Oscar Heimer Wiener

Tonight the final battle between Barbenheimer takes place as the Oscars will award either film or both films awards for the varying categories of which they have been nominated. It is most likely that Oppenheimer a gravely serious subject and film about said subject, no not just Robert Oppenheimer but the Bomb in which he was the Dr of the Frankenstein monster he created (with many many helpers of equal talent and drive) will likely take the largess of awards vs the Billion dollar movie – Barbie – a movie ostensibly about a Doll.

That said the reality was that of the two films the one that inspired the most debate and discussion was Barbie for numerous reasons. There is the one about the Patriarchy and the one about Women and their role in film. There was of course obligatory discussion about materialism and the role toys have in gender identity and equality. I loved the film, it was a comedy about a Doll and the reality of one coming to life and what that means or represents or something like that. I just found it an outrageous comedy and frankly left it at that. But then again movies that inspire any discussion or a debate are ones worth having and there were many this season. Try Society of the Snow, Anatomy of a Fall, Zone of Interest, Past Lives and American Fiction as examples of such.

But when I read this piece I agreed that in reality the infamous Barbie speech was grand and not one I had not made in some version of another in my life. I should have been given a writing credit as there have been many who have said similar. Call Bill Ackerman and he can investigate Greta Gerwig for plagiarism and DEI failures.

As a Woman of a “Certain Age” I have found fewer and fewer movies that are about Women like me. Nyad is one that is up for Best Actress and with that it will be resigned to Netflix for the rest of us to ignore. For years most movies designed to attract that audience were Nancy Myers films starring Dyan Keaton and a fabulous kitchen which may explain the GOP’s response to the State of a Union, as what Woman does not love “kitchen” in the same way Ken loves Horses. I am not sure what to make of current films and why I have found a home in foreign ones as they speak to a larger diaspora that is not my own but from one I can at least learn from. As when I became an Adult Woman I put away childish things, such as Barbie so whatever memories I could conjure they were few and far between what my reality is and was at the time I had her as a toy.

I will let you read this and like movies come to your own conclusion. For what it is worth all the pledges and promises for them to include a diverse coalition of filmmakers and films, was in fact an epic fail this year. See Ackerman it can happen organically and cyclically so all this fuss about DEI, is like all the other ## and demands, basically time will tell and it will all go away. What color was that ribbon anyway?

Opinion The ‘Barbie’ speech wasn’t made for the real world. This one is

By Kate Cohen Contributing Columnist The Washington Post

March 5, 2024

In the final act of the “Barbie” movie, when the Kens have taken over Barbieland and Barbie has lost hope, America Ferrera — playing Gloria, a working mom visiting from the real world — gives a rousing speech that has been the subject of so much discussion, we might as well call it The Speech.

The Speech articulates the ridiculous, conflicting standards that women are expected to meet: physically, professionally, socially and emotionally (“always be grateful”). When one of the Barbies who hears The Speech wakes from her empty-headed submissiveness as if from a dream, Barbie marvels aloud to Gloria: “By giving voice to the cognitive dissonance required to be a woman under the patriarchy, you robbed it of its power.”

What follows is a troops-into-battle montage in which Gloria treats each Barbie to one-on-one consciousness-raising, and, one by one, they realize the patriarchy is bad.

I saw “Barbie” in my living room, but my daughter saw it with a movie-theater audience who cheered at the end of The Speech. So did the audience at the Los Angeles premiere — the first of many audiences. The Speech has attracted think-piece raves and social media love. People have called it “powerful,” “cathartic,” “glorious,” “empowering.”

I get it. There’s not a feeling it expresses about the frustrating demands of being female that I haven’t felt. But for a monologue that supposedly inspires a revolt against the patriarchy, The Speech is curiously devoid of politics.

In context, this makes sense. Despite the dichotomy the movie establishes between the real world and Barbieland, both places exist within “Barbie”–land — that is, the candy-colored fantasy world of the movie. It’s a world in which the men in charge are easily outrun and outsmarted, Barbie instantly replies to a slap on the butt with a punch in the face, and the patriarchy manifests itself as indignities and irritations: stares, catcalls, mansplaining and four solid hours of a Matchbox Twenty song.

Gloria’s speech suits this world perfectly: Like a fight scene without pain or a human without genitalia, it is a feminist complaint without teeth.

But for our world? The real real one? It’s not enough. I like to think that Barbie is right: Naming the problem can break the spell. As a writer, I have to believe this is at least the first step. So with the Oscars — and the election — ahead of us, I’ve written an adaptation of The Speech, inspired by (and sometimes quoting) the one written by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach.

May the next scene in the real world be a troops-into-battle montage that ends when we get our reproductive rights back. I’ll begin as Gloria did:

“It is literally impossible to be a woman.” You can vote, and you can own property, and mostly you are equal to men in the eyes of the law, and it kills me that you still don’t have equal power

“You have to be thin,” or else you will actually be paid less, and if you’re not thin, then you have to try to be thin, no matter that trying to be thin kills thousands of girls and women every year.

“You have to stay pretty for men,” but if you arepretty and you get raped — 1 in 5 American women are victims of rape or attempted rape at some point in their lives — then it was probably your fault. If you’re not pretty, then it couldn’t have been rape, because who would even want you? But it was rape, of course. And if that rape results in a pregnancy, your state might compel you to carry that baby to term, using your body again without your consent.

And if you want to have sex but don’t want to be pregnant? You’d better check with your elected representatives first. The legislatures with the most men in charge are almost always the ones that will force you to give birth.

“You’re supposed to love being a mother,” so if you do want to have children, great! Everyone’s all for it — if you’re White and married — but you’re taking quite a risk in a country with the highest maternal mortality rate in the industrialized world. If you’re Black or Native American, giving birth is twice or three times as dangerous. Make it through giving birth alive, and congratulations: There’s probably no paid maternity leave and definitely no universal child care or preschool, so you either have to pay for someone else to watch your child or stop working. Yes, you. Chances are it won’t be your husband quitting his job.

But still, you’re supposed to want to be married, even though having a husband probably means you’ll have more work and your husband will enjoy more leisure time than you, which might be why most divorces are instigated by women. This is very selfish of you, putting your needs first — don’t you know marriage makes men healthier? — so conservative politicians are trying to make it harder to divorce.

“You have to be a boss,” and you’ve been told women can do anything. So you work hard at school — harder than boys — but somehow women still earn just four-fifths of what men earn, and Black women earn just two-thirds of what White men do. The Fortune 500 boasts only 50 or so female CEOs, two of whom are Black. Just 28 percent of Congress members are women (a record high), and there has never been a female president. When we proposed the most absurdly well-qualified woman for the job, we heard (and some of us even said): But is she likable?

“You have to answer for men’s bad behavior,” or at least endure it on the job, where especially women of color making low wages are routinely sexually harassed and assaulted. We did start holding men accountable, and we did bring down a few villains, but you could almost hear the countdown, three-two-one, and then the complaints started coming about women being vindictive and men losing the freedom to tell a joke.

“I’m just so tired” of being asked to feel sorry for men, when it’s women who are dying at the hands of husbands and boyfriends, it’s women who work harder in worse jobs for less money, it’s women — not the men we have sex with — who might have to pay for sex with our futures, and it’s our bodies and our labor that are used to fill the holes in the social safety net. No child care? No elder care? Lousy health care? Don’t worry, women will take care of it.

“And if all of that” is true, and we don’t do anything about it other than cheering for “Barbie” to get her Dreamhouse back, “then I don’t even know.”

BABS: WHORE, GAY ICON, FEMINIST, DOLL

Of late the analysis of the Barbie Movie has overtaken the actual reviews of the film which were middling at best. Largely I suspect it was not the hard core hammer people expected about a Doll. It is what I agree with the one of many deep dives into the film, a placement product movie about what? A Doll from the largest advertiser in the Movie, and not even a subtle one as they were also the Production funders of the film – Mattel. And advertisement that made over 1 Billion dollars this past week, so it definitely succeeded. And with that I plan on going again. I loved every pink sweet minute. It was high comedy and yes a touch of Feminism thrown in for good measure. But in my “interpretation” it was about being a Girl and becoming a Woman and when you throw away your childish things do you throw away your dreams, your hopes and just become what everyone else is or where you always different just like everyone else? As for all the “diversity” of the world of Barbie and Ken they were not unique or different in their world view and of their beliefs. This was a world that largely day to day went unchanged and the one different was relegated to the name “Weird” Barbie and lived on a hill. The other outlier, Allan, was there with Pregnant Midge as a sort of reminder that you can be different but in turn also canceled off the production line at any time for whatever reason. And with that I can say Midge clearly was an unwed Mother and perhaps Allan the only Man in the crew of Kens who for what I saw in the film were very Gay and very Porn Star like sans the equipment needed to fill the role..in other words MY PERFECT MAN! So I guess Allan was the precursor to Jeffrey Epstein and that explains quite a bit right there.

I laughed when I read the article below as this week two more analysis arrived, Barbie as Therapy and Barbie as a Subversive film with a hidden message. I cannot wait til the next comic strip movie, Nancy and Sluggo and what that means for Domestic Violence and Sexism. Or how GI Joe contributed to the Military War Culture. And again the Kens were very very Gay so I am sure that is another analysis of how the film is recruiting children to the “lifestyle.” And can I just say that is one “lifestyle” I embrace!

With Barbie being a Doll and such the world in which she lived is conducive to two factors: Money and the one who is her Guardian/Owner/Manipulator aka Child who plays with her and either chooses the accessories sold for that same Doll or in turn creates their own world, aka “Weird” Barbie. Well I would take weird any day sans the dog shitting on the carpet which was canceled due to choking hazards. Really? The shitting balls no?

Aside from America Ferrera’s monologue that is a version of the many speeches, excuses, explanations, justifications, condemnations, rationalizations I have given over my last 64 years of living as a Woman on this planet, I did not see/hear a Feminist message. I did see a message about Conformity and Consumerism and the idea that when Barbie crossed over to the “real” world the reality of how one thinks they live and the way it truly is one message; the other that conformity makes life lived by the one who is playing with you.. as the “weird” Barbie advised Stereotypical Barbie to seek upon her journey in which to explain/understand/find why and what was happening to her. And with that she found out that her Guardian/Owner/Master was in fact not a child but an Adult with all that baggage and emotions that children do not have when they play with dolls. I also think many young girls don’t have their Barbies aspire to be Pulitzer Prize Winner or Supreme Court Justices. Disco parties and Cowgirls yes.

But with that I laughed my ass off from the movie. I did not care that the Board of Mattel is not all white men wearing the same suits or that the creator of Barbie was not a kindly Matron but in real life a ball buster, or that Barbie suddenly had a working Vagina upon her arrival but sure I am sure young girls do… or not. And just like in real life the men stole the show or at least the Ken’s and Allan’s did as who did not come out of that movie and discuss the blazing hot performance of Ryan Gosling as Ken – Beach! and Micheal Cera as the doorknob Allan. Wait until the right wing finds out that a Barbie was played by a Trans woman. QUELLE HORROEUR! says French Barbie.

Column: Is ‘Barbie’ the most overanalyzed movie in cinema history? Kenough, already, pundits!

By Robin Abcarian  Columnist  LA Times

If you thought the smash movie “Barbie” was merely a film about a plastic doll who comes to life, boy have you not been paying attention.

“Barbie” is so much more than the year’s blockbuster movie.

It is a Rorschach blot tickling the psyches of viewers, an onion whose multiple layers offer any number of conflicting interpretations, a “Rashomon”-like experience where every viewer comes away with a different idea of what they have just seen.

In addition to blowing past the billion-dollar mark in ticket sales, director Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” has spawned a mini-industry of punditry, analysis and controversy, offering grist to almost every mainstream and specialty publication for endless takes on every possible angle.

I daresay that in its very brief life, “Barbie” has not just revitalized the color pink, it has already become the most overanalyzed movie in cinema history. “Citizen Kane” has nothing on this flick.

“Barbie,” inevitably, has sparked discussions about sex, gender and gender roles, relationships, aging, feminism and patriarchy.

The Washington Post explored Barbie’s “pornographic origin story.” The New Yorker proposed “Decoding Barbie’s Radical Pose” and also explained “Why Barbie Must Be Punished.”

In the Atlantic, a child psychiatrist opined on “What ‘Barbie’ Understands About Mother-Daughter Relationships.”

Famous feminists have weighed in.

Susan Faludi, author of 1991’s “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women,” saw the film with Jessica Bennett of the New York Times and declared “Barbie” to be a movie about abortion, sort of. (Don’t forget, Barbie is an unmarried career woman with no children.)**AND FOR YEARS I BLAMED MY MOTHER.. WRONG BITCH APPARENTLY

I mean, it begins with little girls playing with dolls learning the origin story of Barbie — and the rejection of the idea that women can just be mothers,” Faludi told Bennett. “It ends with her going to the gynecologist.”

Author Mary Pipher, whose 1994 classic “Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls” helped inspire Gerwig, changed her mind about the negative messages little girls get from Barbie dolls after watching the movie with a Daily Beast reporter.

“When I wrote ‘Reviving Ophelia,’ the Barbie doll personified everything I didn’t like about the idea of a woman,” Pipher said. But, she added, “Barbie has changed. If children like to play with Barbie dolls, that’s just fine with me, especially now that there’s a diverse group.”

One sub-genre of “Barbie” analysis plumbs the complexities of Ryan Gosling’s very tortured Ken, who, before Gerwig got her hands on him, was always just Barbie’s handsome bland boyfriend. (Movie tagline: “She’s everything. He’s just Ken.”)

Time magazine declares that “ ‘Barbie’ is a movie about male fragility.”

The Wall Street Journal says, “It’s a Weird Time to Be Named Ken.” (If you ask me, it’s a pretty weird time to be named Barbie too.) I have seen enough puns on his name — “Kenaissance,” “Kenpathy,” “My Kendom for a horse” to want to scream “Kenough!”

Not everyone appreciates the attention lavished on Ken. “Enough About Ken,” writes Xochitl Gonzalez in the Atlantic. “Men are not, in fact, always the center of women’s thoughts.”

Given its various themes, “Barbie,” predictably, has become part of the culture wars.

Bill Maher criticized the movie for being “preachy” and “man-hating.” Elon Musk took issue with the number of times the word “patriarchy” was uttered. Ben Shapiro set Barbie dolls on fire and tossed them into a trash can. *IRONY THERE THAT MISOGYNY AND WHITE MEN GO HAND IN HAND

A spate of stories has tried to decipher the meaning of the Allan doll, a buddy of Ken’s played by Michael Cera, who is maybe gay, maybe binary or maybe the unsung or surprise hero of the movie.  *I THINK ALLAN IS CHILD MOLESTER AND TRAFFICKER..JEFFREY EPSTEIN AS A DOLL… FOLLOW THE CLUES.

And who knew the busty, long-legged blond would find herself embroiled in geopolitical drama?

Republicans — well, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz anyway — have claimed Barbie is pushing a Chinese communist agenda because a world map shown in the trailer includes what is known as the “nine-dash line,” which is used on Chinese maps to depict its territory in the South China Sea. Vietnam, which disputes China’s claims, has banned the movie entirely.

While some conservatives have complained that “Barbie” is unforgivably silent on the issues of faith and family, Christianity Today, in a piece called “Barbie and Ken Go East of Eden,” sees an opportunity to “reckon with the ‘fortunate fall.’’’ That happens when the pair leave plastic fantastic Barbie Land and end up at gritty Venice Beach, where they suddenly realize, as Eve/Barbie puts it, “I do not have a vagina and he does not have a penis. We have no genitals.”

All this, I suppose, is a way of saying that “Barbie” has something for everyone. As the movie’s logline so aptly puts it: “If you love Barbie, this movie is for you. If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you.”

Rather than read about it, you should probably just go see it.

Or, hell, go see it again.

Its Ladies Night

There is another wonderful American Unicorn myth that has women with College degrees doing better than their counterparts who fail to earn degrees, both male and female. This of course accompanies the long term kinda not sorta but maybe its true myth that College graduates fair better economically in comparison to their non-degreed counterparts. But what is more telling is that I rarely see mentioned/accounted the amount of debt, its duration and its affects on overall quality of life,  job commitment and professional decisions attributed to said degree.  Nothing says I make more in a job I hate, paying a debt over my head for the rest of my life towards a career decision I made at age 17 and now realize a decade later that I hate this and would like to do something else not tied to a paycheck but hey…..

Its called indentured servitude and when you make career decisions at age 18 and are expected to somehow make that your life calling means you have handed over life decisions to someone who has barely grown hair on their genitals nor done laundry without supervision, I think that is quite reasonable and sane, don’t you?

But in today’s world where apparently parents want “better” for their children which means they hate their life and work and therefore think that their children somehow should transcend that life that brought them into it, fed them, clothed them and well got them to college but hey nothing says American Unicorn Myth than self hate. 

As this is supposedly the war on women and women are the deciding factor in the election, we have many kinds of women – the Soccer Mom, the Waitress Mom and the Wal-Mart mom, apparently they are all distinctly different and not at all overlapping in the least. Well not so.  A recent study found that women are well not better off Wal Mart Mom worker or the women who shops there.

A recent study found: 

 The pay gap between educated women and men begins as soon as they start their careers, a new study shows. The study, released on Wednesday by the American Association of University Women, found that in 2009, women who had graduated college a year earlier and worked full time were paid 82 percent as much as their male counterparts, a slight improvement from the 80 percent a similar study found in 2001. The pay gap has often been attributed to women entering lower-paying professions, but the study found that a difference persisted even after controlling for that factor.

So women have we really improved or is this war one where we just keep losing?  Today in the New York Times they stated women are this years swing/undecided/independent voter.  All I can say is that in my lifetime I  have seen little in the way of improving women’s situations. And  yes we have women of power and education in significant positions but they do little to actually support and improve women’s positions. Women are perhaps the worst mentors for reasons I have yet to fully grasp. Perhaps they are too afraid. Or  they are too busy being “wife” “mother” “daughter” “sister” or whatever title demonstrates their secondary position to whatever or whomever in life.  I don’t have a binder full of men and yet when I worked solely with men I never had a problem letting them leave at a reasonable time for family commitments and it never affected their pay or job so why should it towards women?
 
Female Voters: Still Deciding

by Katherine Q. Seeyle
Published October 25, 2012 

DERRY, N.H. — Emmakate Paris was a one-woman tornado the other day, whipping through the racks at the thrift shop here, hunting for clothes for her children and one special item for herself: a green suit. For Halloween, she wants to dress up as Tippi Hedren in the Hitchcock movie “The Birds.”

Halloween is a small indulgence in a life that Ms. Paris, 41, said was consumed by worries — “about the kids, insurance, vacation, school, taxes, the price of gas, everything.” 

She voted for Barack Obama in 2008 but is now torn. Mr. Obama has not lived up to his promise, she said. “My husband and I both have to work full time, and we’re just getting by.” 

But she is not thrilled with Mitt Romney either. She said he would set women back because he did not understand their needs. 

“Women worked so hard to get where we are today and to take our rights away from us is — no,” she said, shaking her head.

Behold the coveted female swing voter of 2012. She has slipped a rung or two down the economic ladder from the soccer moms of the more prosperous 1990s, as indicated by her new nickname — waitress mom. Rather than ferrying children around the suburbs in minivans, she is spinning in the hamster wheel of a tight economy and not getting ahead. 

The intense competition for the female vote was underscored Wednesday as both presidential campaigns seized on a remark by Richard E. Mourdock, the Republican Senate candidate in Indiana, in a Tuesday night debate that pregnancy is “something that God intended to happen” even if it is the result of rape. 

Mr. Romney, who had just made an ad for Mr. Mourdock, quickly distanced himself from the statement, while the Obama campaign just as quickly suggested that it reflected the backward thinking of Republicans and said that if elected, they would pose a danger to women’s health.

The quadrennial obsession with winning over female voters can sometimes lead to mythmaking. Pollsters now question the validity of soccer moms as a distinct voting bloc; the term came into vogue in the 1996 presidential election but vanished soon after, to be replaced by the equally dubious post-9/11 “security moms.” 

Whether or not the term “waitress moms” endures, it defines a distinct demographic: blue-collar white women who did not attend college. And they are getting a lot of attention from both campaigns as the presidential race barrels toward its conclusion because even at this late date, pollsters say, many waitress moms have not settled on a candidate. They feel no loyalty to one party or the other, though they tend to side with Republicans. 

“Blue-collar women are most likely to be the remaining movable part of the electorate, which is precisely why both campaigns are going at them as hard as they are,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, who is advising Priorities USA, a pro-Obama “super PAC.” 

About 9 percent of all voters in 2008 were white women without college degrees who had an annual household income of less than $50,000, according to exit polls. 

So when the candidates talk about women, which they do a lot these days, the waitress moms are top of mind. Mr. Obama, for example, is now discussing abortion and birth control not as a matter of controlling one’s own body but as “a pocketbook issue for women and families,” as he said in the recent town-hall-style debate, noting that many women rely on Planned Parenthood not just for contraceptives but for referrals and screenings. 

A recent Romney ad featured a young woman telling her newborn: “Dear Daughter. Welcome to America. Your share of Obama’s debt is over $50,000.” 

Clearly economic issues are front and center for women here in this blue-collar town in Rockingham County, which Mr. Obama won in 2008 by less than 1 percent of the vote. 

Michelle Trulson, 39, actually is a waitress (not all waitress moms are waitresses, of course, nor are they all mothers). She works a second job too, as a lab technician. Fearing that Mr. Romney would undercut her efforts to provide for her family — and end financing for Planned Parenthood — she supports Mr. Obama. 

“I’m a single mom,” she said. “I’m not on welfare. I do work. I don’t collect food stamps. But my kids need insurance, so they’re on Medicaid and I don’t want that messed with.” 

And the economy is the reason that Ashley Delpidio, 26, who works in customer service for a health insurance company, supports Mr. Romney — despite his opposition to abortion rights and mixed statements on birth control. 

“I’m a woman, so obviously I believe in women’s rights,” she said but added that the economy was her overriding concern and Mr. Romney would do better at creating jobs. 

While women in general have historically supported Democratic presidential candidates, working-class white women without college degrees are among their weakest links. Mr. Obama lost them to Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries in 2008, and to John McCain, the Republican, in the general election. 

But Mr. Obama won women over all because black and Hispanic female voters turned out in greater numbers than usual and supported him overwhelmingly, as did white college-educated women. As he seeks to rebuild a winning coalition in battleground states like this one, analysts say, he needs to keep his losses among waitress moms to a minimum. 

“Women are the volatile vote at the end, particularly independent, non-college-educated, married women,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who has long specialized in women’s voting patterns. Important as these women are to both campaigns, they are only one slice of the much sliced and diced female electorate. Pollsters tend to find women more interesting than men because women are more likely to be swing voters, while men usually make up their minds early. 

Pollsters have found differences among women in all kinds of ways that seem to correlate with their voting habits. Unmarried women, for example, tend to vote Democratic, they say, while married women tend to vote Republican. 

The multiple differences among women have created a kind of kaleidoscopic inter-gender gap, from which catchy labels sometimes emerge. Apart from waitress moms, there are now “Walmart moms,” a group defined by Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm — and adopted by the retail giant — as any woman who has shopped at a Walmart in the last 30 days. They differ from waitress moms in that many have college degrees and higher incomes. 

Actually, there is nothing about Walmart that pegs its shoppers as swing voters, said Will Feltus, senior vice president of National Media, which buys advertising time. Citing data from Scarborough Research, a leading market research firm, he said that a higher percentage of independent female voters was likely to be found at Lord & Taylor, T.J. Maxx and Macy’s. 

The data yield other tidbits that could be useful to campaigns trying to reach independent women. Their taste in television programming, for example, runs to the daytime soaps, their preferred soft drink is Diet Sierra Mist, and their preference in wine is, fittingly, rosé. 

“Groups of women simply don’t resemble each other anymore, which is really fascinating,” said Kellyanne Fitzpatrick Conway, a Republican pollster — whereas, she added, the gender gap between men and women had become fairly predictable. 

“Mars versus Venus,” she said, “is a yawner.”