It's time to admit that Barbie is a Best Picture prospect for the 2023 Academy Awards.

I was originally expecting myself to be watching Dune 2 about this time in the year. This is the sequel to the 2021 Denis Villeneuve adaptation which I liked. It dropped during the pandemic, so I ended up watching it on HBO Max at the time (like a lot of folks). Despite this setback, it still made a "decent" amount of money to warrant a sequel.

But it continually gets pushed back. At first it was November, and now it is set to come out in the spring (March). A lot of this has to do with striking actors and writers and other such things that complicate the world in which we live. At the end of the day, entertainment is just "fun" but the people who make all that entertainment need to get paid for what they do. So...I get it. But in thinking of how the Dune sequel might actually benefit from being pushed back until next year, I have to realize that this may be a good thing because the Barbie movie is actually a contender for the Best Picture Oscar.

I never thought I'd be saying that. Barbie didn't conjure up the images that I would think of when it comes to the coveted "Best Picture." That it is today may just indicate how badly the sheen has rubbed off the Academy Awards: a slow decline of "keeping it real" that just unraveled year after year with people becoming more and more aware of how white the industry is, how exploitative some directors and producers have been (Weinstein), the ageism within the industry, and the infamous Oscar slap that sent Will Smith into exile. And now our country is so divided that woke messaging within films and television is being called out by MAGA groups as "You go woke! You go broke!" exercising their financial muscle and ability to corral their own to "teach libtards a lesson!"

So yeah...it's weird. I don't much enjoy watching the Academy Awards anymore. The glamour feels like it has vanished, and everyone is just a monkey throwing poo. Just these particular monkeys all look nice and wear nice clothes, but their lives don't actually feel envy worthy because I just know too much of what's going on, whether it's painful plastic surgeries, sexual assault, toxic patriarchy, discrimination, or racism (take your pick). Never meet your heroes, and the 24/7 news cycle along with Twitter and other social media (unfortunately) makes this almost impossible. We practically know how a fart smells that comes from a celebrity...and this isn't a good thing. There's no illusion there, and they are no different than us. And when we start thinking that, then you just realize that (at the end of the day) there's little justification as to why they make so much money and all of us make so little. Ugh...talk about losing "suspension of disbelief."

All that being said, we come to Barbie. This film by Greta Gerwig was remarkable, and that's what I'm having an issue with (in my brain) because maybe...I never thought that Barbie was supposed to be taken this seriously. But it should. The message of the film (which is a critique on patriarchy and toxic masculinity) made it into something that was incredibly deep and meaningful instead of this weird light-hearted comedy that I was expecting Barbie to be. And maybe my expectations were built on patriarchy, because (as a man) how could I think that Barbie was important to anyone until I realized that this strange doll from Mattel was (in fact) important to many people? And therein (I suppose) lies the rub of all this. The movie that I would have thought was a shoe-in for not having critical acclaim (and easily dismissible) is in fact the opposite of that. It's a great movie, and its "woke" messaging may in fact make it the juggernaut at the Academy Awards that all other movies should just avoid if they can by pushing release dates out into the next year. I think that's what I'd do if I were calling the shots around a film, especially if I was counting on some Oscar buzz to lift the overall box office and aftermarket sales of my movie.

I was not expecting Barbie to be as great as it was.

I saw the Barbie movie this weekend. I didn't expect that it would have such depth to its story, or that it would raise so many existential questions. There's a lot to unpack in the Barbie movie, so here's your spoiler warning in case you haven't seen it, and it looks like something you'd very much like to watch.

Conservative media was quick to brand the Barbie movie as yet another attack on masculinity. I definitely can see where people might think that. It's easy to assume that whenever anything is being criticized (or when people are painting boundaries) that the thing in question is "under attack." In this particular instance, that "thing" would be "patriarchy" and "toxic masculinity." But I think the message is more complex, and it comes through the words of the creator of Barbie as the ghost of Ruth Handler. In one of the best scenes in the movie, this ghost says to Barbie that ideas live forever. She points out that the pain of being human causes us to make up all kinds of things. Patriarchy is one of those things. But there are dozens of other things that we make up too that end up being harmful.

For both the Ken's and the Barbies in the movie, unrealistic body expectations are made up things that have been heaped on both genders. And the ones who have always been on top have always made it rough for the people who have been on the bottom. But it doesn't have to be this way, because "its all made up." It reminds me in some ways of the war that is going on between artists and people who are using a.i. I'm in several Facebook groups where people excitedly post their a.i. art and share their prompts, I have observed that an argument breaks out almost every other day. Do not underestimate what I'm saying here. These arguments generate upwards of a thousand comments in which artists are trashing a.i. and a.i. "prompt engineers" are calling artists "obsolete do nothings" or worse. The whole art industry looks like it is in meltdown, and art majors and art schools will probably vanish within ten years as there literally is no money for those people who want to do that kind of work now. It makes me sad, but this is just how humans are.

For the longest time, people who excelled at anything really would kind of lord that over people who were trying to do the same thing who couldn't. It shouldn't be a newsflash that people aren't born equal. Some have gifts and talents and assets that other people just don't have, and they start way ahead. If life were a race, everyone has a different starting point and some people are born in the deepest holes and are expected to climb out of that. If you realize that what I'm saying is true, you can see why a.i. is such a gift to so many people. Suddenly along comes this machine that can do the thing better than everyone, and the people who had no talent are flocking in droves to use the machine to be able to finally create things that they've wanted to be able to do and could never afford to do. And (at first) the artists laugh until they realize that they've been replaced. And now insults fly back and forth between the two camps of people. One is gloating that they now are in a position where they don't need the other. And the other is scared that they are going to be replaced and will have to eek out a living like people they previously had contempt for. It's awful, but its human nature.

But the message of Barbie is that it doesn't have to be this way. However, it isn't all rosy in its messaging either. It freely admits that equality for all people may come in time, but that history doesn't paint such a rosy picture of how things have gone in the past.

I have to give Mattel a few kudos that it was willing to poke so much fun at itself in this. The boardroom that wants to guide women on their path is completely run by men. And they allowed Aqua's song "Barbie Girl" to be sampled into a new song for the movie that plays over the credits. Originally, Mattel tried to sue Aqua for defamation for coming out with that song, which has some pretty rapey lyrics to it. But now, they see that it's basically what people do with Barbie dolls. And even though Barbie gave girls a lot of representation in different fields, there was always the question of, "What was Ken?" And by the end of the movie, we realize that he's just a stand-in for straight American (modern) men who decided to tie their self worth to a girlfriend's approval.

This take on the state of the modern man surprised me. It's an untenable position for many, where boys are told by the system that their entire worth as a man rests on their ability to get a woman to be their girlfriend. In Ken's case, he doesn't even know what to do with a girlfriend. He just knows he needs to have one. But since the Barbies are independent and self-sufficient, they don't need a Ken. So a Ken has no reason to exist.

In the movie, Ken's journey is a particular fascination for me. Ken (once he's in the real world) finds that men rule everything, and he interprets it the way a lot of people in Ken's position would interpret it in order to refute its existence: all men are on top by the very fact of being men. But then he gets his dose of reality: being a man is not enough. You have to be the right kind of man. You have to be educated and wealthy, and meet a number of arbitrary criteria. The ending message then is that if Ken wants to be happy, he needs to define his own role in life. And society needs to change so that Ken has that space to find that role. And our current society (sadly) too often does not allow for this kind of self-discovery.

As I finish this essay on Barbie I want to end with this: one gender being in charge and ignoring the struggles of the other is a problem. But honestly, it goes beyond gender. Just replace that word with just about anything else within context, and you'll understand what I'm saying. One "caste" being in charge and ignoring the struggles the other is a problem. One political party being in charge and ignoring the struggles of the other is a problem. And repeat, etc. We all could do better, and once again, it doesn't have to be this way.