By: Annie Sudler
Alright, let’s get it out of the way. Reading this headline, I know you probably have some assumptions about me. Let’s put some of them to rest.
No, I have not seen Barbie, nor do I plan on it.
I am (surprisingly) not a male film major.
Despite not seeing it, I hold IMMENSE respect for the Barbie movie, especially because of the positive responses it has gathered from other women.
I saw Oppenheimer opening night in IMAX by myself.
Now that you know all of these things about me, if you’re still reading, I’m hoping we agree on at least two of those above points. Welcome! If you are joining me on the Barbenheimer front lines as one of the unfortunately few women showing up to theaters in full-black outfits and/or period 40s suits, you’re gonna need the wisdom I’m about to share.
I know it’s tempting. I know it is. Trust me. The urge to get on Tik Tok, on Yik Yak, on whatever your social media of choice may be and sneak a peek into the comments of that “guys-you-HAVE-to-see-Barbie!!!” post is dangerous. Don’t succumb to that urge. Trust me. It will never end well. And moreover, it’ll just let men who want to dunk on women enjoying media that explores a wide style of female presentation feel like they have permission to get in there and agree with you. This is a no-go. I have no interest in seeing Barbie solely because it’s not my vibe nor does it really hold any nostalgia for me, and yet I have already spent hours arguing with male relatives about why it is actually incredibly good. Hypocritical? No. We women in film and film-adjacent majors have to unionize against the Nolan dudebros. Here’s some arguments we can make to spin the narrative of this “competition” in our favor and unite us Oppenheimer girlies with our Barbie sisters.
ARGUMENT #1: J. Robert Oppenheimer was actually kind of a girlboss!
Okay, so this one is definitely a reach. Saying that the guy whose life work straight-up erased two cities for a while “served cunt” is for SURE a risky play. But this could work, simply because Oppenheimer (the movie) has one thing that Oppenheimer (the guy) did not: Cillian Murphy. That’s right. The argument was a bait and switch, baby! And listen, you can argue all day about how “the explosions were done without CGI'', but at the end of the day, we know why we’re here. We’re here for riveting global history, innovations in science, the largest-scale trolley problem in human existence yet, but most importantly, we’re here to see Cillian Murphy’s face projected at a scale that makes his constantly anagnoristic chiseled expression taller than my house. You could make a movie that is three hours of any actor I find vaguely interesting standing in a McDonald’s bathroom just absently scrolling on Tik Tok, and I’m gonna watch it in a size and scale large enough that I will have them burned into my retinas when I leave that theater. Nothing speaks to the women of America more than Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh doing flawless accent work while appearing in dimensions that would make a medieval peasant reject Catholicism in a heartbeat to serve what they would immediately believe are this world’s new gods. Cinema is so fucking back!
ARGUMENT #2: There’s nothing that speaks to the female experience more than the concept of nuclear war (or at least talking shit about nuclear war)!
Let me start this one off with a story, okay? When I was a sophomore in high school, my AP World History was a man named Mr. Gov. Well, his last name was actually three times longer than that, but on day one he introduced himself as Mr. Gov and we never looked back. Gov was a great teacher because he kind of didn’t… teach. I mean, he absolutely did! My whole class did amazing on our exams and had great grades! But that’s because Mr. Gov’s pedagogy is one that I believe is the only way history should be taught. Every day, we’d walk into his class, and nine times out of ten he’d simply be sitting at the front of the room under a PowerPoint slide with the day’s topic on it. When the bell rang, he’d read us that slide, then he would tell us about that topic. That was usually it. Notes were optional. No phones, no textbooks, just Gov telling us a story about the batshit insane things that were going on at various points in global history. And let me tell you, I have never seen a classroom of teenage kids, ESPECIALLY girls, more invested in a lesson. Mr. Gov, my Boomer history teacher at the non-denominational Christian school I attended with vague political views he would not elaborate on, had cracked the code that film bros are still pretending is fake: History is fucking CRAZY. I don’t say that lightly. I mean, this is a three-hour movie about a physicist, but Nolan took a page from Mr. Gov’s playbook. He tapped into the drama of it all! The emotion! The pathos! The shit-talking about people you went to high school with at a Mexican restaurant in your hometown a week before Christmas! (Okay, that last one isn’t actually in Oppenheimer, but you can’t tell me those third act Strauss monologues didn’t perfectly fit those vibes). My point is, there’s nothing more universal to women than sitting down for three hours to listen to your best friend tell you a crazy story about people you’ve never even met, and being riveted the whole time. Turns out, acclaimed film director Christopher Nolan is that friend.
ARGUMENT #3: It’s not being a “pick-me” if you fucking hate the people that would be doing the picking.
This is today’s last argument, and the one where I’m gonna get all sappy and emotional and genuine for a second. Preferring one movie to another doesn’t make you a pick-me. Not liking a movie doesn’t make you a pick-me. The only opinion that makes someone a “pick-me” is if the opinion they espouse is only chosen to make them seem “better” than others to a certain person or group of people. If I’m being a pick-me about not being into the aesthetics or story or IP of the Barbie movie, then may God strike me dead, because I sure as hell do not want to be getting picked by the types of dudebros who hate it. THOSE are the people we’re unionizing against. So, whether you’re a Barbie or an… Oppenheimer (we gotta come up with a better name for us), let’s just remember the golden rule: When you’re online arguing about movies, you’re losing regardless of what side you’re on.
Have a lovely day, ladies. CINEMA IS BACK, AMERICA!
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