Culture is omnipresent in the fact that it permeates every single aspect of life–from our clothes, to what we consume, to how we see things and talk with others. What’s interesting is how a certain kind of hyperfocused culture can aggregate and flourish at a singular moment in time based on current events. I mean, I guess it’s just a part of what people spend years studying–just another part of anthropology.
Now, I’m not an anthropologist, but I can’t help but be completely obsessed with my observance of and participation in the current American pop culture phenomenon: Barbenheimer.
There has been ample coverage of this incredibly pervasive cultural moment, and I’ve been voraciously consuming it. I’m listening to the Switched on Pop podcast’s deep-dive into the Barbie soundtrack, as they argue which songs are perfectly plastic, too plastic, or not plastic enough to fit into the pop plasticity that is the Barbieverse. Then, I hop over to The Watch podcast’s praise over how Greta Gerwig “completely rebranded the brand” that is Barbie in a profound and feminist way, as well as their applaud for Oppenheimer’s incredible casting, including the dramatic comeback of RDJ. Then, I finish it out with a Vulture article explaining the gasp-inducing Oppenheimer ending and how Nolan says, “The whole film is about consequences,” nodding my head as I skim through intently. Like everyone else, I’m on BarbenheimerTok, absolutely living for Ryan Gosling’s vague explanation of “Kenergy” and intrigued by interviews about Cillian Murphy's method acting that led to a role of a lifetime.
And I’m not just on the outside watching two sides of a see-saw battling delightfully in a balancing act. (The real people on each side being Barbenheimer stakeholders, who will absolutely make out monetarily once this is over and done.) No, I tested it myself.
When I went to each movie, they were in very different contexts, as the see-saw propagates:
Adorned in a horde of pink, my friends and I blasted the Barbie soundtrack through our rolled down windows, drank sugary alcoholic margaritas at the Sugar Factory, then proceeded to buy buttered up popcorn at the theater as we joined an ever larger community of buzzing, pink-laden movie-goers.
But my hot pink party dress and pink heart-shaped sunglasses bore no resemblance to my casual navy blue button-up and gray shorts that I wore when I sauntered over to the local Music Box Theatre in Chicago for my dark-room Oppenheimer experience; this time, alone. Much like Barbie, there was energy in the air, but instead of electricity, it was quiet tension and intense expectation.
After I did see both, I reflected with others and on my own. All the thoughts, feelings, and reactions further revealed each movie’s dichotic flavors.
I asked my friends, point blank, ”Why the Barbie movie?” It seemed a broad enough question to capture their instinctive emotions toward Barbie and her step into a major motion picture. The answers? Bombastic. Galvanizing. Feminist.
“because the barbie movie is For the Girls!!!!!!!”
“because woman deserve to have the feminine experience on screen and this movies encompasses all it means to a woman and the celebration of girlhood”
My Oppenheimer interactions were completely different. They were more discreet. They were me quietly asking, “Did you see it?” on the Chicago CTA, or texting about it on the DL to a family member. It was slyly brought up in a side conversation, like we were partaking in the kind of conspiracy that the actors in the movie did, praising its cinematic qualities and ability to harness something so dark and distressing in a beautifully crafted way.
So now, it’s the big “how” and “why” of this summer of 2023 cultural phenomenon.
The “how." They were both maximalist movies in completely opposite veins, and we Americans love a good slap in the face when it comes to consumption and entertainment.
Barbie was filled to the brim with feminist sentiment–a smattering of themes that manifested in storylines that, first, coexisted and, then, converged on the bubbling conclusion that the experience of womanhood–and personhood–is everything and anything, which is frustratingly tiring…and also miraculous and inspiring. It did so with magical realism and an overindulgence of pink color and pop music. It did so by feeding us Barbie’s strengths and weaknesses on a sparkling silver platter (that probably floated down from the sky). It did so with an impressive marketing scheme that was unapologetic in its approach and confident that it would succeed. The whole spectacle had a way of looking out from across every screen and winking at us. Most importantly, it brought people together for an excuse to celebrate loudly and proudly. Call it capitalism? Call it community? I believe Greta knows to call it both.
On the other hand, Oppenheimer stole you in, wrung you out, and left you to dry like a bed sheet hanging on a wire. (If you know, you know.) You get thrown into Oppenheimer’s mind–a pressure cooker of both intellectual brilliance and emotional destruction. You experience shifts in timeline, a visual blending of the Oppenheimer perspective vs reality from scene to scene, and a kaleidoscope of intense images and sounds that hold you in emotional suspense yet never fail to swiftly tick you fearfully forward. My favorite moment is perhaps realizing, as a viewer, that the underscoring of rumbling that permeates the soundscape leading up to the detonation of the Trinity bomb is in fact the sound of a crowd praising Oppenheimer’s efforts: an agonizing reminder to Oppenheimer that his legacy would also be his own destruction, as well as the destruction of the world. It left your mouth dry. It was an utterly impressive work.
The “why” part is something I’ll be grappling with for a bit longer. But I think it has to do with not only community, but excitement over innovation. The Watch put it perfectly: They were each unique, independent films with new points of view. Nothing repurposed.
Plus, everyone likes a good standoff. Perhaps it’s society’s continually bloodsucking love for binaries. It’s true that many have associated Barbie with the far feminine pole and Oppenheimer with the far masculine pole. Or, just maybe, by provoking it, as we’ve seen on social media and other Barbie x Oppenheimer platforms, we are exposing the binary of its ridicule. Even better, we may be revealing a truth about our own human ability to shift across the gender spectrum as we see fit–the true beauty that is gender as a form of flexible self-expression. At each movie, I myself leaned into my feminine and masculine tendencies…it felt good to slip in and out as I pleased.
And didn’t Barbie tell us that we could be anything we wanted? C’mon Barbie, let’s go Barbie! She’s always known.
No matter the explanation of how Barbenheimer has put its hook in us, and no matter the reverberations, it seeps into every single aspect of our day-to-day, reminding us that movies really do extend beyond the screen and impact culture in an unmistakable and important way.
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