this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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Capitalism commodifies dissent. It turns protest movements that argue against the unfairness of the current system into a product or marketing campaign to sell their imaginary solutions. The Barbie is a prime example of this.
I liked the I'm Just Ken song though, and it was a fun movie, but still.
Well, that's a pretty reductive way of looking at the message.
I'll give you a hint, why do you think it is that Barbie ultimately refused to participate in the hypercommodified world after the status quo has been restored with even slight improvements being made?
Why do you think Mattel, a company that's been accused of profiting of child labour and whose dolls have been shown to be damaging to young girls body image, made a Barbie movie?
"Tell me you're a male without telling me you're a male" ... ?
Snarky reply I know ... but seriously, to you and everyone inclined to downvote this ... what are the probabilities?
From what I've gathered, generally speaking ... women got and appreciated the message and men struggled with the fact that it was a big speech in a big movie they otherwise enjoyed to some extent.
Which, TBH, is perfectly fine ... different people in different walks of life ... it's why we have films, art, conversations etc ... it's not a big deal to not get what other people are going through and to let them talk to each other about it through art etc.
Nah.
The reality is that this Mattel using feminism to shift product. It's fundamentally no different than when brands pretend to be gay friendly through marketing, to distract from their past and current record. Or when an oil company pretends to be green.
In the case of Mattel, their dolls have causes young girls body image problems and have been accused of using child labour
A relevant bit from a guardian article:
Means and ends.
I’m by no means celebrating Mattel. I don’t give a fuck about Mattel and support all of the critiques you can throw at the company.
I’m talking about the speech and the experience of watching it in a film and its meaningfulness (which I have to presume is what the creators of the film actually cared about).
And more specifically, my initial response was to criticise the reduction of the speech to mere corporate dissent generation when both can be equally true.
In fact I assert that anyone capable of finding the film entertaining is very capable of teasing apart the commercial reality of the film and what kernels of meaning are inside it, as the film more or less explicitly acknowledges.
All of this reduction to mere corporate rage baiting … as I claim in my initial response … is likely coming from a place that is uncomfortable with the kernels of meaning in the film. Which most likely means males. Which was the main elephant in the room point I was trying to make.
I’m betting you’re male … in part because the gender of the critic you linked to is also male.
Nah. That's just an ad hominem. The linked article was the second to top link when you do a quick google.
I know the right disliked Barbie because it was feminist. (Mattel denies the movie's feminist, btw. Which should also tell you something. Presumably they were worried it'd cost them money in feminist utopias like Saudi Arabia).
I liked the movie, but was simply pointing out it was also purplewashing for a company with a poor reputation. Which it is. That's a left-wing feminist argument. I mean, the movie's fun and it was super pretty, but patriarchy isn't really all that funny is it? Andrea Dworkin this ain't.
They can't be equally true in a movie made by a large corporation. IRC Margot Robbie made $50 million. Understandably if you're getting paid that much, you aren't going to spend much time dwelling on stuff like their treatment of women in their factories:
https://chinalaborwatch.org/mattels-unceasing-abuse-of-chinese-workers-an-investigation-of-six-mattel-supplier-factories/
Instead you'll focus on the pretty outfits and avoid mentioning femicide during press junkets.
Well, I think we've reached an impasse then, because I'm not addressing you and your gender in particular, but all men. It's not ad hominem, it's about lived experiences that differ between the oldest and biggest grouping of humanity.
As for all the purplewashing stuff ... I'm with you ... but ... you don't need to tell me about that and I honestly wonder who actually needs to hear it, especially if they're inclined to praise the film and/or the speech?
Sorry, but nope.
Attempting to discredit an argument, because of who said it and why they supposedly said it, is a text book ad hominem.
It's especially painful, because you're defending a corporation (run by a white male) with an abysmal record on women's rights, who sell a product that has a track record of damaging young girls' self image, from accusations of purplewashing. Purplewashing being a term, that as far as I know, was originally termed by female feminists. It's a bit like if I quoted Emmeline Pankhurst, and you said the quote was nonsense because I don't know what's it's like to be a woman.
But more generally, I suppose that's the danger of a superficial understanding of identity politics. In practice it is often used to divide groups with a common cause, like how the far right have used TERF ideology in an attempt to divide the LGBTQ+ movement and pit feminists against the trans community, claiming trans women aren't real women, because of (and I quote) "lived experiences". (Luckily actual lesbians don't often fall into this trap, because they know that this is nonsense because they know actual trans people and know they face similar struggles and live through similar experiences.)
And from a feminist perspective it perpetuates gender binaries and essentialism. The whole men are form Mars, women are from Venus nonsense. In the case of the Barbie movie, purplewashing is very similar to pinkwashing, greenwashing, bluewashing, etc. So you don't need to actually be a woman to understand why purplewashing is problematic, just like you don't need to be gay to understand why pinkwashing is problematic.
But hey, what do I know. I'm just Ken.
Anyway, agree to disagree.
Well I don’t want to continue this longer than we have to as we’re mostly talking at each other by this point. So happy to “disagree” I guess.
But in the interests of trying to resolve this … some questions:
In the end, all I’ve been saying to you is “yes, but there can still be a kernel of truth in this that resonated with people but which didn’t resonate with you perhaps because of your different perspective”.
To reject that as a reality or valid or relevant human behaviour strikes me as an argument that’s somewhere between naive and insensitive, especially given that the purplewashing point is not in question at all.
Anyway, all the best and genuinely thanks for the chat … I believe neither of us got too heated and kept it civil!