Counter-Currents
1,629 words
Leftists ruin everything. Nothing, not even children’s toys, is immune from their hateful ideology. A case in point is Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. There are countless women who played with Barbie dolls as children, put them aside when they grew up, and occasionally think nostalgically about them without ever suspecting that they were the targets of Leftist consciousness-raising. But from the very start, Barbie sets them straight.
Barbie begins with a voiceover that sounds like a witch. In the bad old days, little girls only played with baby dolls, which their cunning parents foisted on them to brainwash them into wanting to become mothers. It was soooo boring.
Then, to the opening strains of Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra, a monolith appears above the primitive little girls, exciting them to an orgy of baby doll smashing. Smashing baby dolls is in questionable taste. It smacks of killing babies in effigy. I guess Roe v. Wade really died hard for the Sisterhood.
The monolith is Barbie. First introduced in 1959, Barbie changed everything. Instead of playing mothers, little girls began playing Barbie. Who was Barbie? Barbie is an emancipated single woman with lots of clothes and other accessories that you can buy for her, including a boyfriend named Ken. But Ken and Barbie don’t marry and have kids. They don’t even have genitalia. As the movie points out, Barbie once had a pregnant friend, but that doll was discontinued. Thus, Barbie does not prepare women for motherhood, but spinsterhood.
Barbie and Ken were initially archetypal Nordics living the California dream, when California used to be synonymous with blond surfers rather than tech geeks with wretched physiques.
But then the kvetching began. Ugly people are a huge burden on society. Not only do they ugly the place up, they also resent their betters and want to tear them down. Moreover, they wish to overthrow the standards of beauty by which they are judged inferior.
Whites, especially Nordics, have long been the focus of the lusts and resentments of the darker, less comely races. And beautiful whites have been lusted after and resented by the fat and ugly of all races. As America becomes more miscegenated and non-white, the rising tide of ugliness threatens to wash away all standards. Thus, Barbie and Ken have become the symbols of everything loathed by the Left’s bio-Leninist coalition: feminists, the fat and the ugly, Jews and other non-whites, etc.
Barbie and Ken have been accused of making brunettes feel bad for not being blonde (as if the world does not contain countless hot brunettes). They have been accused of making ugly people feel bad by being too damn beautiful. They have been accused of making fat people sad by being lanky and fit. And they have been accused of making non-whites feel inferior by being archetypal good-looking whites. It would really set these people off if Ken and Barbie were capable of producing blonde plastic babies.
Barbie’s manufacturer responded to the Leftist hate coalition in two ways. First, they diversified Barbie. Barbie can now be every shade of black and brown, as well as ugly and fat. Second, they marketed Barbie as a feminist icon. It wasn’t a stretch; after all, she was a childless, materialistic, single career girl. Barbie, I am sure, started out as an innocent children’s toy. But she has been retconned into a Leftist psyop by a giant corporation. Capitalism has simply learned how to coopt and commodify Leftism.
This cynical marketing strategy is hilariously parodied in the movie as “Barbieland,” where every woman is Barbie, Barbie comes in all colors and sizes, and every Barbie leads a perfect life, even Wheelchair Barbie. Every sort of diversity is represented. There’s a gay ally doll named Allan, and the black President Barbie is obviously a transsexual or drag queen. Come to think of it, a lot of the Barbies look like drag queens.
Barbies do everything. They run the government. They run the industries. They award one another prizes. We are even asked to believe that they risk breaking a nail as sanitation and construction workers.
What about the Kens? They do nothing. They are just accessories. As far as Barbie knows, they don’t even have houses. They just hang around on the beach.
But Barbie (played by Margot Robbie) and Ken (played by Ryan Gosling) are just not happy as perpetual adolescents in a post-historical consumerist utopia. Barbie has thoughts about death, and she’s beginning to age. Ken, moreover, is not happy being in the friend zone forever.
At this point, I was beginning to think that Barbie could become a great subversive film exploring how feminism and the sexual revolution have failed worse than Communism, producing a world in which more people than ever are lonely and incapable of forming friendships, relationships, and families. I wondered if we would meet Benzodiazepine Barbie and SSRI Barbie, as well as Incel Shitposter Ken.
You can buy Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema here.
I was really hoping the movie would end with these two archetypal Nordics leaving behind their empty materialism, growing some genitals, and starting a family. Since Barbie and Ken are literally the only white, non-dysgenic couple in the whole film, the future of the white face hinges on the production of the Margot Robbie-Ryan Gosling miracle baby. But, of course, Tinseltown will go to any lengths to prevent that from happening.
Barbie seeks advice from Cynical Wine Aunt Barbie, known in the movie as “Weird Barbie.” Naturally, she gives bad advice. Weird Barbie blames her problems on society. Specifically, she says that she became weird because a little girl in the real world “played too hard” with her, whatever that means. Weird Barbie suggests that Barbie’s problems may have the same origins. So Barbie sets off for the real world, and Ken joins her by stowing away.
Ken and Barbie arrive in Los Angeles, one of the most politically correct cities on the planet, which is depicted as a dystopia of sexism and patriarchy. It is not, however, depicted for the dystopia it really is: overrun by Third Worlders, junkies, and beggars.
Barbie is dismayed by the patriarchy, but Ken is entranced. He’s never felt affirmed and respected as a man. The depiction of bro-culture is genuinely appealing, which is highly subversive. Ken decides that power, responsibility, and horses are the answers to his malaise. He thus decides to bring the patriarchy back to Barbieland. The Barbies immediately knock off the career girl stuff and become dutiful Stepford Girlfriends to the Kens. Everyone is much happier with the new order.
Meanwhile, Barbie meets the source of her discontent: a middle-aged Latina with visible black ancestry who looks like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She has a weak, bumbling white husband and a sneering tween daughter who spouts woke drivel. The Barbie returns to Barbieland with the two Latinas, where they are horrified to discover Ken’s patriarchy. The Barbies have obviously been brainwashed. Honestly, I don’t think a woman on the planet could say no to Gosling’s Ken. He’s an amazingly charismatic actor and makes a lot of this dumb role. Sadly, a lot of people hate him for that.
Naturally, Barbie and the Latinas work to overturn the patriarchy. AOC easily snaps the Barbies out of their brainwashing with feminist duckspeak. The Barbies then conspire to get the Kens fighting with one another (“Let’s you and him fight.”), and while the Kens are distracted, the Barbies overthrow the patriarchy. The Kens go along with it, because they literally don’t have the balls to say no.
As the movie ends, the woke inclusiveness is being laid on pretty thick. Make way for Ordinary Barbie, Sweatpants Barbie, Hotflash Barbie, and Cankles Barbie.
Thus, for a brief moment, the Kens wonder if maybe they, too, might have some affirmation in the new order. But justice and consistency are not Barbie’s strong suits — any Barbie’s strong suits — so no.
At that point, I sensed that some men in the audience were on the brink of taking up lead pipes and clubbing Barbies like baby seals. (Hey, they’re only plastic, like the baby dolls at the beginning.)
Barbie finally tells Ken that she just doesn’t want him, further proving this film was written by feminists. Then, in an excruciating scene in which Rhea Perlman plays Barbie’s Jewish creator (((of course!))), Barbie becomes human, then moves to the real world (if you can call Los Angeles the real world). We soon learn what Barbie’s newly-found humanity entails when she walks into a gynecologist’s office. Barbie has a vagina now, but something tells me that she’ll still end up as sterile as her plastic sisters.
And that, dear reader, is the happy ending.
Barbie is one of the most cynically-marketed movies I have ever seen. The bait consists of Robbie and Gosling, who bring in people with Nordic sex appeal — which the whole movie then conspires to destroy.
The bait also consists of enough striking images and bits of song and dance routines (did I mention Barbie is a musical?) to convince people that this is a wholesome, nostalgic comedy — only to deliver shrill, woke tirades and cringe-inducing jokes about masturbation and genitalia.
The very existence of the Barbie doll is an example of how capitalism monetizes nihilism and social decline by selling dolls to little girls that make them less likely to have little girls of their own. That’s no way to run a society.
Barbie has an evil message, but fortunately, this movie is dumb, draggy, and obnoxious, so it is unlikely to poison many innocent minds. Indeed, because it is so crassly anti-white and anti-male, it might accidentally red pill more people than it harms. In fact, I am betting the Manosphere will be mining this movie for memes long after the Sisterhood has forgotten it.
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49 comments
This movie sounds like a big train wreck. As for feminists being against baby dolls, that speaks volumes about feminism.
Yeah Greg, you definitely don’t sound like a Nordicist.
Read this:
https://counter-currents.com/2016/03/nordics-aryans-and-whites/
This article and the discussion are excellent. Is there a mechanism for readers to more easily find these foundational nuggets from the vault? I am thinking also of an interview Dr Johnson did in maybe 2018 which was a good introduction to White Nationalism for the uninitiated.
Try our Classics Corner.
It’s safe to assume that you went into this movie with very low expectations?? Did they catapult over the level that you assumed?
I actually hoped it would be an epic Hollywood self-own, a Goebbels Award Laureate, which is my term for a movie made by Hollywood that the little doctor would have approved.
That’s funny! Maybe your next review should be a compilation of all the films Mr. Goebbels would have enjoyed.
Look at my reviews of Cabaret, Miller’s Crossing, and Quiz Show for starters.
Links?
Couldn’t find Miller’s Crossing. But thank you. I’ll check out your reviews of the other two. And forgive my laziness.
This is one movie I’ll never watch – one of many. It’s a typical product of the Jewish film industry, always pushing the envelope to lower levels of decadence and genocide. It hope it fails. I hope it backfires and redpills its intended audience.
When I saw a teaser trailer a while back that had the whole “I’m gonna beach you off” back and forth I was disgusted. But after reading the whole synopsis elsewhere as well as this and a few other reviews, I wouldn’t have ever imagined it being this insufferable and tasteless. In a sane world, Mattel would be suing the living shit out of the studio for such a gross degradation of their iconic property.
Thank you Mr. Lynch for taking one for the team so we all didn’t have to. Now do Bros.(just kidding)
“In a sane world, Mattel would be suing the living shit out of the studio”
In 1997, Mattel tried to sue MCA Records after the release of Aqua’s kitsch pop hit “Barbie Girl”. Mattel was unsuccessful.
This new film obviously sucks. Anyway, toys work best in horror movies. On which, judging by the trailer, M3gan (2022) could be promising.
“toys work best in horror movies”
You said it. Anyone who saw the giant doll scene in The Brotherhood of Satan (1971) as a child remembers it and will forever.
That whole segment was, as the kids say, “cringe.” It was amazing they shot it, amazing they kept it in, and even more amazing that they put it in a promo.
https://nypost.com/2023/07/18/barbie-review-margot-robbies-mattel-movie-is-lousy/
Kosher landwhale Amy Schumer was the original choice to play Barbie.
https://nypost.com/2023/07/24/amy-schumer-breaks-silence-on-barbie-after-exiting-project/
You know, this one just isn’t on my summer watch list!
But then again, no movies this year have been on my “watch list.” I just keep watching the classics I have stored in my DVD baskets. And I read Trevor Lynch’s reviews of those classics.
Barbie did not in fact start out as an innocent toy. She was the product of a subversive Jewess called Ruth Handler and was based on a German comic about a lady of the night called Lilli. The Netflix series, The Toys That Made Us, goes into this at some length. But there’s also this article from even earlier: https://time.com/3731483/barbie-history/.
At least Barbie isn’t one of the Bratz! Then again, the Bratz wouldn’t have flown back in 1959.
When the Latinx tween (surname Greenblatt) travels to Barbieland, they try to femme her up, but she looks more Bratz than Barbie.
Greenblat took to playing the BRAT like a duck takes to water, but her acting ability really showed its limits when it was time for her to seem like a normal, happy girl! (Did such a thing ever really exist?)
“Ugly people are a huge burden on society. Not only do they ugly the place up, they also resent their betters and want to tear them down. Moreover, they wish to overthrow the standards of beauty by which they are judged inferior.”
“[t]he rising tide of ugliness threatens to wash away all standards.”
You hit it right on the nail, here.
“…Benzodiazepine Barbie and SSRI Barbie, as well as Incel Shitposter Ken.”
Ha!!
I had “Malibu Barbie” and “Superstar Ken” and they were more than friends in my mind; they had a little Barbie infant. They also drove a convertible Corvette inherited by me from one of the neighborhood babysitters. Good times. Then, I grew up. And I never hated a woman more beautiful than me.
I thought wheelchair Barbie had to be a joke, or part of the movie’s twisted world–but no, she’s real. An internet search instantly suggested coal-black wheelchair Barbie with an afro, $15.99 from Amazon. They should add a flannel shirt, shave one side of her ebony head, and call her intersectional Barbie.
I am sure there was a They/Them Barbie in the mix, but I didn’t want to assume anything.
In one of my unpublished manuscripts, I have a Postcolonial Studies Barbie with a bone through her nose. Then there’s a lineup of critical theory action figures, mostly from the Frankfurt School. This burst of imagination is one of the results of getting my nose rubbed in leftist ideology in college.
Great review.
Gerwig co-wrote this garbage with her hubby, Noah Baumbach.
Gerwig is white, Baumbach Jewish.
yes, both statements are true.
Their children, both very young, will likely identify as Jews despite Gerwig’s Catholic schooling. Baumbach’s cougar first wife Jennifer Jason-Leigh (Fast Times at Ridgmont High) is, despite her name, of Ashkenazi heritage.
Do jewesses ever marry goyim men? It seems its always the other way around. O wonder if its our decision to avoid them, or vice versa?
The movie accidentally mirrors Evola’s account of previous civilizations in Revolt Against the Modern World. Barbieland is similar to amazonian civilization which broke off from the late silver age civilization of the mothers. Both of these were in turn swept aside from the brutish bronze age which over corrected in the opposite direction, and like the movie, could be said to be rule by “men and horses.” Sadly, no Olympian heroes come to restore an echo of the golden age.
Surely the men and horses thing is merely accidental here. Surely.
Barbie was created in the image of her creator.
Ken was created in the image of Barbie.
Oooo
Dr. Johnson bravely bears many burdens for the sake of our race. Running from Antifa is one thing, but, this, having to watch a Barbie movie….It’s what the Catholics call white martyrdom. No bloodshed, but the agony is the same.
JF has a positive review of Barbie. Greg, you should have him on. I’d love you hear you two sort out your differing takes. That would make great content.
Clever review of a movie which sounds excruciating. The WSJ had a negative review – (“How about a different movie based on Fun Barbie?”) – so I knew it was bad. Now I have the full picture. Of course, I never would have seen this crap anyway (unless it had been some wildly subversive, hidden anti-fembot red pill, as Lynch imagines it might have been – in a racio-different country, that is).
It’s sad that so much effort and, let’s be honest, genuine technical and artistic (makeup, costumes, mise en scene) talent, goes into making civilizationally subversive trash.
Must say I’m not terribly interested in the film, and surprised you spent so much time writing about it. It seems very one-dimensional, using pop culture to make us look stupid, and “make a point.” There has been a pathological hatred of whites and blondes for a long time, and here’s only the latest sample. Is Gerwig Jewish? Sounds like she is. They do it so openly now that’s it’s almost a yawn.
As for “Lilli,” the original German model for Barbie, the inventor originally planned it as a kind of playdoll for men. America took the idea and, as Americans do very well, took off marketing it for the mass market of girls. You have to admit America has a gift for marketing porn and weirdness, making it acceptable and profitable.
Very nice review. I like the retinue of Barbies and how you named them. Beau wins though with his, “Postcolonial Studies Barbie.” She seems like a perfect foil for, “Colonizer Ken.”
I am sorry you watched this, but the review was worth your pain. Was the Ken’s Tradworld segment an unintentional own goal? That is, a compelling vision of beauty, order, standards and fulfillment that could inspire and stir the longings of those born with noble souls?
My brother went to see the movie, taking his granddaughter and her friend. He hadn’t planned to see it, but after walking about in the mall, decided to drop in…and he said he loved the movie. It was fun, enjoyable, very pretty to look at, and he thought it was very warm and cozy. The kids liked a lot, too, so there.
He saw none of what some of us see in ulterior messages. But this is a guy who listens to NPR “because it offers a balanced view of news, so unlike Fox.”
He’s also an ex-cop, so judge for yourself if they’re with us or not.
And, he agreed; there was lots of blonde and pink in the film.
Fox preaches to the choir with stories that contradict, to some extent, liberal pieties, delivered in a somewhat hectoring tone. The viewer comes away agitated and angry. NPR from what I have seen of it years ago ( Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour ) delivers the party line deadpan. It’s very soothing as long as you don’t comprehend the extent to which it is mostly lies.
And what about new remake of The Little Mermaid with the black mermaid Ariel?
Here’s the real problem that not many are talking about, maybe because there is nothing we can do: the movie is “crassly anti-white and anti-male” and yet (let’s be honest) the vast majority of the women in our society like it.
There is talk about how women were tricked into seeing the movie by the “marketing department.” Well, regardless of whatever reason(s) women have for seeing the movie, it turns out that they are for the most part totally on-board with the anti-male message.
What does that say about our current situation? Or about our chances of ever fixing things?
The woman from the Guardian ended her review of the movie saying she feels sorry for little boys because the world hates them. Indeed.
Do the vast majority of women in our society really like it? Citation needed.
Well, my initial impressions came from what I heard women saying about it as they were exiting the theater when I went to see another movie (Sound of Freedom). My sister saw Barbie and told me she liked it on several levels and I was too disgusted to discuss it with her further. Then I’ve been watching panel discussions about the movie on YouTube and seem to always see women (who like it) arguing with men (who don’t).
But then I pored over the comments in IMDB. Didn’t find many that said, “I was duped by the marketing department.”
The real proof with be with the similar movies Hollywood will start churning out without any deceptive marketing – they have found their lucrative message and target audience.
Short answer, no citation and “Yes.”
A friend of mine (male, strong Catholic, G.K. Chesterton fan and LOVES Marvel movies) went to see Barbie and liked it very much. He thought it “cute” and “fun”, and saw no ideological or sexual role discussion. All of the above essay apparently would be wasted on him, as it would on my brother (in the previous post above), and there is (no surprise) a large herd of Americans who are simply immune to any kind of examination of anything.
As H. L. Mencken would observe, the spirit of the booboisie is alive and well, in great shades of pink and blonde.
Went home to see mom and took her to see it today. (Small town, single screen theater, one showing per day).
Mom, bless her heart and in spite of being german born and the daughter of a WW2 Wermacht soldier, is fully brainwashed by near constant viewing of CNN, MSNBC, etc, walked away hating it. “That was definitely NOT a family movie!” Were her words.
I however, thouroughly enjoyed the movie. Not in spite of, but because of my rightist leanings. Having read this article, and watching the critical drinkers review, i was fully aware of what i was getting myself into. And it was hillarious, though not for the reasons intended of course. And i was the ONLY one in the theater laughing. Good times!
A major plot point was the Barbies taking back Barbieland by reversing the Patriarchal Brainwashing Spell cast upon them by the newly redpilled Kens. I wonder if the filmmakers realized the irony there, since the entire film is feminist woke brainwashing propanda. Im sure that the (((filmmakers))) certainly did. The useful idiots im not sure about.
Missed opportunity…Ken occupies Barbies dream house and renames it “Kendom Saloon”, complete w swinging wooden doors. But somehow negects to change the name of the entire world to Kendom, (a pretty cool dudename) rather electing to simply call it Kenland. Lame.
Can y’all please review Bridgerton, the show is wildly popular among women and girls with all kinds of blatantly anti-white sphere yet its gone completely unnoticed in this sphere.
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