I only found out about this tirade via Frank Conniff
He’s likely getting great big lungfuls of toxic fumes.
This kind of idiocy makes me want to see Barbie more, and I already do, but not quite enough to go to a big theater.
… sigh … people insisting that the Republican Party is anti-censorship.
Here’s my attempt at a response:
It’s not the party of Warren Harding any more. It’s mostly the party of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.
The Republican Party has spent decades encouraging police harassment and violence against left-wing organizing. The Democratic Party has sometimes done the same also against left-wing organizing.
Both the Clinton and Bush administrations encouraged raids to break up protests against the WTO, IMF, FTAA, against Bush’s Wars, and outside the Republican Conventions in Philly in 2000 and St. Paul in 2008, among others. The Trump Administration escalated things further, with Trump ordering the attack at Lafayette Square, gassing parishioners of a local church, and taking a photo-op with a bible taken from that church, with the unmarked vans in Portland, and claiming he’d ordered the assassination of Mike Reinohl. Mike Reinohl should have had his day in court.
continued from the previous post:
Now Republican administrations in several states are trying to keep schools from teaching about queer people, or having any books or other resources that could support queer students.
Now Mike Knowles is insisting “transgender ideology must be eradicated from public life entirely.” Setting aside, 1stly, that there is no single trans ideology, only the various perspectives of trans people, and 2ndly, that it’s very odd to talk about “eradicating” an “ideology”, if he’s not calling for genocide he’s still calling for mass censorship and the complete silencing of trans people talking about our own experiences.
Now Ron DeSantis is trying to retaliate against Disney and against Bud Light for not going along with his culture war.
All of these are forms of censorship. All involve state power. Most involve more powerful groups trying to silence less powerful groups.
I figure I’ll need a handy response, so can anyone suggest improvements?
I haven’t seen it yet, but my family has and from what they said there’s a cool theme where they go from the toy world, (which is of course a ‘perfect’ world) into the real world, and naturally the real world makes no sense because it’s all stupid.
That kinda sounds like a serious literature concept with real potential for depth and it could be very interesting to see how they explore it. So now I’m really looking forward to seeing the movie.
I’m going to guess that most of the people hating on it aren’t actually addressing that and probably couldn’t even comprehend it.
I will say, initially I thought “well it’s a barbie movie aimed at girls, why would I be interested in that?” But in retrospect I’ll save any scoffing until I’ve actually seen it and have a first-person perspective on whether it’s as deep as it sounds or as shallow as it looks.
Many people won’t. I don’t care about those people.
Reminds me a bit of the movie “Enchanted” (IIRC).
But the stupid conservative response makes me think of a cartoon movie idea: “Malevolent Sheep,” about a flock of sheep where once one of them shouts “feminist propaganda!” or some such conservative claptrap, then all the other sheep start spouting the same shit (literally).
The more liberal sheep then make fun of them, as the malevolent sheep prance around stepping in their own shit. Be great done with claymation.
Maybe Aardman Productions could do it starring Shawn the Sheep . . .
I knew Shawn was problematic.
Yes, the unnamed but incredibly powerful “them” are apparently using their orbital space lasers to start wildfires in Hawaii. Because that’s obviously the only way fires start.
But, hoping to avoid extradition, Rossi stuck to his “Arthur Knight” claim to an utterly ridiculous extent. After a judge held last November that the human before him was, more likely than not, the aforementioned Nicholas Rossi, things just got weirder. He started to show up for court in unusual outfits, sitting in a wheelchair he didn’t need, and using an oxygen mask (same), all the while insisting he was Irish orphan “Arthur Knight,” not this Rossi person. The continued delay seems to have been due to claims that extradition would violate his civil rights, and while they were planning to send him to Utah, it was still not a very convincing argument.
At long last, on August 2 the court finally rejected Rossi’s arguments and cleared the way for him to be extradited. He had some strong words for the defendant, though not as strong as the guy deserved. This is still not the final determination, because according to the BBC that has to be made by government ministers.
Dumb to you, but not to them.
I saw it the night before the official premiere with my daughter who is super Barbie movie crazy.
Honestly, it felt to me very chaotic. It was about 10 movie ideas rolled into one movie. The actors were really charming, the world building was great, the costumes and dance numbers were fun. Everyone dressing up and posing with the movie posters was fun. I think if you go in with the attitude of just going along with the fun spirit of the movie, and not wanting something deeper from it, then you will enjoy it.
The big speech everyone was talking about felt like it was ripped from a Facebook post. To me if felt preachy and simplistic. I felt the overall “feminist” message to be really confusing and half-baked and kinda tortured to fit into the fun premise; or maybe it’s just me, but I just felt all the focus on the Kens was just very strange in a Barbie movie. Even so the Ken version of Barbie world was very funny in its execution.
The bits where they talked about the actual person who created Barbie were the most heartfelt and connected, the imagined world of childhood vs. being a real, complex woman. I would have liked to have seen a little more of that idea explored.
It was fun and cute and fluffy. It wasn’t something I felt like I need to watch over and over again or that I’d go back to myself.
My experience:
Mostly they were tweaking all the dumb things Mattel does and is from the beginning. I enjoyed it just for that. Also enjoyed the relationship discussion and the variety of “types” thing. A good way to call out the patriarchy, I thought.
#fapitalism