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kottke.org posts about barbie

The Trailer for Black Barbie

The first Black Barbie doll was created and sold in 1980. Black Barbie, a documentary streaming on Netflix later this month, tells the story of how the doll came to be and the impact it had on a generation of young people who were able to see themselves in a doll with the same color skin, perhaps for the first time.

The trailer opens with this line: “If you’ve gone your whole life and you’ve never seen anything made in your own image, there is damage done.” Which is then echoed later in the trailer when a little girl is describing her Barbie: “Really pretty, and has lochs, just like me”.

Shonda Rhimes produced the film and was recently on the Today show talking about the importance of representation. And here’s a tour of Sonya Larson’s collection of 1000+ Black Barbie dolls.

Reply ยท 1

Patriarchy According to The Barbie Movie

Using the Barbie movie and other media (movies, TV shows) as a guide, Pop Culture Detective delves into what “patriarchy” actually means (mirrors: Patreon & archive.org).

We’re going to use the movie as a sort of primer to help explain what patriarchy actually is, what it isn’t, and how it ends up harming everyone, including men. To have any kind of productive conversation, we have to get over that defensiveness that so many men feel whenever they they come across the word “patriarchy”. Contrary to popular belief, patriarchy is not a synonym for men, nor is it a code word for masculinity, and it certainly has nothing to do with hating men.

The bibliography in the description of the video lists three books if you’d like to do some reading on the topic:

(via waxy)

P.S. While I was watching this video, YouTube removed it after Warner Brothers “blocked it on copyright grounds”. The channel is challenging the takedown and has uploaded it to Patreon and archive.org in the meantime. (I’m leaving the embed in case it comes back to life.) This bullshit is so irritating โ€” Google just totally letting massive media corporations decide what’s copyright infringing without recourse. And Warner (and Gerwig & Robbie too to some lesser extent)…you made the fucking movie to get a message across and to get people talking and someone posts a thoughtful video essay about the central issue of the film and you fucking take it down?


Barbie Girl, in the Style of Six Classical Composers

This is fun: Aqua’s pop hit Barbie Girl, redone in the style of six classical composers: Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, Chopin, and Ravel. (via @Erikmitk)


Greta Gerwig’s Barbie Influences

Greta Gerwig takes us on a whirlwind tour through 33 films that influenced the Barbie movie, visually, thematically, and in terms of plot/content. The influences include The Wizard of Oz, Rear Window, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Singin’ in the Rain, The Godfather, Oklahoma!, 2001, and Saturday Night Fever.

Then, Saturday Night Fever, I always had a sense of wanting this to be a movie with an amazing soundtrack. Saturday Night Fever obviously has this incredible soundtrack by the Bee Gees. There’s a documentary about the Bee Gees, and I’d seen it and was so touched by the Bee Gees, and I thought Barbie seemed so disco to me in her heart, because Barbie’s sort of โ€” and I will say this as a lover of Barbie and disco โ€” a little bit dorky in the best way. Saturday Night Fever was a movie that was driven by music, but not a musical. I guess we’re half of a musical.


Barbenheimer

mashup movie poster for Barbenheimer (Barbie + Oppenheimer)

Barbenheimer poster by Sean Longmore. Perfect, 10/10, no notes.


The Barbie Movie

I have very high hopes for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. It would be incredible if it lives up to them and the first two teaser trailers are a good start.

Also, I love how completely and utterly thirrrrrrsty the video’s description is to establish the bona fides and pedigree of the movie’s cast and crew:

From Oscar-nominated writer/director Greta Gerwig (“Little Women,” “Lady Bird”) comes “Barbie,” starring Oscar-nominees Margot Robbie (“Bombshell,” “I, Tonya”) and Ryan Gosling (“La La Land,” “Half Nelson”) as Barbie and Ken, alongside America Ferrera (“End of Watch,” the “How to Train Your Dragon” films), Kate McKinnon (“Bombshell,” “Yesterday”), Michael Cera (“Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” “Juno”), Ariana Greenblatt (“Avengers: Infinity War,” “65”), Issa Rae (“The Photograph,” “Insecure”), Rhea Perlman (“I’ll See You in My Dreams,” “Matilda”), and Will Ferrell (the “Anchorman” films, “Talladega Nights”). The film also stars Ana Cruz Kayne (“Little Women”), Emma Mackey (“Emily,” “Sex Education”), Hari Nef (“Assassination Nation,” “Transparent”), Alexandra Shipp (the “X-Men” films), Kingsley Ben-Adir (“One Night in Miami,” “Peaky Blinders”), Simu Liu (“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”), Ncuti Gatwa (“Sex Education”), Scott Evans (“Grace and Frankie”), Jamie Demetriou (“Cruella”), Connor Swindells (“Sex Education,” “Emma.”), Sharon Rooney (“Dumbo,” “Jerk”), Nicola Coughlan (“Bridgerton,” “Derry Girls”), Ritu Arya (“The Umbrella Academy”), Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Dua Lipa and Oscar-winner Helen Mirren (“The Queen”).

Gerwig directed “Barbie” from a screenplay by Gerwig & Oscar nominee Noah Baumbach (“Marriage Story,” “The Squid and the Whale”), based on Barbie by Mattel. The film’s producers are Oscar nominee David Heyman (“Marriage Story,” “Gravity”), Robbie, Tom Ackerley and Robbie Brenner, with Michael Sharp, Josey McNamara, Ynon Kreiz, Courtenay Valenti, Toby Emmerich and Cate Adams serving as executive producers.

Gerwig’s creative team behind the camera included Oscar-nominated director of photography Rodrigo Prieto (“The Irishman,” “Silence,” “Brokeback Mountain”), six-time Oscar-nominated production designer Sarah Greenwood (“Beauty and the Beast,” “Anna Karenina”), editor Nick Houy (“Little Women,” “Lady Bird”), Oscar-winning costume designer Jacqueline Durran (“Little Women,” “Anna Karenina”), visual effects supervisor Glen Pratt (“Paddington 2,” “Beauty and the Beast”), music supervisor George Drakoulias (“White Noise,” “Marriage Story”) and Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat (“The Shape of Water,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel”).

Is that….everybody? In the world?


Darth Vader’s exploded head and BarbieCue

Exploded Vader

Barbiecue

From Austrian street artist Nychos, previews of a Dissection of Darth Vader’s Head piece and a “Barbie meltdown” piece from an upcoming show at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in June. You can see more of his work on his Tumblr and Instagram.


Human Barbie dolls

Let’s get right to it. This is a real photo of a real human being:

Human Barbie doll

It hasn’t been dramatically retouched or anything. Valeria Lukyanova has made herself into a human Barbie doll.

Her brand-new hair extensions, the color of Chardonnay, hang straight down, reaching her nonexistent hips. Her mouth is frozen in a vacant half-smile; the teeth are small and almost translucent. She’s holding a handbag shaped like a lantern. A one-eyed smiling-skull pin perches on her sky blue top, pushed to the side by the veritable shelf of silicone around which her whole body seems arranged. In the flesh โ€” the little of it that she hasn’t whittled away with what she says is exercise and diet โ€” Valeria looks almost exactly like Barbie. There might be some Loretta Lux-style postproduction to her photos, sure, but it’s not crucial. This is live. This is happening.

She’s also a recent convert to breatharianism (living exclusively on a diet of air), feels that humans are less beautiful now because of “race-mixing”, and gets her nails painted with “a fractal pattern from the twenty-first dimension” that came to her in a dream. There is also a human Ken doll, Justin Jedlica, who has achieved his look through more than 100 plastic surgeries:

Human Ken doll

But there’s a problem. Ken doen’t like Barbie.

But you’re not a fan?
I don’t really get her. I don’t get why people think she’s so interesting. She has extensions. She wears stage makeup. She’s an illusionist.

You’ve certainly had more surgeries. What’s your favorite one?
My baby is my shoulders, because nobody has anything like them. I divided these so there’s six pieces-front, middle, and back. Just like the actual anatomy.


A letter from the Paleoanthropology Division of

A letter from the Paleoanthropology Division of the Smithsonian Institute: “We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents ‘conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago.’ Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be the ‘Malibu Barbie.’”

Update: Not that there was any doubt that this isn’t a real letter, here’s the confirmation. (thx, sam & sheldon)


When Teen Talk Barbie came out in 1989

When Teen Talk Barbie came out in 1989 saying things like “math is hard”, could you imagine if blogs had existed at the time? The whole internet would have exploded with rage.