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Hey Barbies. Hey Barbie. Hello to my sisters, my dolls. I'm Sam Sanders. I'm Saeed Jones. And I'm Zach Safford and you are listening to Vibe Check live from Barbie Land.
All right, friends. It feels like we have been barreling toward this episode since, frankly, before Vibe Check even existed. Because the marketing for the Barbie movie has been so intense, it feels surreal that it's only just now come out this past weekend.
But it's here, and we have so many thoughts. Sam has seen the movie like eight times. I've seen it once. Zach has seen it like 3.5 times. Y'all, I have been up and through these movie theaters. We'll talk about it. Well, so we decided to go all in. We're weaponizing our pink.
Going all in on the Barbie movie for this episode. Spoilers. Spoilers, friend. If you haven't seen the movie yet, go ahead and pause the episode. We'll be here. We'll be in your podcast feed. A great deal of my delight, a lot of my joy in the movie was surprise. I hear that. I would say if you haven't seen it yet and you want to, pause it.
you know where to find us. So first we're going to talk about the movie itself, how we felt. Did we like it? Did we not like it? What's our favorite character, Alan? And then we're going to talk about the implications of Barbie, where Barbie's taking us in terms of thoughts about gender, identity, politics. What world has Barbie wrought? Ooh,
From Barbie land to Barbie world. I love that. But before we get into the pink of it all, let's check in. Sisters, how are we doing? How are we feeling? Zach, how about you? Today, I'm feeling better about the world. Yesterday, not great. I think I know why. You do know why. And it's been solved. Sam Sanders can be hearing this first. We'll tell the story. Yes. So I have been...
I have been going to the movies a lot just because of Barbie Heimer and all the others coming out. But I've gone, you know, three times, I think, in the past few days. And during one of these times, I was with Sam Sanders and we went to the suburbs of LA and we went and saw Oppenheimer, which I enjoyed. Me and Luke snuck in a bottle of wine. Don't care. Do what I want. Actually, we're going to,
This is part of the story too. They snuck in a bottle of wine. I did not. I'm Christian. I didn't bring wine. Wait, you snuck in an entire bottle of wine? An entire bottle of wine. Yes. And we're not going to say what theater. Red or white? Rose, baby. They picked up wine. I picked up all the concession stuff. At some point of me sitting down with all the stuff in my hand, them coming back with wine cups, all these things, my keys, not just my house keys, but my car keys, the garage opener to my building, all these things that are on my key chain, they're in my pocket. Oh.
And when I realized in the movie, as Sam's getting wine drunk during Oppenheimer, I said, I was not drunk. I was a little buzzed. Okay. Wow. I was like, it takes a lot more than half a bottle of wine for Sam Sanders. That's true. That's true. That's true.
I said to myself, self, your keys fell. They can't go very far. It's a movie theater. You're in one place. But let me tell you, we got up. I could not find them there. I went outside. We came back. And then it becomes this mess. So anyway, our friend Luke drove. So I get home and I'm like, oh, is it there? So this begins a series of, oh, did I leave them at my house? I get a locksmith to come. My super comes. She yells at me because I'm using the wrong locksmith. All this stuff. And for 24 hours, I was like, I've lost my mind. Who steals keys?
So I began calling the theater and I like influenced the hell out of these teenagers that worked there. I was like, I have lost my keys. I found the gay ones there. I really imprinted myself on them. I went back twice. I was there so much with these like random teenagers that they all became obsessed with finding these mystical keys that like just came to the theater. And at 11 p.m. last night, it felt like a movie. At 11 p.m. last night, I get a phone call after I've taken melatonin and I'm half asleep and it's a theater. And they were like,
Zach Stafford were calling to ask, do your keys have something on them besides the logo of the car? And I was like, yes, my gym keys are there. And they're like, well, congratulations. We found your keys and you are not crazy. They somehow fell into a hole in the seat itself. And that's why. And we didn't even know that existed.
Yes. And it was like cheering. It was a very heartfelt moment. But it was like me and the entire Alhambra community have been searching for me. It's going to be like their semester project. Totally. Well, also, it was such a weird experience to see you lose your keys and realize it after Oppenheimer had ended. Because I think of the whole group that went, you enjoyed Oppenheimer the most.
And I could tell that you wanted to talk about how much you liked it, but you couldn't because where were your keys? I was like, oh, Zach, I can't keep you about this movie with him. Yeah, I was like, I can't talk about the movie. I have to get to the house. But you liked it. I liked it. And I would love it more if it wasn't colored by losing keys and me thinking, okay, if I can't get to my apartment, do I get a hotel room? Where do I go to sleep with a child? Yeah. My thing with Oppenheimer is that
This is perhaps the most dialogue heavy film that Christopher Nolan has ever made. But I don't go to Christopher Nolan movies for dialogue. I go for sound effects, special effects, big action sequences. So the moments of the film, and it was about the actual action of the bomb and the sound effects around that, I found riveting. All these men in suits talking nonstop for more than two hours, that got tedious for me. Right.
Christopher Nolan, the epitome is a man in a suit somehow and possibly defying gravity. Yes, Inception, Batman, something that is big and action-y. I wanted more of that from him. Well, I'm glad you have your keys. Sam, how are you doing? I think it's already been mentioned. I've been going to a lot of movies these last few days.
And I want to talk about my specific Barbenheimer experience in the next segment. But yeah, my last few days have just been like movies, movies. They're back, baby. I went to see Theater Camp last Thursday night. I went to see Barbie on Friday. I went to see it again on Saturday. I saw Oppenheimer on Sunday. I saw Asteroid City last night. I watched the clones Tyrone at home on Saturday after Barbie. Yeah, my vibe right now is just like cinema's back, baby.
Also, I'm like at this moment, mid-summer, where I've actually spent the summer budget for summer vacations and shenanigans, but I want some more vacations and shenanigans. So it's a moment of Sam trying to exercise restraint because I'm just like, could I just go somewhere for a few days and just do something else for a few days? My vibe is movie vacation because that's all the vacation I got for the next few months. But I like that. Saeed, what's your vibe?
That's my vibe. Okay. Big dramatic sign. I will say this. I had one of those mornings where an hour and a half before my alarm clock, I'm still in bed, still have my sleeping mask on, but I'm like half awake. We know that phase. And anxiety sets in. And look, I'm very good at like kind of facing my anxiety and saying, look, girl, I still got another 90 minutes. So you just gonna have to wait.
Not this morning. It just felt like my anxiety was somehow like physically turning the temperature up in my bed.
To the point that it was like my to-do list of things I was worrying about just stacked up, stacked up, stacked up. To the point that I literally just kind of went, fine. And I just kind of threw the blanket off and just kind of hopped out of bed like, fine, whatever. So I woke up, you know, stressed out about things that are not actually urgent. Just things I was worrying about, if that makes sense. And then, yeah, I guess I just...
I'm declaring this the beginning of my summertime sadness phase of this season, which has happened, which is like we're past the midway point, which I usually consider July 4th. I just feel a little foggy. I don't know if I need more caffeine this morning. Maybe I am depressed. Maybe I'm just a little sleepy. You know that. Well, and also I think this summer in particular, usually August feels relatively dead work-wise in the same way that like this,
those weeks between thanksgiving and christmas ain't nobody really doing shit sometimes august can feel like that not this august mind you we're not even there yet i know it feels like we're walking into an incredibly busy august it's not gonna be slow you know so gotta push through it is what it is i'm excited to talk to y'all though well hopefully today will break that uh i guess anxiety lethargicness will bring some energy into your life i'm already giggling more
Well, before we get into the Barbie of it all, I feel like I got the blank of it all from Sam, and now I can't stop saying it. Yeah, it is a very crude shorthand. It helps. It helps. Yeah. But, of course, we want to thank all of you for sending us the fan mail, reaching out to us on social media. Every time something happens on the internet involving Snickers—
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Yet I'm the bad one for bringing wine to the movies. I didn't tweet it. I just reported it in fax. Let's jump in. Let's jump in. Let's just...
We're talking about Barbie. This entire episode is our Barbie episode. I want to talk in this first segment about our initial reactions to the movie and what it felt like to experience this big, seemingly monoculture moment of Barbenheimer weekend. And then in the next segment after this one, we're going to get into some bigger themes and conversations that stem from Barbie itself.
But to start, just got to say, as you know, dear listeners, what a weekend for the movies. Barbie made $377 million across the world in its opening weekend and about $155 million in the U.S. alone.
And globally, with the success of Oppenheimer, Barbie and Oppenheimer and all these other movies led to last weekend being the fourth biggest movie weekend ever in recorded Hollywood history. Okay, see, that's helpful. Because the thing with me with movie box office numbers is when you say 377 million or 100, I'm like, it all sounds big. So it's hard for me to contextualize the scale. But the
fourth biggest movie weekend ever in recorded history? Yes. Now, that measure, though, we should clarify here, does not account for inflation still, and it's been this way since it came out. Adjusted for inflation, the most popular box office-wise film in American history is still Gone with the Wind.
Wow. Yeah. Damn. Yeah. That was the biggest movie ever, if you account those dollars for today's dollars. That is fascinating. That's a racism movie. Yo, that was a moment. Before we talk about our reactions to Barbie itself, how did this weekend feel for y'all? This big zeitgeisty moment where it felt like everyone was kind of doing the same thing or at least talking about the same thing and enjoying it together. How was that for y'all? Awesome.
- I adored it. I want more of it. As I've talked about a lot, it's because growing up, I would go to the movies every Friday with all my friends from middle school and high school kind of tapered off. But middle school was like Fridays, everyone went, you all got tickets. It was a big thing. You got ice cream afterwards. I know it was like a big tent pole part of your life. And then you slept over at someone's house afterwards. This past weekend, you know, Sam, you were able to get us Barbie tickets and we were able to go as friends there and then Oppenheimer.
And, you know, we came as a group and then we'd arrive at these theaters and other groups were there. And it did feel like middle school in a way that, like, this is, like, the big part of your week. And everyone's doing the same thing and everyone has something to talk about. And everyone's reacting to the same piece of culture. It just was really, like, nostalgic in all the best ways. Yeah. Saeed? Yeah, I'm charmed by it. I think...
Culture has become pretty adversarial. I think Americans generally are pretty adversarial. We're very competitive. I think it's fair to say. And so it is really interesting to me, right? There's a scenario in which this past weekend, the numbers might have been the same, but the narrative could have been Barbie versus Oppenheimer.
right it could have been the sense of which movie is better you know it's kind of very comparative competitive and i just didn't see that instead it was like both and you know i'm gonna see both the same day like it wasn't the sense of comparing the aesthetics or the talents of greta gerwig versus christopher nolan i really wasn't seeing that and instead it was like this nice kind of
collectively excited moment. And to their credit, the creatives behind both films played nicely the entire roll-up to these movies. There was a photo from a few days ago of Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie going to see Oppenheimer and taking pictures of it, right? That was nice to see. Because the cast did this interview series where they were giving good luck words to the cast of Barbie and being able to see you this week. And so it was really lovely. And something, I saw some data today because we're finally getting, you know,
exit poll data from the movie theaters and the gender split is pretty much exactly the same for who went to the movie so barbie's tracking at around 69 of the viewers of the movie over the weekend identify as female oppenheimer at 64 identify as male so it did feel like the most equal i've never seen that before in the history of movies that you have two different movies that have clear gender parity on who's going to them and it wasn't very interesting either
No, it was nice to see. I have complained on this show before about how this age of internet and on-demand and streaming means that we've lost any semblance of a monoculture. We no longer all watch the same sitcom Thursday night and then talk about it the next morning. And I think we lose something as a culture when we don't have that.
This Barbie in Oppenheimer Weekend felt like we had a return to water cooler monoculture, at least for a few days. Everyone I know watched it and wanted to talk about it together at the same time. Yeah. The last similar movie experience I can think of that felt this way in the sense of it's not just on the internet. It's like people dressing up. It's people creating their own home parties and events like very organically. Was Black Panther probably?
And even that to me was black people. I'm sure there were white people out there, frankly, who were also excited. But it was, you know, I went to see it at the Magic Johnson Theater in Harlem. We were all dressed to the nines. I went to dinner. Actually, I went to see it with Kimberly Drew and my friend Angel. You know, like, yeah, but even this, because it was the Barbie Heimer of it all, like, damn it, I'm going to say of it all, all episode. It did feel
Yes. Cohesive. And like beautiful in this really nice way. So there's this moment. I went to see it again on Saturday after seeing it Friday. Mm-hmm.
We're parking in the garage. We're about to get out of the car to go up and see the movie. And this other car has parked like across from us. And it's three young women in their teens. They get out of the car. They're all dressed in Barbie pink. And before they go up to go see the movie, they just give each other hugs. And you're like, that's really beautiful. I think there was a whole weekend of me seeing young women...
having so much fun with the Barbie aesthetic and the Barbie look for themselves and for other women, not for men. Like,
I felt the same way about that energy the way I felt when I went to see Crazy Rich Asians opening weekend in LA. The crowd was pretty much all Asian. And I was in this theater watching the Asian community have their moment. And I was like, good for y'all. I love that I can even just observe this. I felt the same energy with the way that particularly young girls were enjoying Barbie this weekend. I thought it was great. Yeah. And I know there's more you want to get to. But the other reason I loved all of this is it's just...
Lately, it just feels like everything's breaking down, including pop culture. And I think this was a weekend where pop culture did what pop culture is supposed to do. There you go. Give us something to connect. Give us a moment. Give us a cohesive opportunity. Let us build. Let us riff, right? It's not just about buying your ticket and sitting in the theater. It's like, what are you going to wear? What's the dab? What's your Barbie? People are sharing memories. We're creating conversations and everything. Sure, there's a discourse. I'm sure people have been arguing over it, and we'll get into it.
things but that wasn't the defining characteristic of this cultural moment and i love yeah it was great yeah i want us to just talk now about whether the three of us liked this movie i liked it with caveats where do you guys stand give me your review
I really liked it a lot. I had a lot of fun. I loved everything about it. I love the marketing. I love the brand activations. I think there's like no big notes when I walked out of it, which we're going to get into. I want it to map onto it. These really big theoretical critiques and conversations and really take this on as a piece of culture and bring it into like the cultural criticism space, which we will do and we can do, but
When I took a breath the next day and just thought about the fun of seeing queer characters being hinted at, seeing Barbie go through all these experiences, he can be a himbo. The fact that that was made and made to be so fun and to allow us all to play with it was just really great. It gave me a lot of hope for entertainment because it has felt lately that we have to rain on everything.
And this isn't being rained on. And I don't think we're going to rain on it today either. I think we're going to talk about it in smart ways. But like everyone, similar to Theater Camp. Theater Camp, you know, Vulture, your home, Sam. You loved it. And Vulture even said, you know, Theater Camp is so sweet, you can't really critique it. And I think I want more of that. Like things that are just like, just go enjoy it. Just consume it and have fun. Totally. Saeed?
I would give the Barbie movie a B minus. I'll give Barbie a B minus. Oh, okay. Yeah, which is, you know, sort of a great... I mean, so I'm excited to get into this. Yeah. First of all, the halo effect is real, right? The marketing, the kind of cultural phenomenon. It worked, yeah. But I want to set that aside for a second. I loved the movie. I was entertained. I loved how it looked. It's beautiful. I just feel like so many...
would-be blockbuster, mass-marketed films, certainly superhero films are a great example. Like we have this issue where everything looks the same. You know what I mean? And this just looked different. It felt different. It was high camp. It was actually zany.
Which I feel like we don't get to see that often. I love that. In terms of substance, I think the reason I don't feel like it was like an A-plus for me is that when the film tries to get deeper, it's just not there. It's just not there. But it's a good time. And I don't think everything – sometimes being basic is okay. And I think when you stay in that plane, it was a success. It was a hoot. Yeah. I think that parts of this movie were absolutely brilliant. Yeah.
The flow and the pacing of the first third to first two thirds of the movie. Yes. Just phenomenal. It moves at just the right pace. The comedic timing is amazing. You're on this quest with the heroes of this film in a way that feels propellant and also hilarious and also sweet in this beautiful gilded world.
Towards the end, it tries to make too many people and too many stakeholders happy, and it kind of trips over itself. There's a moment where the ghost of the founder of Mattel shows up to perform Earth Mother. Before we get to that, because I love this, because I agree. I was like two-thirds of the way perfect. What was your first record scratch moment?
I think for me, and this is probably a part of my bigger, larger critique about it thematically, this movie never settled on who is the actual hero who needs the journey in this movie. Everything about this movie starts to set up Barbie as the hero who has the archetypal hero's quest. Right, the stereotypical part.
the mother character played by America Ferreira she sets the emotional stakes for the entire film and she starts the propellant action that makes everything else happen in the film so in my mind this film would have worked better if she got more time more plot and more hero's journey herself mhm
She makes the entire journey possible with what she's doing, yet we end up knowing the least about her. So that felt weird. And then as soon as you start to think about the plot line of Ken –
I hate to use the word problematic for such a fun film, but was Ken Loki an incel? Not Loki, Heike Encel. I was just like, all right, he rebels because the women don't give him enough attention and therefore he has to exhort power over them. Okay, so I love this because I don't think that's problematic. I think that is Ken as an antagonist. The Kens are become antagonistic figures, right? And they are incels. I think the film though...
It just feels like that's why I was like B minus. It's like an instance where like a really smart student, a lot of potential big ideas, takes a big swing and then kind of gets in a little deeper and then tries to back. I'm like, no, it's like what the kids were doing was very violent. And at the end, like them sitting on the bed together and her trying to open up and he's still trying to kiss her. Like it's this thing where I'm like, no, like an actual threat.
has emerged. And I think America for when she's doing her makeups like girl, he literally tried to overthrow the government and kind of turned y'all all into subservient mates. Like, why are you trying to be nice to him? Yeah. Still, because it's still Mattel kind of tries to reset to going. But oh, it's just Ken, though. He just didn't understand. Yeah. And, you know, seeing it the second time, I just asked more questions about the logic of the film and it didn't hold up. That doesn't get in the way of it being a fun film. But OK, think about the last third.
Barbie has to go back to Barbie world and help train the women on how to beat the patriarchy. Shouldn't America Ferreira's character lead that training because she's lived it? Barbie wasn't human yet. How did Barbie have the knowledge to equip the other Barbies with this knowledge of the patriarchy when she had not yet become human and live in that world? And so I just think the entirety of this film...
My biggest problem with it is that the character who should be the hero and in charge of the journey is not allowed to be. It's America Ferrera's mother character. But instead, Barbie has to do it, but Barbie isn't equipped to do what this movie asked her to do. That said...
This movie for me felt like a nice block of Swiss cheese full of holes. Still delicious. Like I'm okay with it. I was like, why not breathe? Zach, what do you think?
I agree. I think the record scratch moment for me was when we started to emerge, not just in the real world, because Venice was really funny to me when they are rollerblading. Also, Ken walking from Venice to Century City. Hilarious. At peak LA. How far would that be? You ain't walking to Century City from Venice. You're not walking.
And that's the funniness of it. You have to cross the 405, which no one likes to even cross the 405. So the fact that he walked across it is like really hilarious. Oh, that would have been a really funny scene. Also, making Century City the seat of the patriarchy, chef's
It's hilarious. Chef's kiss? So fucking funny. Go ahead, Zach. But it's in those moments. Like the Mattel, that was funny to me, et cetera. But when we start getting into the real world of America Ferrera, her daughter, and also just that bench scene, there's the moment in which Margot Robbie sits on the bench with the elderly woman. People have been saying that that is Barbara Handler, the inspiration to Barbara. It's not. It's not her. Oh, they're saying the woman who plays that. Yes.
character so everyone's been viewing that as like that's the actual barbie you know age that's not her sadly that would be brilliant but that's not her it is actually anne roth who's an oscar-winning costume designer um who's sitting there but in that moment it was really sweet but i was like wait a minute what is this kind of one for one barbie and real women in the real world and why are we using these like real women's experiences to only define barbie who's never been in this world which i
I like Life Size with Tyra Banks, where she was so clueless. That's why that movie for me with Lindsay Lohan is so brilliant, is that Tyra Banks emerges and she's like, I'm a doll. What is this? Teach me. I don't understand what's happening. And you see her learn in real time. Where Barbie, it's like, these Barbies aren't people. They never were. And to hold them to the same standards of actual lived experiences like America Ferreras is...
So she should be, to your point, Sam, America should be the protagonist. So we should have more, she should have been introduced way earlier. We should know more about her family, what she's gone through. Then Barbie's kind of learning through America's story kind of what it means to be a woman. And that would make more sense to me.
Yeah, like the character who actually holds all the emotional stakes for the film is America Ferrer's character. And just some of the way that that character was created in hindsight, you're like, it's kind of sloppy. So she designs Barbie dolls, but also she's just the receptionist. Right. Which is confusing. Which is it? What? That was confusing. That said, I found this movie quite beautiful. I feel like often with creative projects in terms of a narrative engine is an idea I think about a lot. You see two types. Yeah.
You see projects where it's like the creator had a clear idea of, in this case, where the story ends, where the protagonist ends. And everything that happens is driving us to that moment. So we're actually gaining momentum as we drive towards that final moment. This was the other version where I feel like the writers, the directors, had a very great idea.
And I love it. And I think that's why we love the first half of the movie in particular. They had a great idea of how it opens, right? The world that they're building and how they want to destabilize it. And it was really fun. And I think, was it Lizzo singing that song? So they have the two versions of the song as things are kind of changing up. So good, so good. The traveling between the worlds.
But it didn't feel to me that the narrative engine had a clear idea of its destination, which is why at the end, it just felt like it ran out of steam. See, my theory, I think what you saw in the latter half, like a third of that movie, was Greta Gerwig having to please multiple stakeholders. She had to make a movie that pleased feminists. She had to make a movie that also pleased Mattel. She had to make a movie about a blonde white doll that's also diverse enough. And I...
And I saw in the last half of that movie, her checking all the boxes she needed to to make all the stakeholders happy. And for Greta Gerwig to make a movie that's still as fun as it is, in spite of having to do all that work, hats off to her. She did the impossible. How do you get a movie that speaks to feminism?
while also making a major corporation run by a man, Mattel, happy? You know, how do you make a women-led film a blockbuster on a Marvel scale? Yeah.
and have it all be pink. Like this was hard to pull off and she pulled it off. And so I want to acknowledge that. - Yeah, to riff on that, it kind of feels like so often missteps in pop culture projects of this scale, the missteps land like slaps in the face. Like it feels like downright disrespectful. This did not feel that way. If something doesn't land for you, you go, ah, that note didn't quite hit for me,
I knew it was well-intended. This is the thing I was tweeting. I was tweeting some questions about the film, and I tweeted in response to myself. You know what, though? I'm not mad about any of it. I have questions about it. I see some plot holes, whatever, but I'm not angry. This movie still made me very happy. With that, got to go to break. When we come back, we're going to talk about the feminism of it all and what Barbie's success means for the future of the film industry. We shall be right back.
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All right, listeners, we are back and we are going to continue this big, big conversation about the reigning queen of America, Barbie, and what this movie means to all of us. And, you know, we'd be remiss without talking about the context in which this movie arrives to all of us in this country. You know, Barbie is a, I would say, feminist icon, which we're going to get into, but she is an iconic doll that has meant a lot for a lot of women for many years and has been around for, God, 60 plus years, 70 years.
But this movie arrives at a time that makes us feel like the time when she was created in the 50s. You know, reproductive rights are falling apart. You know, racism is really boiling over. And because of that, we're seeing a lot, a lot of attacks. Fox News is covering Barbie nonstop these days. And their big headline is Barbie's making everyone hate men. And I'd love as men for us today to talk about this response to the film and the world that it enters and
what do you think about that? Because for me, I was like, whoa, this is crazy. Miss hell, let a movie with incels come out that was in production while incels literally entered the Capitol a few years ago. Yeah. I mean, I think in general, the revolt of the right against this movie, uh,
only mattered if it stopped this movie from making money and it didn't. So they're going to do this with everything. An interesting counterpoint though, to the right wing revolt over Barbie is their quiet and steady support of,
this child abduction movie, Sound of Freedom, which last weekend and Boppenheimer weekend made $20 million. This is a movie approved by QAnon and Q supporters. And it's a hit in the movie theaters. For me, that is the bigger flex of right wing muscle right now. They're making their own movies, right? So part of their work right now is attacking films like Barbie, but they're also creating their own Hollywood, which I find a little scary. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I guess, yeah, so much of these pop culture conservative backlashes are actually like shadowboxing. When I saw the movie, you know, and it's like, how dare this film include Issa Rae playing a black president, I'm assuming is one of the issues. How dare this film include Hari Neff, a trans woman, playing the doctor, playing the doctor.
It's kind of interesting because I think in some ways, I think what we're saying is that the film's politics are actually pretty basic, straight forward. If not conservative. I think that's the way it considers. So that's the thing. I don't feel that the film's politics are conservative. I feel like it's a very basic gender feminism 101 that I think we need to build on because
But frankly, it's being dismantled in this country in a very alarming way. I don't want to say that the film is retrograde. Here's why I say that parts of it felt conservative to me. The feminism displayed in this movie failed to acknowledge any intersectionality. It failed to acknowledge the way that which... Okay, it was very white feminist. That's true. And also, so it...
It failed to acknowledge the way race affects relationship to patriarchy. And it failed to acknowledge any semblance of queerness, even though the film is incredibly queer coded. So what I found the most puzzling perhaps about this movie is that everything about the marketing felt like a gay wink and a nod. And every man in that movie at some point seemed to be doing something homoerotic with the other kids.
Alan is seemingly gay. Hari Neff is a trans Barbie. But queerness is never verbally acknowledged.
It's never verbal. Oh, right. There's even the with the weird Barbie. At one point you see the sugar daddy Barbie and the earring kin, but they never acknowledge that they're gay. Like I would have loved for this movie to even once say the word gay, say the word queer, acknowledge that any of these characters could even be that. Instead, we get an entire back third of the film that is a soliloquy of
on the way straight men and straight women interact. And I think in 2023, that kind of conversation about feminism is 20 years too old. And I say that in spite of enjoying the movie itself very much. - It's so fascinating you say that because I think the movie is aware that you or people like you and I are going to say that. And Alison Wilmore actually points to this in her Vulture review that's really wonderful.
And she writes, there's a streak of defensiveness to Barbie as though it's trying to anticipate and acknowledge any critiques lodged against it before they are made. And they're right. You know, we're dealing with, you know, a character who is a white woman who's deploying white feminism to find herself a Mexican-American woman who's working class, literally drives her around in the movie, helps her find herself. Shows her how to unlock her emotions and then drives her around. So it's like this thing of like...
It's aware that it's not doing enough for intersexuality for a 2023 lens, but it feels like it's doing, not that it's doing enough, but it's also, I would defend it in saying that like the things that it's fighting for, the second wave of feminism, if we have to name it, still have never been accomplished in America. Like none of this is being done. Like women are still, and even the fact that we're putting Greta, making Greta create a film to define how to get women free when she herself is not free, seems like a lot to put on a
woman, which is what men do to women all the time. There you go. That's helpful. That's my pushback. I mean, one, at the end of the day, this is a movie about toys. It's a Mattel movie. So I do think there are reasonable limitations to how radical or even contemporary the film's politics can straight up be. I think what the film does a great deal
And sometimes it does it well, and sometimes it doesn't do it well. For example, you're saying like having a Mexican American character drive around a white woman character and literally be her magical Latina is not using subtext effectively.
But I think Greta Gerwig, what I think she was trying to do to kind of work with the constraints of this Mattel was like have a lot of – it's funny you use the Swiss cheese. Like the holes are portals. Yeah. Like as a queer person, the reason I didn't feel like I, as a gay man, was constantly being slapped in the face is I was able to see moments of relatability with Alan. Well, like that moment where the kids on the beach are like –
Let's have a beach off. I'm going to beat you off. I'm going to beat you off. That's like gay subtext meant for us. And that it's literally like a West Side Story choreographed fight, right? To show like both to make it queer, but also to show how silly the fighting is. Or like Alan. And I was telling Emily Nussbaum, a New Yorker writer, you know, she was like, when you saw Alan, did you identify him as being gay?
And I said, yes. And I was like, honestly, I was like, that's exactly what little Saeed would be doing. He'd be wanting to hang out with, like, you know, like if there was a playground war, as there often was, you know, and the girls versus the boys, I'd be like, well, can I be with the girls? And can I be the spy? You know, like, so I felt like the writing allowed,
the holes instead to function as entry points for what the film could not explicitly say. And I don't know if that's retrograde. I'm not angry about any of this. I'm not angry about any of this. I just think that like
I might have enjoyed a more progressive or even transgressive film. As I said in the first segment, Greta had to do a lot. Mattel was on that set. She had to prove to leadership at Mattel that she could keep certain scenes in that might not be the friendliest to the company, right? She had a lot of work to do and she did it. But I was telling someone after I saw it the second time, what if this hero's journey hadn't been accomplished
a quest to figure out how to beat the patriarchy, but a quest to realize you're actually queer. Remember, the Oracle who helps start to guide Barbie into the real world is played by Kate McKinnon, who is coded so lesbian that she offers the Barbie character a Birkenstock. What if there had been a radical reimagining of Barbie in which the whole journey is she's figuring out that she's a lesbian? God, I would have loved that.
What if half the movie was Ken figuring out that he's actually in Love, Missing, We Lose character? I would have loved that. And I get it. They can't do it. I know it's not the movie. And I know that. But I'm just saying, I'm just saying, I would have really enjoyed that.
they made a blockbuster that needed to be palatable for mass consumption. And they did that very, very well. Very, very well. I guess to me, what's interesting is I just realized, I was like, this film for me exists on a continuum. Like if I was teaching a class, right? Like if I was teaching like gender narratives or something, Barbie by Greta Gerwig would be on there. And then I'd also have a film like Ex Machina.
right? Where like robots are the dolls and we know how we see what Alicia Vikander does, you know what I mean? Which is far more radical, dangerous, subversive, right? To take that kind of fembot analogy. And so I guess to me, I was fine with it because I kind of,
had fairly limited expectations for what Mattel would even allow. And I was like, how can this film exist alongside? Yeah. I guess what I'm saying is there's a movie that she made that worked in so many ways. And there's an indie movie I would have had Greta...
if she were still an indie director. She's not. And I'm fine with that. I don't think I'm saying I hate this movie. I'm just saying there's a different movie that I would have also enjoyed. Sure. I hear you so much, Sam. And I agree. I would like to see the openly lesbian Barbie getting her Subaru and going out into the woods and doing all these things and marrying Kate McKinnon's character. But I would argue, and I think I will argue this from moving on, that the movie is queer and that she is queer at the end because Barbie...
plays by a very heteronormative rules that's why she was built it was all about like training girls to be the best wives the best this to always make men happier in all these different ways barbie at the end she chooses not to be with a man which never happens in movies like this they always end with them choosing you with a man she chooses to go take care of herself to find her own body her own agency her own life and for me that is pretty queer that this ends in that
way. And I think it sits in this continuum of queerness that allows us to see a journey unfolding. You know, I really love this emergence lately. I think the show Heartstopper says this, the movie Better Nate Than Ever does this. It shows us characters beginning their queer journey, and it doesn't end with them becoming fully realized. Because so many young queer people aren't fully realized for years and years and years. And we've become very accustomed to movies having them fully develop within 90 minutes.
And I like really messy endings. I like it where it's like, wait, was that person actually gay? What was going on? And I feel like Margot Robbie's Barbie is on a journey that's just beginning. Okay. So in the sequel, she goes there. Can I say something? Something I did, I will say that did feel like a slap.
When they come back together and kind of like they're coming together and it's like right before the ghost shows up. And they're about to like wave off and we're kind of like, what's going to happen with Margot Robbie's character? Is the girl's name Sasha? She's America Farrah's daughter. Yes. The Gen Z character. Yes. Right then at the end, I noticed she's wearing like a pink dress.
high high femme dress that's totally out of character. Because she was wearing a hoodie when you first met her. Yeah and she was always kind of baggy which is very interesting because they find clothes for the other characters that still kind of fit. You know what I mean? Like America Ferrera. Like yeah she's wearing pink or more floral but it's like oh that's akin to something she would wear in the real world. I felt like that. I felt like a little bit of a betrayal frankly of the Gen Z character. I was like the Gen Z's character's issue was not that she wasn't being feminine enough.
is that she was not extending empathy to her mother. That was her journey. And so it felt...
It felt mean in a way to be like, and now we're going to put this character in a dress because she's learned her lesson. Does that make sense? This is the inherent conflict with the very idea of Barbie. You know, when Ruth Handler founded Barbie in the 50s, she said she wanted to make dolls that her daughter and other girls could play with that could help them imagine infinite possibilities for their adulthood. Which is why Barbie from the start could wear a bunch of different clothes because it showed that she could have a bunch of different types of jobs if she wanted them.
But what doesn't get talked about in this movie and in most of the Barbie discourse is that the template
was a German doll named Billed Lily. And Billed Lily at the time Ruth Handler made Barbie was a German joke of a sex doll. Billed Lily had been a cartoon character and a woman who was kind of an escort and slept with rich men. And men in Germany would have little Billed Lily dolls in their car, in their homes as a crude little funny sex joke. So the basis for Barbie itself is a German sex doll.
And as long as that is part of the DNA of Barbie, what Barbie is always asking all women to perform in some way, and men too, is to perform a version of beautiful sexualized perfection. And I think that's what you're getting at in this final scene with Sasha where all of a sudden she's pink and femme. That's what Barbie is always asking women to do in some kind of way. - Win a Nobel Prize but be cute while doing. - There you go, be perfect. Like Barbie is always about perfection.
But it's also like, be perfect, be beautiful while you do it, but also always live under patriarchy. Because at the end of the day, Barbie Land literally only connects to Mattel Corporation. So they're like, do whatever you want as long as you were subservient to men. And I think that's what makes the ending for me pretty queer because Margot Robbie says, fuck that. I'm leaving Barbie Land. No man, no nothing. I'm going to build my own world. And I think that's pretty cool. I do have a question for the both of you about like what this says about the future of cinema.
We know that Mattel is planning to make some 45 movies based on 45. Yeah. Barney's becoming a movie. I guess they got a lot of toys. And Mattel just announced a deep into partnership with Warner Brothers Discovery to make dolls for Warner Brothers properties. So we've,
entered an era of Mattel. And I feel like in the same way that Iron Man set off 20 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Barbie is setting up a 20-year Mattel Cinematic Universe. Are we excited about that prospect or scared by it? Because I remember I loved that first Iron Man, but by the time we got to Endgame and Infinity War, I was exhausted. Yeah, I'm not thrilled. I enjoyed, I did enjoy this film. I'm going to enjoy watching it again at some point.
I enjoyed it as a lark, though. I think it was really fun to see what Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, because she's not just the star, she's also a producer. And I love Margot Robbie. God. She's so good. She is so good and so smart. And so I enjoyed this as a lark. It was really fun because this is really shoot for the moon. It's funny, like Zach mentions Barbie as kind of a feminist icon. It was also kind of a feminist...
you know, villain, you know, in a lot of ways. And so it was like, gosh, what a difficult property to kind of turn into a story that has any kind of substance, any kind of verve. And this creative team thrived. I do not want to see a Barbie 2 and I do not want to see 45 more of it.
What about a dark A24 style take on Barney produced by Daniel Kaluuya? That's coming too. That is coming. It is. I'm not even lying. This is coming. I believe you.
That is coming. I am kind of into it if we keep playing and I like that these corporations are becoming more a little allowing for some- They can poke fun at themselves. Yeah, letting people poke fun at them. I think that's great and funny, but it can't be all that there is. There needs to be room for indie films and our house films and new ways of thinking about things that aren't just tied to big IP. So I just hope that Hollywood sees like, maybe you do these big tent poles that
bring out a lot of people but still fund these other projects that really are allowing us to have new worlds to dream in because I don't want to be stuck at six years old my whole life. Like watching Barbie, I was like thinking about like playing with Barbies and making them scissor and it's like fun but I can't, every movie cannot be like,
Like a slide into my own childhood nostalgia. Like I need something else. And we saw the limitations. The fact that for the Mattel executives, their narrative ends with them being like, oh, we'll make so much money marketing the ordinary Barbie. Ordinary Barbie, yeah. The idea from America Ferreira's character. Like, yeah, capitalism...
Capitalism wins still. Capitalism wins at the end of this movie. It's high camp. It's zany. It's true confection. And I would just say, keep it there. The moment you try to turn that confection into sustenance, you're going to get... You can't make cotton candy steak. It's cotton candy. No. And we deserve cotton candy sometimes. We do. All right. Well, with that, we're going to take a quick break. But don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with our recommendations. So stay tuned. We'll be right back.
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Hey, Barbie, we are back. And before we end the show, of course, we like to share some recommendations inspired in particular by the Barbie film. Sam, you want to get us started? Yeah, I was thinking a lot about what other stuff I've seen in the last few years that captures a lot of the energy of Barbie because I enjoy the energy of Barbie. And a lot of what I enjoyed was this young, youthful, feminine energy on a journey to figure out womanhood. Like,
Like, I like watching those journeys. And the best show that gets at that for me in the last several years is the Michaela Cole show Chewing Gum. That's so good. It's so funny. It was a BBC show that ended up on Netflix that came out several years ago. And it's just brilliant. Michaela Cole wrote it, created it. It was a play that she turned into a show.
Her character is this former Pentecostal Beyonce fanatic, Tracy Gordon, who comes from this repressed church upbringing and all of a sudden is trying to figure out how to be grown and how to have sex. Hilarity ensues. And it has a lot of the zany, young, crazy energy that Barbie had.
but it comes with sex, which I found lacking in the Barbie movie for obvious reasons. So I think if you like the vibe of Barbie, but you wanted to go a little bit further, check out Chewing Gum. It is hilarious and brilliant, and you just don't stop laughing. You don't stop laughing the entire time. There's one moment where Michaela Cole's character is about to hook up with the guy, and she starts singing a song about her vulva. Yeah.
And it's one of the funniest things you've ever seen in your life. It's beautiful. It's so beautiful. And when you watch it, when you finish, you should then go to your podcast feed and listen to Sam Sanders and Michaela Cole in conversation about the show from NPR because it is a beautiful conversation. I don't know if I've listened to that conversation. You both grew up Pentecostal, right? We grew up Pentecostal, yeah. Well, she actually came to Pentecostalism in college.
But yeah, we both talked about church and God. And I've actually interviewed her twice. Once for another Netflix show she had, then another when her latest book came out, which is kind of a book retelling of a speech that she gave several years ago. But that second chat with Michaela Cole, we got really deep on God and stuff. And it was, I loved it. I love her. It's so good.
The second one is the one I'm talking about. So if you're going to the feeds, go to the second one first. And we'll add that to the show notes, actually. But yeah, thank you, Zach. And yeah, Michaela Colgan, do no wrong in my book. And Chewing Gum is super fun. I love it. I'm sneaking a peek at the notes so I know where we're going. Zach has taken us to school. Zach, what's your recommendation?
I am taking it to school. So my recommendation is a piece of like iconic feminist theory, not even theory, it's an essay. It's from 1980 by Audrey and Rich. It's called Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. The piece is just so,
amazing. But if you love Barbie and you're like, why have we always assumed Barbie would be with Ken? Why do we assume all these things about gender expression and sexuality and what happens when you sit in that gray zone? This piece is about that. And what it does really well that really changed my life was it talks about, you know, homosocial spaces that women are with each other. And due to that and being, you know,
oppressed by the patriarchy, they have a very particular, you know, way of moving through the world and needing each other through labor and work. And Audrey and Rich argues in many ways that that is lesbianism in itself, this connection between each other. And she also has a lot of great things to say about gay men and why gay men are very different
than lesbians because gay men are closer to power than lesbians. And I think that when you read this piece I did and then watch Barbie, you get to understand even the gay coded kins have way more power than the women. And why is that if they're both, you know, both oppressed people? And this piece kind of gives you the theoretical understanding of that. And it's just a really fun, fun read. And it lets you say things like, you know, compulsory heterosexuality, which is a really hot queer theory term. It's good.
Okay, on my list. Oh gosh, if you haven't read it, I need to reread it. It's excellent. My recommendation this week is The Good Wife, the CBS series by the Kings. People love that show. People love that show. So this is my...
time watching it, including when it was aired. So I guess, you know, I rewatched it a few years ago and then this is my third time back in it. You can watch it on the, what is it, Paramount Plus app. I'm three seasons into my rewatch. So obviously it was on my mind. But when I was watching the Barbie movie last night, America for Era has a really good, I would say it's an objectively great speech. I think it's just like, it's a really good, compelling speech. I don't know if it works in the movie because
Because we don't get to see any experiences for that character that illuminate the rhetoric, if that makes sense. I think Greta Gerwig is just assuming, perhaps rightfully, that femme and women viewers will just read in their own relatability to America Ferreira's speech and the contradiction. But it's a really compelling speech about the contradictions.
and the impossible contradictions of being a woman. You know, be strong, but not too strong. Be sexy, but not too sexy. All of that. And it's just, and I think she just says like, it's just, it's,
too hard. It's just too hard. And The Good Wife, I think, is very much about that contradiction. Julianna Margulies' performance as Alicia Florek is all about the gray space baby. She's sexy. She's difficult. She's icy. She's passionate. She's a mother. She's a spurned woman. It's just all of it. It's very compelling. It's a very good legal drama, but I think it transcends. Rightfully so. It's been celebrated for good reason. But it's so good. So yeah, if you like
Rightfully difficult women. I guess that's why I would say rightfully difficult women. The Good Wife is your show. Anyway, that's what we are feeling this week. What's your vibe? Check in with us at vibecheckatstitcher.com. Also, listeners, I would ask, this is something we didn't get into. Yes, this movie, Barbie, is very much about women, but also I feel like it's also about femme. Femme.
Like femme. And you don't have to be a cisgender woman to be high femme. And so if you have recommendations where we can get into that gig, I would love that. Because I think the femme experience is something I would like to learn more about. So again, you can let us know at vibecheckatstitcher.com. All right, all right, all right.
Thanks to Greta Gerwig. Thanks to Margot Robbie. Thanks to Mattel. And thanks to you listeners for listening to this week's episode of Vibe Check. If you love the show and want to support us, please make sure to follow this show on your favorite podcast listening app and tell a friend. Like, tell a friend and send us a voice note of you telling that friend. We've gotten a few. I like to hear it. Oh, my God. We didn't even talk about Ryan Gosling yesterday.
kind of low-key walking away with this movie. Oh, I will say, keep this in, he will get an Oscar nomination and he may very well win. He may very well win it. He'll definitely get a nomination. He did. And he was having so much fun. He was having so much fun. I think the first time I cry laugh was the party and watching him like dance his way. I just...
Also, real ones know he has been singing and popping and locking since his Mickey Mouse Club days. Yes. Brothers' talent. And let me say, I saw that man back when I was a kid, and I invested then, and my returns on that investment have just grown year over year, and I love him for it. So I guess in our credits, also thanks to Ryan Gosling. Thank you, Wes. Keep going, Zach. Thank you. Sorry. Thank you. And also, more importantly, huge thank you to our producer, Shanta Holder, our engineers, Sam Kiefer and Brendan Burns, and Marcus Hom for our theme music and sound design.
Also special thanks to our executive producers, Nora Ritchie at Stitcher and Brandon Sharp from Agenda Management and Production. And of course, we want to hear from you. Don't forget, you can email us at vibecheckatstitcher.com and keep in touch with us on Instagram and threads at theferocity and Zachstaff and at Sam Sanders. Use the hashtag vibecheckpod. Stay tuned for another episode next week. Bye. Bye, Barbies. Bye.
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