They Live! — The Barbie Movie.

In 1988 John Carpenter wrote and directed a movie called They Live! If you didn’t see it, it is worth it. The basic plot is that the world is being colonized by aliens that we can only see with sunglasses. These aliens mean to “enslave” humans and they manipulate them to be subservient consumers with subliminal messages that can also only be seen with sunglasses. The movie is an obvious critique of consumerism that is intended to keep people pacified, controlled and subservient while those ot the top reap the benefits. The Barbie movie could have used sunglasses, but alas, it didn’t.

The Barbie movie, being produced by Mattel, could not afford any real criticism of its product. The movie gallantly navigates feminist critique only to attempt to assimilated it as rebranding rather than creating any real sort of enlightenment. However, the movie is still interesting and it has been fascinating to read all the reactions to it, so much so that I am throwing my hat in the ring as well (I will post links of other articles and videos I found interesting at the end).

Barbie The Doll

The Barbie movie is an attempt to rebrand Barbie doll a symbol of contemporary feminism. The film opens with a scene reminiscent of 2001 a Space Odyssey, and instead o monkeys there are little girls that break their baby dolls when Barbie appears. This idea that the…