“Why should you be the one to give in, you ask? The answer is simple: As the greater and more dedicated Muppets fan, by all rights the CD is mine. Plainly and obviously, I appreciate the Muppets on a much deeper level than you do.”

— “I Appreciate the Muppets on a Much More Deeper Level than You” from The Onion (2003)

“If you love Barbie, come see this movie. If you hate Barbie, come see this movie.” — Barbie movie trailer

• The sets of Barbie (Greta Gerwig, 2023) are a child’s play-set re-imagined as Brechtian epic theater and socioeconomic critique.
• The transition from Barbieland to the Real World is an act of double artifice, since both Barbieland and the Real World are cinematic contrivances. Also, to quote Robert Anton Wilson, “‘Reality’ is what you get away with.” (And as far as “getting away with it,” see Patriarchy.)
• Barbie doesn’t shy away from mentioning Ruth Handler’s IRS problems. Handler being the creator of Barbie.
• Barbie is simultaneously a nostalgic portrait of a doll that influenced the lives of countless children and a subversive critique of toyetic capitalism commodity fetishism.
• Barbie plays toxic masculinity as farce, hence the manufactured “scandal” about Ken and the “crisis” of American male masculinity. “Poor, poor pitiful me.” — Warren Zevon
• Barbie cast Will Ferrell as a comical CEO quasi-villain a la The Lego Movie. Boring.
• Barbie is a quest narrative where Margot Robbie’s “Stereotypical Barbie” seeks to find herself and be herself. To wax Deleuzian, from the becoming-doll to the becoming-woman.
• Barbie is a movie bursting with artifice and Camp, yet it dares to confront the complex, contradictory, and confounding nature of being a woman in America, aging gracefully, and the exhausting ordeal of just finding the energy to get through the day. The humor offers a helpful salve to the agonies of human existence.
• Barbie was colorful and fun, yet had an important moral to the story. It had a message that was far from subtle, but was so ostentatiously lampshaded it didn’t come across as some maudlin, earnest Message Movie.
• Barbie was a bright pink movie about a girl’s toy, hence the last place people would suspect a full-frontal assault on toxic masculinity and the criminal venality of the Patriarchy. If you want to smash the Patriarchy, laugh at it and mock it relentlessly. The Big Strong Alpha Male chud doesn’t like being laughed at and mocked. Because beyond whatever he’s hiding in his shorts, there’s nothing there. One swift kick and the entire edifice will crumble.
• Greta Gerwig has directed Barbie, Little Women, and Ladybird, a brilliant doctoral thesis needs to be written about Gerwig’s directorial oeuvre and the experience of “the American women” (however such a category is/should be/will be defined).
• Those bright yellow Rollerblades were awesome!
• Margot Robbie has played Barbie, Queen Elizabeth I, and Harley Quinn, as above, doctoral thesis, etc.
• “Barbie is communist propaganda,” and “Ken is a symbol of America’s masculinity crisis” are clickbait headlines or pull-quotes from the mouths of idiots. Don’t listen to them. Don’t take them seriously. Laugh at them and mock them relentlessly.