On July 21st of 2023, a monumental achievement was shared with the world. Years in the making, an expansive marketing campaign that stretched from New York City’s Times Square to ubiquitous advertising culminated with near-universal acclaim from both fans and critics. I am of course talking about Pikmin 4: One of Nintendo’s newest first-party games. I have over fifty hours in the game and can boast a 100% completion rate on my first playthrough. Also, the movies Barbie and Oppenheimer were released on that same day
With positive and empowering themes, Barbie appeals to those who grew up with Barbie dolls and their children alike. Over the years, the various direct-to-DVD Barbie movies have gained a dedicated following and enjoyed commercial success, an incredibly profitable venture for Mattel, the creator and distributor of all Barbie media. This resulted in an uproar when it was announced that a Hollywood blockbuster adaptation of Barbie would be created. Directed by Lady Bird creator Greta Gerwig and co-starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, the film was set to release on July 21st of 2023. Coincidentally, BAFTA and Oscar-nominated director Christopher Nolan had a new film scheduled for release on that same day. It was to be a biography of the father of the atomic bomb: J. Robert Oppenheimer. One film was a PG-13 movie about talking dolls that discover toxic masculinity, the other was a three hour R rated drama that ends with the image of the world engulfed in total nuclear war. Sensing this dichotomy, the internet at large thus began to create satirical promotions for both movies in tandem. On the 21st, thousands rushed into theaters to see Barbie and Oppenheimer back-to-back, codifying Barbenhiemer as a bona fide phenomenon. But that is not to say that each film is not without its fair share of controversy.
Barbie is a film heavily based on feminist themes and ideology. Barbie’s messaging emphasizes a commonly held belief that women are equal to men and can run society on par with male dominated social hierarchies of the past. The feminist message of Barbie caused anti-feminist conservatives to post about the movie and create controversy. Conservative career-commentator Ben Shapiro published an over forty minute video against Barbie that begins with the genuinely hilarious image of Shapiro burning a trash can full of Barbie dolls as cheap explosion overlays appear on screen. Only time will tell if this video has tainted my YouTube recommendations, but it was well worth it for the mental image of Shapiro buying brand new Barbie dolls from Mattel for the sole purpose of destroying them in what can only be described as a reverse boycott. Reactionaries burn dolls and decry movies like Barbie as woke and radical, causing those on the left to see the movie so that they can have a position in this week’s culture war and nothing changes. Everyone becomes slightly further entrenched in their previously held worldview and Mattel’s ninety minute advertisement makes over a billion dollars at the box office.
While Barbie’s controversy is found in its message, Oppenheimer’s is found in its very premise. The one constant in online media satirizing Oppenheimer (and not Barbie) is intense naïveté on the part of Robert Oppenheimer himself. Most are variations of “Oppenheimer doesn’t learn that bombs kill people until it’s too late!” While not entirely in good faith, this portrayal of Oppenheimer as a loveable doofus responsible for the deaths of thousands speaks to the unease inherent to any Oppenheimer biopic. There was a lingering fear prior to the movie’s release that the character of Oppenheimer would receive the Hamilton treatment, with a flawed real-world protagonist being whittled down to a historically overlooked kingmaker, while still kept separate enough from the issues of the day to be likable. In the case of Hamilton, that issue was slavery, while in Oppenheimer it was the use of the atomic bomb in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This fear is one of glamorization, the portrayal of the bombing as either an achievement or something wholly divorced from its creator. Viewers have expressed discontentment with the lack of sensitivity surrounding the victims of the bombing and the notion that although the bombing killed thousands, it saved even more lives. This sentiment is expressed multiple times throughout the movie, trying to draw viewers to the perspective that the bombings were a necessary evil. Despite what the internet says, Oppenheimer is not actually banned in Japan, but a release date has yet to be set. At large, Japanese audiences dislike the movie because of the absence of recognition of Japanese civilian victims, a reasonable notion in respect to surviving victims and their families.
Despite criticisms levied at both films, there is no doubt that both Barbie and Oppenheimer were wild successes. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Oppenheimer has grossed over 600 million dollars while Barbie has made more than double that with box office earnings as a staggering 1.38 billion dollars. Both films helped fuel the success of the other, as perhaps the single largest factor that went into the success of the Barbenheimer trend was its duality. Because they were so tonally different, Barbie failed to cannibalize Oppenheimer’s audience. Barbie was lighthearted and bright with both power ballads and Will Ferrell as an overenthusiastic CEO of the Mattel company while Oppenheimer was somber, with little room for jokes in its impressive three hour runtime. The cognitive dissonance of Barbenheimer was ripe for memes and other forms of satirization online, only helping to fuel the trend’s popularity. This dichotomy extends to the two film’s attempts to deal with the fraught nature of the materials each draws upon. Barbie’s metacommentary is upfront in the extreme and ties into the movie’s other prominent theme of gender. From a pivotal conversation with Ruth Handler – the creator of Barbie – to the censorship of Barbie’s one f-bomb being an overlay of the Mattel logo on the character’s mouth, the movie would be fundamentally different without its numerous inclusions of the Mattel brand. In stark contrast to Barbie’s extremely meta plot, Oppenheimer does not make major use of that specific cinematic device. Its story is primarily concerned with the implications of the atomic bomb’s existence and the fraught morality of its creator. However, that’s not to say that the story of Oppenheimer is devoid of immediate lessons. There is a chapter in both stories where the fictional world of the main character’s meets that of reality. In Barbie, that moment is telegraphed and relatively in line with Joseph Campbell’s famous hero’s journey, the moment commonly known as “crossing the threshold.” In Barbie, that moment happens when Barbie and Ken ride their car/boat/rocket ship/tandem bicycle/roller skates into the real world while in Oppenheimer that moment occurs when the cameras are done rolling and alongside his co-stars Cillian Murphy walks off the red carpet to join a picket line.
It is no secret that this is not a fun time to be a writer in Hollywood. Stagnant pay and shrinking opportunities for writers led in part to a series of recent box office failures affecting most major studios. From Indiana Jones 5 to Shazam 2, this year was particularly conducive to bombs; only literal in the case of Oppenheimer, which was ironically a runaway success. Coupled with staggering inequality, nonexistent streaming royalties, and the looming threat of artificial intelligence, it is no surprise that the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) voted to go on strike this May. Then, on the day of Oppenheimer’s premiere, the Screen Actors Guild – American Television and Radio Artists (better known as SAG-AFTRA) voted to strike alongside the writers. The culmination of this vote led to the dramatic walk-offs seen from the all-star cast of Oppenheimer.
As of this review, the strike is ongoing with no signs of stopping, meaning that we must wait with bated breath for an agreement between the striking writers and actors and the corporations who employ them before anything on the scale of Barbenheimer can happen again. It stands to reason that there will be a drought of scripted content on TV similar to that of 2008, the last time the WGA voted to strike. In the meantime, expect a deluge of reality TV. Good news for fans of Gordon Ramsey, bad news for fans of organized labor. In order to ensure that the next Barbenheimer is written not by an AI, but by people, the strike must end with favorable terms for the WGA and SAG-AFTRA. The best way to help those striking is to raise awareness on social media and donate to charitable organizations like the Entertainment Community Fund if possible. Otherwise the entertainment industry as we know it may go up in smoke, doomed to live and die a life of blond fragility.
Support the Strike:
https://www.sagaftrastrike.org/
Sag-Aftra Social Media Toolkit
https://entertainmentcommunity.org/
Work Cited:
Barbie. Directed by Greta Girwig, Warner Bros. Pictures, 21 June 2023.
“Barbie Franchise Box Office History.” The Numbers, www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Barbie#tab=summary.
Bronzite, Dan. “The Hero’s Journey – Mythic Structure of Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth.” Www.movieoutline.com, 2022, www.movieoutline.com/articles/the-hero-journey-mythic-structure-of-joseph-campbell-monomyth.html.
Conover, Adam. “How Can You Support the Strike?” Www.youtube.com, 18 July 2023, www.youtube.com/shorts/hAUYo0XQpg4. Accessed 8 Sept. 2023.
McClintock, Pamela. “Box Office: Warning Signs amid Summer Hits.” The Hollywood Reporter, 4 Sept. 2023, www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/barbie-oppenheimer-box-office-warning-summer-1235581171/. Accessed 8 Sept. 2023.
Oppenheimer. Directed by Christopher Nolan, Universal Pictures, 21 July 2023.
Pikmin 4. Directed by Yuji Kando, Nintendo, 21 July 2023.
Shapiro, Ben. “Ben Shapiro DESTROYS the Barbie Movie for 43 Minutes.” YouTube, 22 July 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynU-wVdesr0.
Tanyos, Faris. “Stars of “Oppenheimer” Walk out of Premiere due to Actors’ Strike – CBS News.” Www.cbsnews.com, 14 July 2023, www.cbsnews.com/news/oppenheimer-stars-walk-out-london-premiere-actors-strike-emily-blunt-matt-damon-florence-pugh-cillian-murphy/. Accessed 8 Sept. 2023.
Unknown. “Oppenheimer When the Bomb He Designed Specifically to Murder Millions Murders Millions,” 2023, knowyourmeme.com/photos/2573627-j-robert-oppenheimer-oppenposting.
Zemler, Emily. “Critics Say Omitting the Japanese Toll Makes “Oppenheimer” “Morally Half-Formed.”” Los Angeles Times, 4 Aug. 2023, latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2023-08-04/oppenheimer-movie-christopher-nolan-atomic-bomb-hiroshima-nagasaki-critics#:~:text=Despite%20speculation%20to%20the%20contrary. Accessed 8 Sept. 2023.
