99 lines
5.3 KiB
Markdown
99 lines
5.3 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Barbenheimer"
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date: 2023-08-03T10:03:12+09:30
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lastmod: 2024-04-16
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draft: false
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---
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Over the last two weeks my partner and I have seen both Oppenheimer and Barbie
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at the movies. I have to admit that initially I was only intending to see
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Oppenheimer at the movies and then watch Barbie at home, as by my estimation,
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Christopher Nolan movies are almost always better seen at the cinema. Both movies
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were fantastic, and they framed an interesting set of
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thoughts for me that I would like to delve into a bit here.
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## Oppenheimer
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The first of the two that we went to see was Oppenheimer. I have been familiar
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with Oppenheimer (the man) and the Manhattan Project for some time, but only
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in a very surface level way. That is to say, I had a good idea of what the
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broad strokes of the story would probably be - I wasn't far off.
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The only real complaints I had with the whole thing were first, the
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depiction of the Trinity test which I felt, through the focus on a practical
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reproduction of the explosion, fell short of really managing to communicate the
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incredible destructive force of a nuclear bomb. Secondly was, again
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this is very much my personal opinion here, the trivialisation of the line
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Oppenheimer is famous for from the Bhagavad Gita. Perhaps it was wrong for me to
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do so but I expected this line to be somewhat more important in the movie than
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it was.
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The primary public criticism that I have seen of the movie is either that it
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turns Oppenheimer into a hero, and honestly I couldn't disagree more, it far
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from mythologises him in my eyes, or that it whitewashes, or at least ignores,
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the ways in which the Manhattan Project, particularly Los Alamos and the Trinity
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test impacted local peoples at the time. This second point, I think, is the more
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valid criticism, however I think it falls short, as the movie
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is about the man, not about the bomb, or the Manhattan Project, or even the war.
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That being said, including some indication of the impacts, such as the fact that
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the site for the Trinity test, or even Los Alamos, was not simply an empty
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desert but rather inhabited, and appropriated by the government for their use,
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would not have hurt the story being told.
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Although the movie was fantastic, and I left the theatre happy that I had gone to
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see it, I found myself somewhat forgetting it and thinking on it very little in
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the week that followed.
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## Barbie
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As I said earlier, I was initially not intending to see Barbie at the cinema.
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My partner and I don't often go to the movies and Barbie seemed like a movie that
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could just as easily be enjoyed at home. However, in the two weeks after their
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release, there was a great deal of discourse about the two movies, and particularly
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Barbie. One thing I noticed about this discourse that was of interest to me was
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how divisive it was, and generally how gendered it was. I had friends commenting
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on the movie saying things along the lines of, "It's more a movie for girls" or,
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"I didn't really get it", and that's not even mentioning the amount of content
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online that voiced to very similar points. And I decided that I had to
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see the movie so that I could develop my own understanding of it rather than
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relying on second hand information and opinion.
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> A side note: I think on of the mistakes being made by people commenting on
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> these movies is that they are trying to compare them in some way. Although,
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> both being movies, they are comparable, their content, style, messaging, etc,
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> is, I would argue, incomparable. Any discussion trying to determine which
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> movie was better is going to go nowhere. As such, I will avoid doing so.
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I loved Barbie. I found it an enlightening movie. After it
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was over I described it to my partner as viscerally enjoyable. I found
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it funny, educational, moving, and profound. I will certainly see it again in
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the future. To me, it felt broadly unlike anything I had seen before, and this
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resulted in it feeling very refreshing. It articulated a great deal of things
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that resonated with me in a very consumable, entertaining way. Having said all
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that, I think it is obvious why so many people, primarily men, leave the
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theatre saying things like I mentioned before.
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I don't want to dwell in this issue, or divide, because I honestly feel that it
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is not my - a, very comfortable in his gender, male - place to do so but I do
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want to say something.
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Anyone criticising this movie for being too feminist or "woke" needs to
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re-evaluate their attitude. It is clear that the success of the movie speaks for
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itself in terms of how much people enjoyed it and how popular it is, as much
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as I'm sure there were some people hate-watching it, they will be/have been/are
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among the minority. I think that if you watch a movie like Barbie, particularly
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as a man, and don't like it either because of its attitude towards men, its
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portrayal of men and women, or its vocalisation of women's issues, then again,
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I recommend an attitude adjustment.
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It's hard for me to articulate exactly how disappointing it is that people take
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such a negative view of what is really a fantastically entertaining and
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educational movie. As much as other peoples perception of the movie does not
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affect mine, it does worry me that there are so many people who perceive it
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badly.
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### Editor's Note
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This was written, and left somewhat incomplete, a while ago, I'm publishing it
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now as I still feel the way I did then, but I'm not adding to it.
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