⭐🌈🌙The Baron of Barrenness, The Knight of Nightness🌙🌈⭐
I’m 33.
The other genius aspect that I forgot to mention is that Ken’s coat is a reference to Fight Club, which is a movie about the damaging effects of toxic masculinity.
Folding Ideas has an amazing breakdown of the movie and how it is a massive critique of how masculinity is handled in mainstream culture, and not a celebration of it, like so many dudebros misinterpret it to be, but yeah, they had their thinking caps on for this movie.
My eyes were laser trained on that coat from the moment Ken put it on, but it had to take a backseat to the massive amount of mental healing I was going through alongside Barbie herself. I finally had a moment to let my brain point out why it stuck a pin in that coat for nearly 2 hours.
I was debating talking about it despite my annoyance with spoiler culture, but eff it, I’ll tag properly and talk about it, because I’ve seen this in a lot of guys I grew up with, and it just kind of hurts your heart.
I can’t stop thinking about how beautifully the Barbie movie portrays that often times when men (speaking in very binary terms, apologies) are hurt and feel wronged they’ll act out in ways that hurt people, may that be purposefully or inadvertently. And society enforces this. Meanwhile women, who are used to living in a hostile world, will often express and process their pains in ways that don’t harm others.
But Ken never wanted to hurt anyone. He just was hurt and didn’t know how to deal with it. He found the first thing that gave him an outlet and some inkling of comfort and latched onto it. And after Ken has had his supposed “villain arc”, Barbie isn’t mad at him. She lets him know it’s okay to cry.
The villain was never Ken himself, it was the fact that society is built in a way that prevents men from having ways to safely process and regulate their emotions. A society that punishes men for crying and confiding in friends and wanting to be comforted.
The Barbie movie isn’t anti men. It’s a big fuck you to our society that is hellbent on keeping everyone in an eternal cycle of hurt.
I wasn’t able to celebrate it last year so I am now
Poor little guy tried wearing my sweater but it’s too big for him and he tripped. 😔
I just saw the Barbie movie. I really wanted to hug all the characters. I think I ended up crying through most of it because I’ve been through everything they addressed.
Ken’s singing and silliness towards the end cheered me up. I really appreciate how his arc ended. I was scared for a second, but he is definitely 10/10 best boy. Definitely Engie-tier.
Everyone was going on about the song Barbie Girl before the movie released, but The Fall by ELO felt like it could have been in there. You kind of get Xanadu vibes throughout the film, and that’s a good thing.
I’m also glad that this wasn’t Twitter: The Movie. I didn’t expect that going in, but I’m still glad, anyway. It was a very sane, realistic view of life as a woman.
i was thinking about that post comparing Jessica Rabbit as an asexual to Barbie and an asexual and then i thought of the Neil Gaiman post (was it a post?) about Crowley and Aziraphale being asexual and then this happened.
