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The next article comprises spoilers for Barbie and Don’t Fear Darling.
A wonderful blonde is driving via the arid desert in a Nineteen Fifties convertible within the blockbuster Warner Bros. film of its yr, escaping an idyllic existence that isn’t what it appears. That is actually the plot of the model new blockbuster Barbie, through which the proper Barbie (Margot Robbie) has her actuality shaken when she begins experiencing “irrepressible ideas of dying” and has to journey to the actual world to repair the human who’s enjoying together with her too onerous and transferring her adverse emotions onto the doll.
ICYMI, it is also the plot of final yr’s Do not Fear Darling, which follows Florence Pugh’s Alice as she involves the conclusion that one thing’s off in her uncannily Barbieland-like valley Nineteen Fifties experimental group.
Field Workplace Barbie
You’d should be residing below a rock — or a minimum of on the fringes of society like ostracized Bizarre Barbie (Kate McKinnon) — to not have been aware of the intense Barbiecore makeover popular culture has had this summer season. It looks as if each different model has a partnership with Mattel. Director Greta Gerwig, Robbie, and Ryan Gosling, who performs one among many Kens, had been on pink carpets and press junkets all around the world within the lead-up to the movie in a promo tour that appeared to go on barely too lengthy (owing to the actors’ strike which started final month). This has paid off. Barbie raked in $162 million on opening weekend and is ready to line the pockets of each Mattel and Warner Bros. Discovery for years to return.
Do not Fear Darling was speculated to be the Barbie of 2022. One among solely two theatrical releases from the studio (the opposite was the equally ill-fated Black Adam), the fanfare round it signaled the return of Hollywood — or, extra to the purpose, Hollywood gossip — because of the upheaval on set. Director Olivia Wilde left her long-term accomplice Jason Sudeikis and started relationship her worker, Kinds, who changed the abusive Shia LaBeouf. A video of Wilde attempting to placate LaBeouf by throwing “Miss Flo” below the bus and claiming Pugh did not need to work with him went viral, after which Pugh eschewed interviews for the film. She barely made it to the Venice premiere, swanning in on the eleventh hour in a purple two-piece playsuit, Aperol spritz in hand and never a care on this planet. A thousand memes had been launched. After which Kinds spit on Pine. Hollywood was again, child!
Distinction that with the Barbie set, on which essentially the most controversial factor to occur was Robbie fining crewmembers for not sporting pink on Wednesdays and giving the cash to charity.
That is the place the variations between Barbie and Do not Fear Darling finish, although.
The Kenergy Is Off
Each films are helmed by actress-turned-directors, with Barbie being the third movie from Gerwig and exploring themes of feminism, womanhood, and the way the generations work together, although not as well because it thinks it is being. Wilde, who additionally stars in Do not Fear Darling, noticed success in 2019 together with her directorial debut Booksmart being heralded as a feminist coming-of-age flick, which I additionally do not suppose was that deep. So, it is sensible that for Wilde’s sophomore effort, she would latch onto a script that tries, although in the end fails, to cope with comparable feminist ideas as Barbie (if , ), doing the rounds within the press saying that ladies’s orgasms had been the one precedence of the film.
However whenever you discover out the plot of Do not Fear Darling — that the oasis through which Alice, her husband Jack (Kinds), and their buddies reside is a digital actuality pressured upon the ladies by their trendy incel companions and lorded over by their males’s rights activist grasp (Pine) — that is simply gross.
Regardless of Barbie ostensibly being in regards to the titular doll, there’s a very sturdy males’s rights activist subplot that rivals Barbie’s journey to search out existential equilibrium. Ken tags alongside on Barbie’s journey to the actual world, the place he turns into red-pilled by patriarchy (and horses). Getting his Andrew Tate on, he returns to Barbieland on his personal to show the opposite Kens of his newfound discovery. When Barbie rocks up later within the film, the Supreme Court docket are actually cheerleaders, and the president is getting “brewski beers” for interchangeable Ken #17.
The Way forward for Movie Is Feminine
Who would have thought there’d be so many parallels between the web’s boyfriend, Kinds’ Jack in Do not Fear Darling, and the web’s boyfriend circa 2011, Gosling’s Ken? The previous is indoctrinated into kidnapping his physician (Physician Barbie?) girlfriend and forcing her right into a mind-numbing (actually) existence of Nineteen Fifties housewifery as a result of he is unhappy she does not have time to cook dinner him dinner, whereas the latter simply desires Barbie to reciprocate his emotions… however in essentially the most poisonous means doable. “He stole your own home, brainwashed your folks, and took over the federal government,” America Ferrera’s character Gloria tells Barbie in one among a number of feminist pep talks when Barbie expresses “himpathy” for Ken.
In each films, the ladies spend time in mid-century, “ticky-tacky” homes. In Do not Fear Darling, the wives marvel what the boys do all day working on the top-secret Victory Venture headquarters. Barbie’s Dreamhouse is hers alone; a number of references are made to that all through the movie. “The place do the Kens keep?” Gloria asks Barbie. “I really do not know,” Barbie shrugs.
There are additionally dream ballets, authentic songs carried out by the male leads, automobile chases, company goons, and vibrant jumpsuit uniforms for the ultimate showdown that make Do not Fear Darling and Barbie virtually the identical film. When the strikes are over — or, certainly, if the studios go forward with AI, which Warner Bros. has already performed — perhaps we’ll get a crossover sequel: Do not Fear Barbie.
Sadly, it seems that the message Hollywood has obtained as an alternative is that Barbie’s success requires *checks notes* Uno and Scorching Wheels blockbusters as an alternative of films by, for, and about ladies. To cite Reese Witherspoon, and regardless of Don’t Fear Darling’s poor effort, “Girls’s tales matter. They simply matter.”
Scarlett Harris is a tradition critic and writer of the e book A Diva Was a Feminine Model of a Wrestler: An Abbreviated Herstory of World Wrestling Leisure. You may comply with her on Twitter @ScarlettEHarris and browse her beforehand printed work at her web site, The Scarlett Lady.
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