Kirsten Wow.

00:19:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, she had the loopy braids. Remember I no one cares well. Carsten was kind of a mid one.

00:20:09
Speaker 2: I was a kit Kittridge girl, little miss reporter during the Great Depression, and then when and then when I got really depressed during lockdown, I bought another one. Melody. She's a motown singer from the sixties. Whoa These ones didn't exist when I was. They know, they exist for like children. Now I shouldn't have it, Okay, okay, but I love her. She's one of the many watching eyes in my own all right.

00:20:40
Speaker 1: So Ken discovers patriarchy and he freaking loves it. Then we cut two Mattel Headquarters, where the CEO Mattel, played by Will Ferrell, learns that a Barbie and a Ken have escaped into the real world. This is overheard by Will Ferrell's executive assistant, Gloria played by America Fererra, who is like doodling and designing new Barbies such as Irrepressible Thoughts of Death Barbie and full body Cellulate Barbie, and we're like, hmm, is there a connection here? Then we cut back to Barbie and Ken at a school where Barbie approaches the girl from her vision. Her name is Sasha played by Ariana Greenblat, but rather than the warm welcome that Barbie was expecting, Sasha is like, hey, Barbie, you've been making girls feel terrible about themselves for decades.

00:21:38
Speaker 2: Is like, dear Mattel, yeah, I have some strong feelings about Barbara Millicon Roberts and it's not wrong. And a Clippi was like, are you writing a letter?

00:21:53
Speaker 1: H and so she's like, yeah, you make girls feel horrible about themselves and you're a fascist.

00:22:00
Speaker 2: And then once again we have Ryan Gosling looking at horses, Barbie crying crying, yes, yes.

00:22:08
Speaker 1: So then Ken heads back to Barbieland to teach the other Kens what he learned about patriarchy. Meanwhile with Barbie. So some guys show up who work at Mattel to take her back to Mattel headquarters, but Barbie is uneasy about the whole thing. She doesn't trust Will Ferrell, so she runs away. As she's escaping, she stumbles upon a woman named Ruth played by Rhea Pearlman. They have a quick conversation and then Barbie escapes from the Mattel building.

00:22:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is when it kind of it's kind of established that in this world, Rea Pearlman is God and that yes really works for me, makes sense. There's like that moment where they're doing the Sistine Chapel thing where she like passes her the tea cup and you're like, whoa, this is getting And then I went and there's all these Book of Genesis references. It's a you know, the discourse around this movie is a fucking disaster, but you can find the clickbait about like is Barbie the Book of Genesis? And then I read it and I was kind of sweet, Yeah, I was like I get it. Barbie Land the Garden of Eating, the you know you can get Yeah, I don't want to talk about it, but you can see that out on your own if you want, okay.

00:23:22
Speaker 1: So Barbie escapes the Matila building and she's picked up by Gloria and Sasha because Gloria is Sasha's mother, and Barbie realizes that it wasn't Sasha's memories she was seeing, it was Gloria's.

00:23:34
Speaker 2: I love this scene because it's a lot of like characters connecting an exposition intercut with car commercial. It's really fun. It's really like people are like dunking on this scene and you're just like, fuck you, I don't know. I think it's funny. And Greta Gerwig didn't even direct the car shots. She was like, someone else can tink here, that's not my problem.

00:23:55
Speaker 1: She's like, who directed Fast and the Furious. We get him for a day, all right. So they figure out this connection between them. They dodge the Mattel executives and they need a place to hide, so the three of them go to Barbieland. When they arrive, though, Barbieland is different, it's not a place full of women's leadership and empowerment. It is now a ken driven society.

00:24:24
Speaker 2: They start with like the scene from Top Gun. They're doing Top Gun volume.

00:24:29
Speaker 1: Wait, yeah, all the Barbies are now like subservient to the Ken's needs.

00:24:34
Speaker 2: Ken has Stevens's brother is running for president.

00:24:38
Speaker 3: Ye.

00:24:39
Speaker 1: Ken has basically just infected barbiland with patriarchy and horses. He's turned Barbie's dream house into Ken's Mojo Dojo Casa house. He's brainwashed all the Barbies all of that. So Barbie is horrified and devastated, and she's crying again.

00:24:56
Speaker 2: She is crying again, and she's and this time there's no coming back.

00:25:00
Speaker 1: Yeah no. So eventually she and Gloria and Sasha pay a visit to Weird Barbie to figure out what to do.

00:25:08
Speaker 2: I feel like Weird Barbie is kind of like a friendly Grinch figure where she lives on the outskirts of town at the top of a mountain. It's like if you went to the Grinch's house and he was like, hey, I know you hate me, but that's all good.

00:25:23
Speaker 1: Weird Barbie is also like Morpheus from the Matrix, like here's your two choices, Red Pillar, blue Pill.

00:25:30
Speaker 2: And then I just feel like, I don't know, there's a version of this movie to me where like Weird Barbie gets like a laser gun and tries to like exact revenge on the Barbies that have been talking shit about her. I kind of want that for her. She's really taking it lying down.

00:25:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, justice for weird Barbie.

00:25:48
Speaker 2: At the end the she's like, can I be the Queen of Garbage and and he's he's like, yeah, sure you can be garbage.

00:25:57
Speaker 1: Oh no, I want so much more. Yeah for her.

00:26:00
Speaker 2: Okay.

00:26:01
Speaker 1: So they all figure out a plan to unbrainwash the Barbies and regain control of Barbieland via a series of feminist monologues from Gloria and it works. And now the Barbies have to get the Kens to turn on each other, which they do by making them jealous of each other via them playing guitar at the Barbies doing match Bugs twenty covers.

00:26:33
Speaker 2: It's too easy, but I laugh every time.

00:26:35
Speaker 1: It's so funny. This is also where we get Ryan Gosling singing I'm just Ken. Then the Kens go to war with each other. During the battle, like while they're distracted, the Barbies go to the White House or the Pink House, I guess, and they're like, okay, let's vote to regain constitution. So they regain control of Barbieland. And then Barbie and Ken have a conversation where for some reason she apologizes to him.

00:27:09
Speaker 2: And he says, thanks for saying that. I was like you motherfucker. Literally, I that is like a point in this movie that I am so baffled by. Want I have to like, I have to blame it on studio notes in my mind, because it doesn't make sense to me that like in the previous scene, we have like this brief sort of quiet scene with America Ferrera and Margot Robbie and America Frere is like, he is trying to take over the government. He stole your house, you brainwash your friends, and Margot Robbie Barbie's like, yeah, that's right, I don't have to feel bad for him. And then in the next thing, she's like, I'm so sorry for the perceived slight and then he's like, well, you shouldn't have done that. Why I stole your house?

00:27:54
Speaker 1: Like yeah, and then on top of that, she goes on to do a lot of emotional labor to be like, Ken, it's time for you to discover who you are outside of your relationship to me, and he's like okay, and then again no apology, not even a thank you.

00:28:11
Speaker 2: No, he pays it forward to the other Kens. Yes, and she's also I mean she's doing emotional labor for him the whole time, like from the first frame he's in where he's like, am I cool, She's.

00:28:23
Speaker 1: Like like yes, okay. So then some changes are made to barbieland such as weird Barbie is allowed to integrate into Barbie society yea. Some of the Kens are also given a tiny bit of political power. And then Will Ferrell and the other Mattel executives have arrived in barbieland to close the portal between the two worlds. I don't even know why they're there, but get them out out of Barbie Land. And then Sasha is like, well what about Barbie, Like what's her ending? And Barbie doesn't really know what she wants. But the woman from earlier, Ruth, appears again. She turns out to be Ruth Handler, inventor of the Barbie Doll Wow, And then she and Barbie have another conversation that helps Barbie realize that maybe she's not Barbie anymore, and maybe she wants to be where the people are she wants to see, wants to see them dancing, okay.

00:29:25
Speaker 2: And then no, no, no, whole song please Okay, yeah, what do you call them feet? And then we see the Quentin Tarantina shot again. It's perfect, perfect.

00:29:39
Speaker 1: And then she becomes human and the movie ends in Los Angeles with Gloria and Sasha dropping Barbie off at a gynecologist appointment. Not how I would have ended, a little bitter.

00:29:51
Speaker 2: Essentialism there, but that's the movie. That's the movie. Wow, thanks Caitlin. Yeah, so before we get started, because there is some reference to Barbie history here, I'm putting my weird hobby to use and I'm going to share a little bit of Barbie history with you. So if we could get up the Ruth Handler. Okay, so that's the real Ruth Handler. She is a co founder of Mattel and the creator of Barbie. She was like one of the few women working in toys in the nineteen forties as well as one of the only Jewish women working in toys in the nineteen forties. And she co founded Mattel with two other men, her husband Elliott, and a guy named Matthew. And they made the name of the company a combination of matt and Elliott. No Ruth to be seen. They will pay because they died, so did she in any case, I'm a Ruth fan. They originally make a bunch of other toy products, and she keeps pitching this idea of an adult fashioned doll with boobs, and male executives are like, boobs on a doll, you're a pervert, and so she's not allowed to make it for years and years because boobs on a doll, you're a pervert. Eventually she sees this German doll called bill Lily that has boobs, and then the men are like, all right, well, if one man thought it was a good idea, I guess we could do it. So they make Barbie. They name it after her daughter, Barbara, who's in the next slide here. I believe, Yes, there's Barbara, there's Barbie. She originally fucking hated Barbie's as is her right, She's like, mother, how could you? But yeah, there's like a few biographs details given about Ruth and the movie that are all true, including I think she says I'm a tiny woman with a double misseectomy and tax evation issues. All of these are true. She was technically sentenced to forty five years in prison. Jordan Belfoort vibe, I know and like Jordan Belfort. She was a wealthy white person and did not actually serve I think any time in prison. She got community service, which is horseshit. And also she defrauded rich people, so we were like, well, yeah, in any case, she didn't go to jail, but she was forced to resign from Mattel. And what she pivoted to then is she had had a double misseectomy. She was a two time breast cancer survivor and had spoken publicly about having self esteem issues after the last of her breasts, and so she invented a second really successful product that was sort of a I don't know how to describe this product correctly, but it was basically like fake boobs that you could put on like a bra if you'd had a missectomy. You could get it in one, you could get into both whatever you needed. And that was really successful as well. And yeah, she was, you know, scammer, criminal who had two really successful intentions.

00:33:15
Speaker 1: From from Barbie to Brobbie.

00:33:20
Speaker 2: Don't encourage that. No, it was good.

00:33:23
Speaker 1: It was good, and some people liked it because I stared at them.

00:33:27
Speaker 2: I was like, I think it's all because we can see them. But yeah, there Barbie and Ken re named after her kids, Barbara and Kenneth. They both hated the dolls. Uh. They got a good settlement when they died anyways. Uh. And then Ruth Ruth sort of that her sort of end of life reflection was that her whole life had revolved around titties and that hadn't been intentional. So she's really cool. I'm glad that they included her in the movie, and like referenced her is a corporate propaganda absolutely is, but she was a cool lady. I was hoping because one of the things that I understand was probably necessary for the movie to be made, but I find really annoying and poorly handled is the CEO character and the CEO narrative. I wish that they had instead brought in other figures from Barbie history, because there's so many interesting people and I want to spotlight one right now. This next slide is Kittie Black Perkins. She was the lead designer of Barbie for twenty five years from the eighties into the early two thousands. She's really cool. I feel like she's really under discussed. She designed the first black Barbie. She was yeah, and she was also the first black Barbie designer at all and sort of was a huge advocate for getting more diversity within the Mattal company to I think I have a next slide of some of her most famous creations. Yes, I definitely had that ball on the right. She also did a really cool series that I was too young to have encountered, but there. It's called The Marvelous World of Shawnee and it was the first Barbie collection that was entirely black women of different skin tones and hair textures, and it was really really cool, and she had this incredible impact on the company. And I just wish that instead of a room full of men, we had, you know, brought people like Katie Black Perkins into the mix, because she is a really important part of Barbie history and we don't really see her or many prominent characters who are not white in this movie. And so that's that brings us James Barbie history section. Wow. Thank you, Wow. A round of a pause, because it's like it's giving hostage situations. All right. I think if you go to the next slide, I think we're back in the dream house. Yeah, here we are.

00:36:00
Speaker 1: Yes, No, but you just touched on something that is a big part of the discussion around this movie. So the movie came out, people watched it, and I don't know why I had to people.

00:36:12
Speaker 2: Watch explain that and then and then what happened. But then and then and then people had some thoughts about it. But did they write them down?

00:36:20
Speaker 1: They did, and then they also said them out loud, oh thank you, and a lot of a lot of the criticism around this movie was it's feminism, one oh one, it's it's white feminism the movie. We need a more nuanced and intersectional approach to discussing feminism in media, and that is very, very true. I don't disagree with that at all, but I have mixed feelings about it because the world, most of the people in it, I think, still need a lesson, like a feminist one oh one lesson.

00:36:51
Speaker 2: So I don't know.

00:36:52
Speaker 1: I was just like, Okay, pretty cool that a enormous blockbuster movie with a huge budget, huge studio backing, about a very famous product tackled patriarchy and examined feminism. The big problem with it, yes, is that it has like sort of the facade of inclusion because of some of the characters. But those characters are very much on the periphery and it still centers the like epitome of like Western beauty, standard whiteness, blonde hair, thinness, like all the stuff, and it's peepee poo poos what I'm getting at.

00:37:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we feel pretty similarly about this. I feel like it's having to hold a bunch of truths at the same time, which, if you're having a discussion online, is famously not possible. It's like, all of a sudden, someone's threatening to kill you, you know, but no, no one threatened to kill me over the Barbie movie because I kept my mouth shutting. Wow, I minded my own business. No, I think that. Yeah, I agree that. I think that a lot of the as I was like, going back through my knowledge of Barbie history, I feel like a lot of the issues with the movie with inclusion are the same issues that Barbie has with inclusion. Right where there has been progress, there have been attempts, there has been motion forward, and like the company has to some extent, taken notes about I think most recently, there was a discussion around ableism with Barbie's and there has been discussions around race with Barbie. There's been discussions around body types with Barbie, and it's slowly changed over time, but it still always centers the thin, blonde, white woman, and I think that that's also what this movie is doing. And I'm thrilled that we have I think it's like I'm thrilled that we have so many amazing barbies, and I'm also frustrated that we don't get more of them, you know. But in the same way, I think you're totally right. The way that people have talked about this movie feels disingenuous, in the same way that, like I was saying earlier that people were like, this movie's a commercial. I was like, yeah, not like Iron Man, which is an indie sleeper hit, you know, Like just it just feels really disingenuous the way people have approached the discussion where it's like I need to find a righteous reason to hate this, right, It's like you just don't like it, and that's okay, Like not everyone has to. I also feel like the reverse argument and a lot of the like we're not going to get into the Oscars discourse because this episode doesn't come out for a month and hopefully it will be very dated. But like the way that you know, like white feminists online will defend the most wealthy white woman in the world against her will. You're just like, what is this? Yeah, what am I looking at? But in any case, I do, I do feel like it's there are really valid criticisms to be made of this movie. And also when we're talking about this movie as like a blockbuster, which it is, the conversation is really pointedly different, Like no one's having conversations like this around any other blockbusterory that I can remember, which I think is cool. It's different, But so there's also a lot of bullshit to sift through.

00:40:15
Speaker 1: This is the fourteenth highest grossing movie of all time. If you look at the thirteen above it and probably the one hundred below it, Like none of those movies even acknowledge sexism or patriarchy or any of those things. They probably all or most of them have a male protagonist, Like they're not. Most of them are directed and written by men as well. They're not having the same conversation this movie is doing. And as we always say, it's not any one movie's responsibility to like change the world or be the be all end all thing when it comes to discussing feminism. But the movie it missed many opportunities to be more inclusive, to have more meaningful inclusion, because again, you know, there's a Barbie played by a transactor, hard enough. There is a fat Barbie played by Sharon Rooney. There is a disabled Barbie who uses a wheelchair. She's played by Grace Harvey.

00:41:11
Speaker 2: But we don't get to know her at all. She has no lines. Really, I think that like we don't get to really know the Barbies. We get to meet a lot of them, but outside of Marco, Robbie Barbie and Weird Barbie, you don't really get a distinct personality for anybody, which is not true of the Kens. And that is like my big issue with this movie. And I really really like this movie. Like if we're just going like Romp, can I watch it? Yes, yes, a million times?

00:41:40
Speaker 1: Tend out a tent on Caitlin's Rambo either it's the best.

00:41:46
Speaker 2: But yeah, when it comes to like, well, who has most of the funny moments and who and which group has the more distinctive personalities and things to do, it's the Ken's by a mile. Like I am never not going to be frustrated that the Barbies don't get their own song, like the Ken's get this, and like I'm just ken in my opinion, fucking rips. It's so good it does. It was all my Spotify rapped and that's so embarrassing, and and was it number one? I don't know, but like that was so cool. And they got this big studio like old school ballet move they got it, like all this stuff, and meanwhile, Barbie is crying somewhere and we're just like this fucking sucks. I read somewhere that there was an original Uh there was a Barbie. Uh. I don't know if it was a song because Marco Robbie I don't think sings, but there was originally. I only saw it written as like there was originally a fart opera? What what words did you say? I don't know if it was shot, but I was reading a lot of I listened to the director's commentary for this movie, Thank you, Yeah I did. I didn't learn very much the two things. It was mostly Greta GIRWGG being like, yeah, so then this happens. I'm like I could just watch the movie, but no. Greta Gerwy said there was originally a fart opera that she was planning for the Barbies because they were like Discovery. I don't know if it was in the real world or Barbie world, but they figure out what farts are and then there's a Barbie fart opera. Okay, So then I guess that she was like and no one thought that was funny, so they didn't end up in the movie. I'm like, I don't know how I feel about that. I guess I would have, you know, either way, the Barbies don't get a big number, yeah, and the kNs do.

00:43:36
Speaker 1: And I was gonna say, fart opera, what is this a Shrek movie?

00:43:42
Speaker 2: Okay?

00:43:43
Speaker 1: There.

00:43:44
Speaker 2: The other thing I learned from the Greta Gerwig commentary that I really loved was that, you know, like there's a moment where, uh, usually it's dual lipa Mermaid, but then suddenly it's John Cena Mermaid. I don't think Greta Gerwig knows who John Cena is because he comes on screen and she goes, oh, John Senna, and she said John Senna came in for the day, and that was so lovely. I had such a great time directing John Senna, and I was like, wow, it has not reached her. But I'm just like, yeah, I guess, like in the Gerwig bomb boc Households. Has anyone ever been like, let's turn on WWE, I don't know it missed her? I really, oh John Senna, no one ever tell her.

00:44:31
Speaker 1: They haven't watched Fast and the Furious eight and above which one did see your peer in for the first time?

00:44:37
Speaker 2: Nine? Oh wow, some people being ready.

00:44:44
Speaker 1: This is kind of you know, never underestimate your audience if it's not Hobs and Shaw. I don't care, but yeah, I.

00:44:55
Speaker 2: Think like one of my big criticisms of the movie is that the bar don't get to have as much fun as they can see.

00:45:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, and again, like all of the emotional labor that Barbie is doing with Ken at the end, and there is a point where Barbie is just less active as a character in the back half of the movie, but Gloria and Sasha sort of take over as the more active female characters at.

00:45:20
Speaker 2: Least and weird Barbie, I feel like the three of them when when which Yeah, I didn't know how to feel about that, but I'm like, oh, when I've been having a depressive episode and three friends are like, all right, we're gonna We're gonna make sure that they don't shut your power off. You know it is nice. Yeah, but yeah, so she's really really active for the for the front half of the movie, but once she hits that wall, not as much, but she comes back at the end, she rallies.

00:45:46
Speaker 1: She does come back and at the end of the day, it is a movie about like a woman having a self discovery.

00:45:53
Speaker 2: It's literally it's a she's a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Yeah. Wow, And I here's my other little thing. Okay, I think we should talk about Gloria and Sasha because I think their dynamic is under explored but also interesting. Sasha specifically, I feel like it's very Okay, here's my Stanley Kubrick. I think I'll tell you. Okay, I know I have a master's degreen screenwriting.

00:46:16
Speaker 3: I would.

00:46:18
Speaker 2: What I would never bring it up. Try me, Okay, Sasha's story can be boiled down to how I learned to stop worrying and love the MATEL Corporation that is Stanley kruperg gets okay, yes, because it's I think that it's a really interesting dynamic between the mother and daughter. It's frustratingly only like I think, well done. For about ten minutes towards the end of the movie where when Barbie gets depressed, you know, Sasha and Gloria. I just want to keep saying America Ferarra, Sasha defends her mother when Barbie is like you're useless or whatever the fuck she says, and I liked that. I don't really know what their conflict is. I feel like it's just sort of pulling from like if you've been a teenage femme, it's probably a dynamic you've had with your mom, and so you're just it's just stop. I don't like the movie Tantanic. I like naval history. Up. I'm a bar Storian. I'm not horny. Stop up. That's kind of their Yeah, But I really like those moments between them where they're like learning to understand each other. She has to admit that her mom is cool, and then they go back, but they do mostly exist in relation to Barbie as like Barbie's assistant. And then America Ferra develops the Weapon of mass Destruction, which is her speech.

00:47:54
Speaker 1: And I don't even have the energy to really go into the speech and how it is like not very good, but go back and listen to it.

00:48:02
Speaker 2: It's like, here's what I'll say about this fee, I feel like the speech is I don't know. I don't hate the speech. I was well performed. It was well performed. The words, however, I would have rewritten it. I didn't mind the words. I feel like there was a lot missing, which like the big thing that for this movie in general, I feel like it attempts to address patriarchy in certain ways, but patriarchy is just like one element of the evils of the world. Like we see this movie attempt to address patriarchy while not addressing either white supremacy or capitalism, which are the main things that intersect with it. So I feel like the moments in this movie that feel hollow is because those two other things are being very pointedly ignored, because if you're addressing white supremacy, then you can't have mostly white leading characters, and if you address capitalism, you can't have the Barbie movie. And so it feels weirdly like I I appreciate elements of the like attempt to boil patriarchy down to a simple and effective speech, and it's like, I don't know, I could take her leave parts of it. But I also I saw this movie in theaters a couple of times, and there was always someone bawling their eyes out, and so I was like, I'm not going to take that from people like I. You know, the moms were really in their bag with that. My mom was My mom was sobbing. My mom was sobbing during that, and I was like, Okay, that's enough. And then you're embarrassing me in the movie. And then at the end, I don't think I've told you this. And then at the end there's another attempted profound movement moment. The speech worked on my mom. The second profound moment, she was mad. It was at the end when Rhea Perlman says we mothers stand still, so are we can stand back and see how my mom was like, I would never stand still. I was, It's like, that's true. I've certainly never seen you stand still, even when I've specifically requested it. And she's like, I think that's so regressive. You should say that on bechdelcast, which I agree with. I think that that line genuinely sucks. The speech was a hit or miss for me. I appreciate that it resonated for people. Did it need to be published in the newspaper? No, that's so goofy and embarrassing. And I don't know. So many things that are embarrassing to me about this movie involved the reaction to it versus like what I'm actually watching. I don't know. Yes, I feel like, okay, this is super super picky. But the America Freire speech, for some reason, I feels like fifteen percent. It goes like fifteen percent longer than you expect it to, and I kind of want her to, like I feel like there's a good sketch in like her pausing and then continuing and being like, you can play one video game, but you can't play two video games. You can you can go to CVS, but you don't have an extra care card. Like it's just like because it's like such a you get like in that cadence, you can say fucking whatever, and my mom would be weeping, Like you can go to McDonald's, but you can't get a happy meal because you're a grown up and no one respects you.

00:51:27
Speaker 1: Wow, it's so true.

00:51:29
Speaker 2: It's so true. No, it's not true. You can get a happy mind do it?

00:51:34
Speaker 1: No?

00:51:36
Speaker 2: Well, anyway, okay, so uh talk about oh hi, hello, someone's getting parasocial in the friend, you saw, you saw an opportunity and you see stick. Yes, I did notice that.

00:51:58
Speaker 1: I think Gloria's name is only spoken one in the whole movie, and it's in passing. Yeah, yeah, so the whole I was like, what is her character's name? Because I missed it every single time I all, like four or five times I've watched this movie.

00:52:13
Speaker 2: Yeah it's fair. I mean I feel like that also speaks to like how even though Gloria and Sasha are prominent characters, you don't actually know that much about them, and a lot of what you know about them is just based on what you understand about parent child dynamics, Like so much is not actually there. It's just like relying on what you may have experienced to like sort of fill in the gaps of what might be there. I do love her due lingo husband and that's America, Oh my god. And that's America Prayer's real husband. Yeah, yes, yeah, his name is whatever, who cares? I did write it down.

00:52:53
Speaker 1: But you would never support a man, So it's just dad exactly. Also when he says which has to be a reference to God to kick out? Yes, absolutely, Well, while we're talking about our favorite jokes, when Will Ferrell CEO is like if humans went to barbie Land, or if Barbies came into the real world, things would happen beyond what your wildest dreams could ever imagine. And then Jamie Jamie Demetrio, best person alive. I love him so much. If he's listening, marry me. Stath LEDs Flats is the best show ever anyone's seen, it.

00:53:31
Speaker 2: Said the single wo Meanwhile, forty percent of this audience is seen every Fast and the Furious. Just collecting data.

00:53:40
Speaker 1: Anyway, Jamie Demetrio hot, He replies to like, oh, what could we possibly imagine? And he says, a podcast hosted by two wise trees.

00:53:52
Speaker 2: Podcast?

00:53:53
Speaker 1: What is the Bechtel Cast podcast? But a podcast hosted by two wise trees? If you were a tree, Jamie, what tree would you be?

00:54:02
Speaker 2: Oh? I don't know tree kind.

00:54:03
Speaker 1: I'll tell you all of them.

00:54:07
Speaker 2: Okay, we got willows, we got a oaky, we got birch palm m hm. Oh you're roun elm whoa apple tree? Don't help her anyway? Oky orange. Okay, really quick, while we're on the subjects of the CEO, because we referenced this earlier, but I really think like and again, I fully understand that this movie was signed off by Mattel, so of course I'm sure they had a million notes. I'd be really curious in the future. I just would love to have more oral histories of studio notes in general, because I think a lot of the time the writers and directors absorb a lot of criticism becau because it's their name there. But there's a million shadowy figures that influence what ends up there. And I like when anytime I've written an episode of TV, like there's been a whole scene that you're like, weird, what is that? And yet I wrote it. You know, it's just like there are so many people involved. So I would be curious how the CEO character evolved because I think that casting Will Ferrell feels really intentional there, right, because yeh, if you're doing a CEO as a villain, you don't cast Will Ferrell. If you cast Will Ferrell, it's because you want him to seem kind of like, oh, well, he's not doing the right thing, but he's kind of hapless and he's kind of like whatever, Like he'll figure out a goofball. He's a goofball. And I think that that is a really pernicious way to frame corporate America.

00:55:45
Speaker 1: Well, so didn't he play basically the same exact character in the Lego movie.

00:55:50
Speaker 5: Yes?

00:55:51
Speaker 2: Yes, in the Greta Gerwick commentary spoiler alert, she did say something helpful. Okay, she when he first comes on screen, and she says the CEO character, he's not evil. He's like a really enthusiastic golden retriever. He really believes that sparkles lead to female empowerment and he's just gonna stick with that. And I hate that. I hate that so much. I think that there is like attempted commentary within there. And I am like to give this movie as much credit like as I can. It says more and jabs at more than you would expect it to, where it's like they do reference, like we have not had many female executives really ever, and there are like a number of jokes to that effect. But also it just sort of makes the capitalism element feel like goofy and harmless while we're attacking patriarchy and white supremacy we don't talk about and so it's just like all I mean, I know, and one movie cannot do everything. But because this movie is so honed in on patriarchy. The way it treats other elements feels kind of dissonant and weird. But it's also like, if it didn't treat it that way, would the movie exist. I don't know, because something something comes. I mean, that's the.

00:57:07
Speaker 1: Thing about presenting a like anti patriarchy argument in a movie packaged in this very like pink, hyper feminine Barbie package.

00:57:20
Speaker 2: I mean it makes it.

00:57:21
Speaker 1: Does it make it very palatable and fun? Yes, But again it it just ends up ignoring a lot of things and creating cognitive dissonance.

00:57:32
Speaker 2: But I do like how hyperfeminine, like hyperfeminine aesthetics are like inherent to this world, and I like, I really do like that, and I like, I feel like the pictures you see of people who go to see the movie reflect that, where it's like permission to be hyper feminine. And that was like one of the elements of Stereotypical Barbie that I really liked, where you're presented stereotypical Barbie along with all of your assumptions about her, which is criticisms that have haunted Barbie, some rightful, some were projected over the course of over half a century, where like she is brainless, she's a bimbo. She's not smart, and like associating hyper femininity with not being smart, and it seems like stereotypical Barbie has like inferred this about herself because she's always like, well, I'm not one of the job Barbie's, so they should probably figure it out. And she is this hyper feminine Barbie and then over time she figures out like I am smart, I am capable of growth. And I really liked that, is like having a hyper feminine character who is smart and not playing into the tropes that we're used to seeing, because I feel like it truly is like there's a lot of times where you see a woman in pink and you're trained to think like bimbo, not smart, not going to contribute very much, and that's silly even though pink's not really my color. Wow, could have fooled me. Well.

00:59:00
Speaker 1: I feel like we had a very similar discussion on the Legally Blonde episode.

00:59:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I also had Ellwood's Barbie.

00:59:06
Speaker 1: What that's the thing too, is Barbie just like Lego, where every property that exists is Lego, and also everything in person is also Barbie Barbie.

00:59:16
Speaker 2: I feel like, does a weirder job of it, where it's like things that you're like, oh, that's awesome, and then you're like why Rosie o'donald, like why cheese? Recently, I think she'll be she'll be at my house. I recently got Ida b Wells Barbie, like they make historical women barbies too. I have Sally Ryde Barbie. We're adding Ida to the mix, you know, running out of the shelf space. I just have too many. I don't know whatever. I've never heard of John Sanna. Oh my gosh, we've never We have yet to talk about the DJ College situation. I don't know what he's in the movie. Is he a ken? No, he's selling the kens? Oh my god. Oh guys. I almost backed off because I was like, wait, it's DJ College. Another one the guy who's like this, he's in the movie.

01:00:12
Speaker 1: The guy's like these mojo dojo castles off the shelves, you guys, and also a celebrity who famously hates eating pussy.

01:00:21
Speaker 2: They're just like, a, this is all we could ride a fucking dissertation on this. Oh my god. I'm like, my I I just had a surge of adrenaline. But I was like I know who DJ coll It is. There. Yeah, they he had a he had a cameo, and I also love that during that Greta Gerwig absolutely does not know who he is because she she was silent through that whole scene and then started talking.

01:00:48
Speaker 1: A few other fun cameos though, Annie Mamelo has a little cameo. We've got Emerald fanel Is Midge. Okay, where are the closest? Burn will come to the Oscars. Also, the woman at the bus stop is legendary costume designer and Roth she's designing Cowboy. Yes, she did Midnight Cowboy, Cold Mountain, Mama Mia okay, and then one Oscars for English Patient and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Bottom?

01:01:24
Speaker 2: Are you right bottom down? Twice?

01:01:26
Speaker 1: No, but I said the first bottom as though there was more to that title, and there isn't.

01:01:32
Speaker 2: You're doing We're doing great, We're doing ground and it's the Ludese. I'm telling you Hi again.

01:01:42
Speaker 1: Barbie's it's future Barbie Caitlin and future Barbie Jamie.

01:01:48
Speaker 2: Wow, we're basically the astronaut barbiees. I know that astronauts don't time travel, but I in my mind they kind of basically do.

01:01:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, have you ever seen Interstellar. I mean it's kind of like that.

01:02:02
Speaker 2: Have I ever seen interest on it? Have we ever covered it on the show? No? So no, I haven't seen it. Uh huh. Anyways, Welcome to the Future. Yeah, So this was the point in the show where I just want to share with you that we would do our fun like we did a live game where we had Barbies from the Barbie Movie and we would do kind of just a series of immaculately improvised scenarios.

01:02:30
Speaker 1: Oh, such good improv.

01:02:32
Speaker 2: We brought up some audience members to do it with us, and they were just as good at improv as we were, and sometimes better because we're pretty mid at it.

01:02:42
Speaker 1: Wow, can't believe you said that.

01:02:44
Speaker 2: We were also set it on stage. But it was a blast. So but you know, obviously that doesn't quite translate to audios. So in lieu of that, you the listener listening for free will be deprived of fun and subjected to further discourse because, of course, in the live show, you know, time is limited, so we didn't get to quite everything that we wanted to.

01:03:09
Speaker 1: So, and that's why you should come to the live shows when we do have them, because there are segments that we tend to cut out when we release the actual episode on our feed because either they just don't translate very well to the audio medium, or we just want to give our audience, our attendees to the live shows a little special treats. So it's all the more reason to come to our live shows when you can.

01:03:34
Speaker 2: The shows are fun. Yeah, I just wanted to start by I know that we had a section in the live show where we talked about Ruth Handler and sort of the history of Barbie as well as Kitty Black Perkins. I just wanted to add a few extra things that we didn't have time to talk about in the show, just because I thought it was interesting that also connects to the idea of mothers and motherhood within the context of this movie. Because I and I know that we're like not supposed to do this, so please don't yell at me. I bravely read a book, Jamie. How could you? I know? But I really, I mean, I genuinely really am interested in dull history. I really am. And so I got this book from the library. And if you are not a subscriber, not a subscriber to the library, but like, how if you have a library card. You're able to access free books and movies through your library card. So I borrowed the book Barbie and Ruth, The Story of the World's most Famous Doll and the Woman who created Her by Robin Gerber, just to sort of bolster my knowledge about what the actual story of Barbie is because understandably in the movie, and this isn't even a criticism, like the movie is not about the history of Barbie. I think the fact that Ruth Handler is even included was more than I was expecting, honestly true. But I think that what we didn't get the chance to talk about in the live show was how she is presented as a god figure and also a maternal god figure, because she is presented to us like and it's like not hidden at all, that like she is basically the god to Barbie's Jesus. Sure, and that, as we'll talk about in a little bit, like is explicitly stated by Greta Gerberg, is like she know bomb Back, knew that they were doing it. I think that that's a really weird but like pretty interesting thing to include in your Barbie movie. Yeah, but the real life Ruth Handler, what I think I think it just sort of speaks to how we project, not just I mean the real life Ruth Handler was a mother to Barbara aka Barbie. But I think that, like we've talked about in a lot of movies, that like it has to do with this sort of sis woman divine prophecy where not only will you be a mother, but you will mothers are inherently good and mothers are you know, inherently good at being mothers when that is often not true and also a ridiculous expectation because it is not a divine prophecy, you're a person. And I think that that is very well demonstrated in real life Ruth Handler's life, who had consistently a very very contentious relationship with specifically her daughter, but both of her children, and I think you know, by many accounts, she was an incredible businesswoman. She had a lot of growth throughout her life where she did not consider herself to be a feminist and in fact like avoided friendships with women for much of her life. And it wasn't until her later years, when she was making prosthetic breasts for breast cancer survivors, that she really felt connected to women and to just even the concept of feminism, and you know, had a period of her life where she was reflecting and like reading feminist theory and being like, wait, have men been awful to me most of my life? And you know, yes, And to the point where something that really made me laugh was that this doesn't exist in the sort of more overarching histories. But when she finally when she started her company that was just hers. Her husband wasn't you know involved in her company for the prosthetic breast was called Ruth ten And so she finally got her name in the company my girl boss hero. But in any case, she had a very difficult relationship with her children and was not quote unquote the natural mother that we see presented, who is inherently, you know, like just knows exactly what to do. And I just thought that that was worth mentioning, even in the context because of how she's presented where and they are willing to you know, sort of cop to. Maybe it's not the best phrase, I but like cop to certain like flaws that were public, such as being sentenced to a forty five year prison sentence and having had anseectomy, but still feel the need to be like, but shit, at the end of the day she's a mother, when in fact that was like a part of Freeth Handler's life that was very challenging.

01:08:23
Speaker 1: Also, and we mentioned this in the live show too, but the line where the Ruth Handler character at the end of the movie says something like we mothers stand still so our daughters can see how far they've come or whatever the line is, and how it just rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

01:08:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think like that again, it just like applies this prescriptive role of like deference and yeah, humbleness.

01:08:53
Speaker 1: And becoming a mother means that you surrender other parts of your life.

01:08:57
Speaker 2: And stuff like that.

01:08:59
Speaker 4: Yeah.

01:08:59
Speaker 1: The other the thing that I found interesting about Ruth Handler's like journey with feminism is that, from my understanding, she created Barbie, or she at least viewed Barbie as an alternative to baby dolls, something that was like aspirational, something that would help girls or whoever was playing with them. And that's a separate issue I have with this movie where it feels it's very much like, well, the only people who play with dolls are girls. But anyway, that's a I'll get to that later. But anyway, she viewed Barbie dolls as an aspirational way to help girls envision their lives outside of being a mother, which, of course, you know, that was the expectation that was foisted onto women at the time Barbie was created, and Barbie dolls were an opportunity to allow girls to see that they could grow up and have a career and they didn't necessarily have to adhere to that kind of rigid societal expectation, which was a pretty radical idea at that time, right, So I appreciate that about Barbie dolls and about like Ruth Handler's vision for them.

01:10:15
Speaker 2: I did too, and I feel like, you know, the way that I even though like when I was a kid, I forget if I mentioned it in this, but but yeah, that I had like a moment where, you know, I loved playing with Barbies and then felt self conscious about enjoying it, and then realized that it is in fact quite stressful to have an aspirational doll, even though you are projecting your hopes and desires through them in a way that feels very fun and dynamic and cool in the way that just being a kid is. The body stuff does get to you over time, and certainly I wrote a strongly worded letter to Mattel being like, listen up, boys, my boobs are not going to come in, I've recently realized, and like, but just truly like the very you know, entrenched white Western beauty standards that Barbie's been rightfully criticized over a period of years. We talked about this during the show, but that I didn't really understand, and I think that that is sort of a testament to the power of Barbie two, that I didn't really know as a kid that dolls were not aspirational, and like, I never had any interest in baby dolls, and so I think, like it's almost this like cool, frustrating, but new problem to deconstruct, Well, what does the aspirational doll say about what I should be aspiring to? But the fact that that didn't exist, that problem didn't exist before because you were not supposed to aspire to anything, and like, wow, right, I also just wanted to touch on really quick because it's Ken history. Yes, Ruth Handler's the Handlers. Elliot and Ruth had two children, Barbara and Kenneth, Barbie and Ken and Ken. I feel like he is not I mean just says in the world of the Barbie movie under discussed, under examined in real life as well. Ken Handler seemed like a truly wonderful person who so who eventually unfortunately he passed away of AIDS fairly young. I think it was in his forties, in the late eighties, early nineties, And so there is sort of this whole. I mean, both children, Barbara and Kenneth different than the dolls, I think, appreciated what their parents were trying to do, but resented how it sort of haunted them right where Ken was teased at school for being like, do you just have a lump? You know, goofy shit like that, But if you're a kid, that's humiliating and it feels horrible. And Barbara, interestingly, her issue with her mom that she reflected on later was that she resented her mom for having a career because it meant like, quote unquote, her mom was different, which of course is entrenched in privilege the reasons that that is. But it was interesting just sort of reading how she reflected on that later on, where she was like, I resented my mom because I didn't really understand how radical it was that she was working, Like I didn't see any moms that were working and so I assumed she was the problem when that wasn't the case. Oh. She also said of her brother Ken, and I think this was prior to his death, so it was just like good natured ripping. But she said, my brother is eccentric and he thinks my mother is God. And I was like, I want a son like that.

01:13:43
Speaker 1: But in any case, I feel like you do have two cat sons like that.

01:13:47
Speaker 2: I do. They're both eccentric and they think I'm God. And I'm not going to challenge that characteristic. But yeah, Ken was. I mean, he was a young gay man in the sixties and so it was not socially acceptable for him to be out. He was married to a woman for most of his life. He had some show business aspirations that so because he you know, like the kids they all grew up in LA they're kind of like Hollywood babies. And Ken went on to direct two movies, one of which I've seen called Delivery Boys about.

01:14:30
Speaker 1: Hey, and this is coming sounds like me in my hooter's career.

01:14:34
Speaker 2: It is a very like dancy, somewhat home eerotic movie. I quite enjoyed it. The plot is all over the place, like you're like, I think they are just like dancing and delivery. But it's a nineteen eighty four film directed by Ken Handler about a multi ethnic group of pizza delivery boys who started a break dancing team. And having seen the movie, I can tell you that's exactly what it's about and nothing else. But he you know, he is most famously known as the namesake of the Kendall but he also was a very creative person and had a lot of output of his own. So in any case, he did not come out to his family, I believe his mother, father, and sister until he had already tested positive for HIV, to the extent that he and his wife was already aware at this point, And so Ken and his wife Susie, and a doctor went to the home to explain not only what his diagnosis was, but what it was at all, because of how naive and how I mean, I think it really just speaks to how under educated the general public was about about issues surrounding HIV and AIDS. And so he passed away in nineteen ninety four. He was only fifty years old, and at the time his parents announced that he had died of a brain tumor. And so I mean, I cannot say with any level of certainty what the intention behind that was, whether it was a denial that they had a queer son, or if they thought they were, you know, in this very antiquated way, thought they were acting in his best interest. I don't know. They didn't speak about it extensively, but I just feel like there Ken had a really tragically short but really interesting life, and within the queer community, was really well loved and had a lot of friends and a lot of creative pursuits and stuff like that. And he didn't like Ken Dolls, and Barbie, well, she didn't like Barbie Dolls. And so I guess if you invent something, don't name it after your kids, they will hate you. But that's the additional context they wanted to share.

01:17:00
Speaker 1: Thank you for that, And I guess the other things that I had about the movie that we didn't have time for in the live shows, a lot of them were things that I found frustrating about the movie. A few specific things are A pretty big component of Barbie's character, in addition to the fact that she's crying for most of the second half of the movie, is that she has a strong fixation on her own appearance and of course Barbie is a product of her environment, so it makes sense that she's hyper focused on her image because so much of the Barbie brand and lore is about what she looks like, how she's designed, that she's quote unquote perfect, all of that kind of stuff. But this manifests in the movie in a way that I feel like is not really thoughtfully commented on. There is that moment where Sasha is saying, like, you made girls feel horrible about themselves, and you're a fascist, But.

01:18:18
Speaker 2: It's kind of like she's presented as ultimately being wrong because and I think it's also like I get it's it's tricky because I feel tempted to defend the movie where it's like, well, you know, it's like part of it, but like couching it in jokes sometimes is really tricky because it's like, in one situation there something is if not a thousand percent true, worth discussing, and then the other thing, that Barbie is a fascist is objectively not true, and so it's all sort of cast in this same sort of like, well, none of this is true, and you're like, well, let's get back to the body image thing, because I think there is some truth to what Sasha is saying that a lot of the criticisms of Barbie have come up over the years are sometimes coming from a place of just like how dare a woman exist? And then there also is genuinely, as we talked about in the live show, a history of because this is quote unquote the aspirational doll. You're being handed this white, thin, blonde, large breasted, anatomically impossible doll and told this is what you should be aspiring to. So that's a far more complicated thing to deal with, and I mean, yeah, right.

01:19:32
Speaker 1: And then again, the way this all plays out in the movie for Barbie's character is that, like, the thing that finally motivates Barbie to be willing to take this journey into the real world and fix this rift that's been created is weird Barbie saying like, if you don't do this, you're going to keep getting more cellulate, And Barbie's like, oh my god, that's the worst imaginable thing. I could never have that. So that's what motivates her to go on the quest. Toward the end of the movie, after you know, Ken has taken over and ruined barbie Land. Yeah, one of the big things that Barbie is upset about is that she's not pretty anymore and that she's worried that Ken doesn't like her anymore. She also says things like I don't think I'm smart or interesting, But because she's already been so focused on her appearance, it feels like that's kind of the bigger takeaway from that moment.

01:20:30
Speaker 2: And also the added in like Margaret Robbie is the wrong person if you want to like blah blah blah, which is a very funny joke, but yeah, I think that, Yeah, it's like something that I like, we were talking about, Like, I think that this does, in a really kind of pernicious way, tie into this movie's fundamental inability to talk about capitalism in a meaningful way because you can't talk too much about the body stuff without being overly of Barbie, who is bankrolling the movie. And I felt frustrated by the cellulate joke. Again, it just felt like kind of dated too, because it's not like there are not you know, we have a fat Barbie. We have at least some body. Diversity within the Barbie is not, you know, arguably not enough, but there it does exist. And I was like, Okay, I guess if you're like five D chessing it like, no, Barbie has cellulite because they're all hard plastic. But you know, the inherent message in there, it still felt like, yeah, it was still pretty focused on looks.

01:21:33
Speaker 1: Well because this whole thing, like it kind of just boils down to yes, stereotypical. Barbie is known for being this, you know, like ideal beauty standard. So it makes sense that she would value that about herself, because when a certain trait is valued by society, you tend to value that about yourself or your condition to value that about yourself. However, I feel like there was a big opportunity for Barbie to learn that that's not a trait that she should place so much emphasis on, or that she, you know, should be expected to be valued by others about herself based only on her appearance, and that she, you know, should discover other qualities about herself. But the movie doesn't fully get there. You know, there's a little bit at the end when she is talking to the Ruth Handler character about becoming human and wanting to be someone who makes and creates ideas and contributes to society, but that doesn't really feel super earned to me because everything we've just saying learned about her thus far, A lot of what we learned about her thus far is like her placing so much emphasis on her appearance and like being very fixated on that. And I feel like if that arc had just been more like thoroughly explored, I feel like I could have easily gotten there. But I don't know, it just it didn't quite work for me.

01:23:03
Speaker 2: I agree, but like to a slightly turned down extent, I guess I think that the body issue is unexplored in a way that I don't know, like it was disappointing. And also because it is the Barbie movie, I was not surprised that those kind of flaws were present because this I don't think that this movie is handled to truly meaningfully critique the product of Barbie, and because so much of the critique around Barbie surrounds body issues, I wasn't surprised that this movie doesn't crack that wide open, because it's not a movie by its very existence that would be able to But I don't know. I mean, there's been so much talk about, like, well, what if there's a Barbie two. First of all, just let the movie be the movie. And also I think that, like, were there a Barbi two, I would hope that, like, if the focus on the first Barbie movie is on tackling these stereotypes associated with Barbie, then it's like, and let's move on, and let's focus on the Barbies that, like we were talking about during the live show, are present but not story present and deserve actual storylines. And so I guess that that is what my hope would be. I guess I wasn't super put off by it because I didn't really expect more from the Barbie movie in that regard, but like, I guess that transitions a little bit into something that I was thinking. I mean, because I think that by the nature of our jobs, we I mean, I was even when I was seeing this movie for fun, I was thinking about it from a Bechdel cast lens, because what the movie is talking about makes it kind of hard to not, you know, put it on. Some movies are so just like Smooth Brain that you're like, I'm just having fun. But like, it was hard to not immediately, you know, because the movie is trying to to interrogate however overly essentialist as we're going to talk about and mentioned it in the live show, but interrogate binary gender stereotypes as they pertain to Barbie. I think that I got so honed in on that, which is not a fault on my part. I mean, the movie's asking you to do that, but I wasn't thinking about alternate readings of the movie, and so I wanted to just mention two that did not occur to me, but I thought we're interesting to read more about. One of them was the Ruth Handler is God Barbie's Jesus, where Greta Gerwig has said at a number of points in the press tour for this movie, yeah, that she basically compares this to a reverse Adam and Eve situation. She says in a Vogue interview from last May quote, Barbie was invented first, Ken was invented after Barbie to burnish Barbie's position in our eyes and in the world. That kind of created myth is the opposite of the creation myth in Genesis, and so I feel like it kind of with that weird kind of biblical lens, some of the creative choices make a little more sense to me, but don't necessarily work like I feel like it's if you're having to have these two things be true at the same time it's and be a corporate movie. It's basically impossible. But there were some choices that I didn't like from a gendered perspective, Like we talked about during the episode, the end scene with Barbie and Ken, where she apologized to him, he doesn't apologize to her. I think that, like, once I read the biblical interpretation of it, that scene made more sense to me. But from the gendered place, which is how it's basically presented to us, it didn't work for me as much so, but I did think it was interesting that that read is very valid and at least somewhat intentional.

01:26:55
Speaker 1: Sure, either way, I'm still going to be frustrated by all of that emotional labor that Barbie is doing, all of the apologizing that she's doing and receiving none in return.

01:27:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, all I was saying was that that read works for the biblical thing, but it's also like, that's a biblical thing. Do I want to give that read deference? Not really the other reading I wanted to reference because I saw it a couple of times. There's a number of pieces written about it, just about Barbie, and when I say Barbie, I mean, Margo Robbie Barbie as an asexual icon. Of course, she is not openly ace within the movie, but either been a number of I think really well written and thought out pieces that argue that she is ace coded, including interviews that Marco Robbie has given. In that same Vogue press tour, Robbie was asked, she's my friend. Mago was asked if the character of Barbie had sexual desire, and margat Robbie said no, I don't think she could. She is sexualized, but I never thought she should be sexy. People project sex onto her. Yes, she could wear a short skirt, but because it's fun and pink, not because she wanted you to see her butt. So this is I'm pulling this argument from a salon piece by Kelly Pow that came out last summer aka The Season of Barbie think Pieces, But Kelly Powell essentially makes the argument that while it is not a stated choice with the character that Barbie's interests like, she openly has no desire for a relationship. But basically what this piece is describing that I feel like is often lost in the discourse around as characters and ace people, of which there are already so few in terms of characters. Is that being a sexual does not preclude you from rape culture, and that Barbie's character in this movie is an interesting example of that that while she does not desire a sexual relationship, she is still constantly piled on by the rape culture that exists, by how people perceive her. So I thought that was another, you know, interesting of the thing, because it just felt like, I mean, the discourse around this movie was just so much that it wasn't even as if these two reads were like not able to be found, but there was just so much that I just wanted to say, hey, check this out. I thought it was interesting.

01:29:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that read, And I appreciate about this movie that she doesn't end up with Ken and that this romantic relationship isn't foisted on her when she clearly is not interested in it. And after all that Ken had done to ruined Barbieland so I thought that was a really interesting and brave choice.

01:30:06
Speaker 2: Yeah. Again, just like something you never see in blockbusters is I think even in Blockbusters, if you have a lead character who's a woman or a fem that, even if they are very self motivated, they're movie the plot alogue like, it's they're a great character. There still is generally like and here's their partner. And and again, obviously we've talked about it on the show a million times, not that that is lessening desire, but but it's just very rare to see a protagonist who it's just like, here's a hyper feminine protagonist, and we're not going to force her to end up with someone like. I can't think of a popular example of that. That isn't a child like that isn't like a movie for children.

01:30:52
Speaker 1: It's it's very rare, and especially when the like the source material is bar B plus ken like, you would expect that to be how the movie ends up. But I'm really glad that that wasn't the case. Agree, although there is something at the end that I did find very frustrating. We touched on this in the live show, but I think it deserves more attention, which is that when Barbie decides to return to the real world and become human, the first thing that we see her do is go to a gynecologist, and it's implied that she has grown a vagina question mark.

01:31:39
Speaker 2: The implications are quite scary.

01:31:41
Speaker 1: They're scary, it's a very gender sensualist thing to imply that because she apparently has a vagina, now that's how you become a quote unquote real woman.

01:31:52
Speaker 2: I was talking about this bravely with my boyfriend, not woo, but I was talking about because that was a that from view one I've always felt yucky about and because and I don't think it comes from a hateful place. I just think it comes from a thoughtless place and that I was like, well what is because I like, I've never not seen that, because it is also kind of like a tongue in cheek kind of thing. But I'm like, there's other ways to make this joke without it having to be gender essentialist. I was like, can we have her go buy some mace? Like can we Like, there's a lot of different ways to be like I am joining the struggle of human women and femmes today and I am buying mace and a knife to attach to my keys or whatever it is, without it becoming this creepy like you're saying like essential ast bio freaky, Like it's just a dark road to go down. Don't ever go down it. There's ways to make the point. I think that they're trying to make without doing that.

01:33:01
Speaker 1: My pitch was like, why can't we just see her like enrolling in a class.

01:33:07
Speaker 2: Or something like. I like that, Like at the end, she's like excited to do something that people dread. Like that, it's like no one's smiling to go see their guynecologists, but like no one's smiling when they're doing millions of things associated with being a femin in the world, you know, right.

01:33:29
Speaker 1: So, Greta Gerwig, I pulled a quote from her about this. She says, quote, I knew I wanted to end on a mic drop kind of joke, but I also find it very emotional. When I was a teenage girl, I remember growing up and being embarrassed about my body and just feeling ashamed in a way that I couldn't even describe. I felt like everything had to be hidden.

01:33:52
Speaker 2: And then to see.

01:33:53
Speaker 1: Margot as Barbie with this big old smile on her face saying what she says at the end, with such happiness and enjoy I was like, if I can give girls that feeling of Barbie does it too. That's both funny and emotional. Unquote, which fair I get, especially because women and fems are encouraged to feel ashamed about their body. But it just feels like, like you said, it wasn't carefully sought out and the implications of a joke like that were kind of ignored.

01:34:29
Speaker 2: And yeah, stuff like that. I agree, Yeah, I think it's under that. And know it's also interesting to hear her sort of internal logic. It makes sense that it comes from a personal place. But again I think that that's just that's almost like something that we rarely encounter in this exact context. But like that feels like the oh tour risk that like people in those positions just need to be really mindful about. Is that, like, if you're projecting your experience as the experience, you're gonna come up against issues like this that are intentional or not exclusionary. And in this you know, in this case centering SIS women right, And also I can acknowledge that you know, SIS women, I mean, anyone could laugh at that joke and that a lot of SIS women felt seen by it. But I just feel like, as the button of a movie that I really enjoyed, I was bummed out by it. There are so many because I mean, there's just so many ways to make that point without centering that there's so many ways in which femmes are encouraged to feel shame and discomfort. You really have a chrkey to rey Board.

01:35:42
Speaker 1: So truly. Yes, a few other things that I found frustrating about the movie. This is just going to be a quicker list, But one is the joke that compares what's happening in barbie Land with like Ken taking over, comparing that who colonizers committing genocide against indigenous people in the New World in the fifteen hundreds.

01:36:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially in a movie that makes no attempt to comment on Indigenous people in any other way except in this one joke, and it Yeah, do not like no another one.

01:36:20
Speaker 1: And I hinted at this a little bit ago, but the suggestion that the only people who play with dolls are girls. This is the case in the opening sequence with the little girls playing with the baby dolls, and then later when weird Barbie is explaining to stereotypical Barbie that there's usually a disconnect between the Barbie and the girl who is playing with her, ignoring the fact that boys and children of all genders play with dolls.

01:36:49
Speaker 2: Which again, it felt very preventable. Like it, you don't change the meaning of that statement by saying, like the kid like.

01:36:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, the language could have been altered to to just make it more gender inclusive, and it just didn't do it. Speaking of Weird Barbie, I say justice for her. I think she deserves more of an apology.

01:37:09
Speaker 2: I think weird Barbie could should have stolen someone's house. I was like, weird Barbie should have done some damage. I feel like if I was Weird Barbie, I would be filling such rage in a way that I would have been more interested. I would have been way more interested in Weird Barbie exerting her rage onto the other barbiees versus the Kens on the Barbies, because Weird Barbie, unlike the Kens, has genuinely been wronged, right. She is like Jennifer Hudson cat in Cats as I think I loudly said to you in movie theater, But it's true. She is. She is like memory, Like where's her memory? All alone in the moonlight? Like they said, like hard enough Barbie says, she used to be the most beautiful Barbie, but then she got old and weird, and now she's been sent off to the island of misfit grinch Barbies. And it's like that's literally Jennifer Hudson Cat, Yeah, tell me that's not her. What was the name, Grizabella, Grizabella the glamour Cat. And then they gave her the gift of death at the end. They should have done that. They should have sent Weird Barbie up in the balloon and just given her the sweet embrace of death if that's what she wanted. Either way, we do know that she knows what death is and I will never get over that. But yeah, I think that like they were just the fact that I mean, and I liked Kate McKinnon's performance. I think the anesthetic is cool, Like the joke of weird Barbie is awesome, but it just felt like that character is like it's such a strong setup for a character and such a perfect piece of casting that it's like, let her fuck around. She's mostly just like, it's all good that you've treated me horrifically, and I'm Jennifer Hudson Cat, You're like, it's actually famously not all good.

01:38:53
Speaker 1: It's not okay, and yeah, and then she's doing a bunch of the labor to like save Barbie land on brainwash the Barbie.

01:39:01
Speaker 6: So it's like like Marco Robbie, Barbie keeps calling her ugly, and I'm like, it feels very like Liz lemon coated, where you're like, I mean, the cost of it makes her look not you know, but but it's like you're still looking at ka kit and be serious, you know.

01:39:15
Speaker 1: Right, I mean it goes back to the stereotypical Barbie's kind of obsession with image that like, I just wish I'd been handled differently in the movie anyway.

01:39:25
Speaker 2: And yeah, and I guess like with her obsession with image, I think it makes sense that it's there, but it's just not handled period kind of. It's just it just is. It's like the Blockbuster. What happens in every Blockbuster where they're like, we're not doing the thing, but like to some extent your always doing the thing.

01:39:45
Speaker 1: The thing this is real quick. But I would also say justice for Midge. I know, there's like the voiceover that says, like, oh, let's not show Midge because a pregnant or I'm sorry, a pregnant dog is just too weird. And I don't disagree with that. I don't necessarily want a pregnant doll.

01:40:06
Speaker 2: If you've seen the doll, I like, because I also wrote Justice Formage in my notes, Justice Formage as she's presented in the movie.

01:40:13
Speaker 1: In the movie, Yeah, and then you see the doll and you're like, that is disturbing. But when you see you know, Emerald Fanelle in the movie and then it like pans away from her really quick, it just means that there's a joke at the expense of a pregnant person. Yeah, so I didn't love that either.

01:40:35
Speaker 2: I let it fly, but only because the dolls genuinely bone chilling.

01:40:39
Speaker 1: It's creepy. Yeah, I guess I don't know how succinctly or thoughtfully I made any kind of like conclusive thoughts throughout the live show, but I do just want to say that, like bottom line, it's about women lifting each other up and fighting against the patriarchy. Very few movies are actually about that. It's not a movie that revolves around a woman ending up romantically with a man. Instead, it's a movie about a woman's self discovery and self actualization. But I also think that this movie pretty accurately reflects where we are at culturally in regard to feminism. You know, it's again a big, high budget, high grossing movie about feminism that still focuses on a character who is sis. She's white, she's hyper feminine, she's traditionally beautiful, because that is it's Margarot Robbie, because that is still what's largely valued by society. And even though there's more feminist discourse in the mainstream culture than there was, and there's more calling out sexism and patriarchal standards than there was, like you know, a decade ago and certainly before that, intersectionality is still not very mainstream. And I think this movie reflects that. I think that the as we said, like the attempts at inclusion are pretty surface level, and it just means that we just have to keep pushing the conversation right of intersectionality and meaningful inclusion.

01:42:23
Speaker 2: And I think that this movie, I want to believe, and I think we did discuss this in the live show, is that while this movie leaves a lot to be desired in terms of meaningful inclusion, that its success in a just world leaves the way. Yeah. I mean, because we've talked about this on this show for years, where it's like proving again and again and again that a quote unquote marginalized movie going population, which is ridiculous because women are the majority of movie going population, like need to be validated as worthy of being catered to directly. And it's very rare that, like, at least in the blockbuster sense, that women and friends are undeniably shown to be can be a force behind a movie. And I hope, and you know, blah blah blah, Like I don't believe we live in a just world, but I hope that the success of Barbie will lead two more meaningfully inclusive projects, and hopefully this will be a stepping stone in building blockbusters that are genuinely more inclusive. And I think building blockbusters that are more genuinely inclusive mean straying from this old ip because you're presented with a high fucking mountain to scale if you're given Barbie ip like, it's it. I really hope that the success of Barbie can be taken as a sign that yes, in fact, women still want to see movies, always have, always will, and to invest in original stories that don't have these complicated and fucked connections with body image, with race, with heteronormativity that the Barbie property does. And so anyways, I think this movie, like, I mean, we've talked about it all at this point, but its failures should be discussed, and I hope that its success means that those failures can be corrected by directors down the line. And with that, let's take you back to the Barbie past, where we provide our Barbie past conclusive thoughts about the Barbie movie.

01:44:39
Speaker 1: Wow, does the movie pass the Bechdel test?

01:44:46
Speaker 2: Yes?

01:44:46
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yes, immediately and all the time. And we love that, and we love that. And when the Kens are talking, they're usually talking about barbiees.

01:44:56
Speaker 2: It's true.

01:44:56
Speaker 1: It's like the reverse Spectel test thing.

01:44:58
Speaker 2: It's true. They're either they're talking about Barbie or horses and horses of indetermined gender. I feel like horses really kind of get the short end of the stick in this movie. I feel like horses, you know, they never asked to be associated with patriarchy, That's true. Let them be free. The Felicity girls are begging for it.

01:45:17
Speaker 1: Yes, but what about our nipple scale? The scale world we write the movie was zero to five nipples. Examining it through an intersectional feminist lens, Yes, I'm between like a three point five and four on this. I think this movie is doing a lot more than most movies do. And even though it misses opportunities to be more inclusive and to be more intersectional, and to just open up more conversations about capitalism and white supremacy and all the things we discussed, it still is is a fun romp about women taking down the patriarchy, and I love that, so I think I'll go I'll go four nipples. Four out of five is eighty percent, and that's still a B minus and that feels honestly fair. So past Barbie over here. I'll give one nipple to John Senna, whoever the fuck that is never heard of him. I will give one nipple to Esay, I will give one nipple to Greta Gerwig, and I'll give one nipple to Margot Robbie.

01:46:36
Speaker 2: Wow, that was not creative at all. I'm going to go for as well. Yeah, I mean, based on everything we've been talking about and stuff we didn't even have time to talk about. I think that this movie is because this movie exists and was so successful. I am currently at the time of recording, optimistic that it will lead to more women driven projects that are more inclusive and are more thoughtful on the issues that this movie didn't address. Because I is a Barbie movie ever going to be capable of handling capitalism meaningfully. Probably not. But I do feel like the success of this movie and the fact that it is explicitly about women tackling women's issues is really amazing. Yeah, I mean, I think that obviously, the diversity of this movie is very surface. Y. I still can't believe that they cast EASi Ray and gave her ten lines like what is wrong with you? My mom is a second grade teacher, And I asked, I did a little study. I was like, what are kids' favorite parts of the Barbie movie? And their favorite parts are when Easiray shows up they are so thrilled and do a leaper Mermaid. Wow, those are the parts that matter to the children. And I celebrate that John Cena Mermaids sort of crickets there because who is that? Who is John Senna? Who's John Senna? I don't know who that who that is? But yeah, I mean I also, I just like, I really liked seeing this movie. It puts me in a good mood to watch it, and there's not a lot of movies that do it. And I think it's gonna stand the test of time. And I think that's really exciting. So I'm gonna give it four nipples. I'm gonna give one to Greta Gerwig. I'm gonna give one. Oh, I'm gonna give one to Arianna green Blatt because I wish that Sasha had had more to do, and she played the moody teenager really perfectly. Truly, she was like giving full hot topic in her first scene she had. I was like, all, but like the thumb, you know, like the slave on the thumb. She could have been wearing fingerless gloves and it would have worked. And that's great. I'm going to give one nipple to Issa Ray and I'm gonna give one nipple too. I'll give one to John Senna as well. I hope he catches a break at some point. He's really no, I'm going to give min a DJ Collin because no, wait, wait, wait no, I'm going to give my DJ collins ex wife. May things have improved on her end? Yeah? Is that an episode? That's our episode, everybody, mum.

01:49:20
Speaker 1: And that was the Barbie Live Show. Thanks again to everyone who came out to all of the shows that we did on this tour. Thank you to the venues for having us. We always have such fun doing live shows, especially the.

01:49:36
Speaker 2: Meet and greets, hanging out like actually just getting to spend time with you. We really appreciate it very much.

01:49:42
Speaker 1: Thanks to everyone who bought merch and again we have another tour coming up in the UK, so if you want to come see us do shows on Titanic or Shrek. We know most movies of all time, possibly the two movies that are most canon to this show, so you know that we're gonna put on a spectacle.

01:50:10
Speaker 2: And you can't call us misinterests because guess what, they're directed by men. Sorry, uh no, we'll see you at the UK. Thanks to everyone who came out to this tour and as always, if you want to listen to more Bechdel Cast, well you're very able to do that. You can go right now to our patreon Akmatreon that's patreon dot com slash Bechdel Cast, and for five dollars a month, you have access to two additional episodes a month around a fun theme hosted by Caitlin and myself. It's always a good time, and you'll get access to over one hundred and fifty episodes of back catalog there as well.

01:50:47
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, you can also go to our merch store at teapublic dot com slash the Bechdel Cast, where you can satisfy all of your merch needs and everything there is designed by a one Jamie Loftus, So grab your merch and stay tuned for the other live show that we covered on this tour. That episode will be coming out soon on The Wolf of Wall Street, so keep your eyes peeled for that and other episodes. Ye Bye, Bye Bye. The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Voskresenski. Our logo in Merch is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree slash Bechdel Cast