Classically Abby - July 26, 2023


The Barbie Movie Is WOKE and UNWATCHABLE ⧸⧸ Conservative Mom Movie Review


Episode Stats

Length

17 minutes

Words per Minute

184.91551

Word Count

3,166

Sentence Count

212

Misogynist Sentences

32

Hate Speech Sentences

17


Summary

In this episode of Conservative Mom Movie Reviews, I review the new movie, "Barbie: A Feminist Dream House". In this episode, I break down the plot, the wokeness meter, and whether or not you should take your kids to see this movie.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I did it. I saw Barbie. So you don't have to. And when I say so you don't have to,
00:00:06.260 I don't mean in the cliche version of you don't have to. I mean, I legit don't want you to have
00:00:13.320 to suffer through this film. Welcome to a new series on my channel called Conservative Mom
00:00:20.060 Movie Reviews. My plan is to review movies that you might be interested in taking your kids to
00:00:26.760 from a conservative mom's perspective. I want to share whether or not this is going to be a good
00:00:32.440 idea for you to share with your kids, whether it has woke nonsense or whether it's even a good
00:00:37.240 movie. Let me know in the comments, do you only want to see movies that are new, that are coming
00:00:42.080 out? Or should I go back and review some old children's movies, some old movies that maybe
00:00:46.580 you're interested in watching with your kids? I'd love to hear your opinions and thoughts in the
00:00:50.860 comments. But let's talk about why we're really here, which is the Barbie movie. I went to see
00:00:56.980 Barbie last night by myself because I could not bear to put anyone else through it. I knew going in
00:01:05.760 that this was not going to be my cup of tea, but I did this for you. So in today's review,
00:01:11.880 I'm going to break this down into three parts. One, is it watchable? Two, the wokeness meter. And three,
00:01:21.060 should you take your children to see it? So let's quickly break down the plot. We open in Barbie
00:01:27.600 land. It's a feminist utopia. All of the women are in charge and all of the men are second-class
00:01:33.700 citizens. All of a sudden, our main character, stereotypical Barbie, that is literally her name,
00:01:39.600 stereotypical Barbie, starts to have an existential crisis. Thinking about death, waking up with bad
00:01:45.020 breath, burning her waffle, having flat feet, and getting cellulite. And of course, this is a
00:01:50.560 malfunction in Barbie land. So she has to go figure out what is causing it. Well, it turns out that the
00:01:56.880 little girl who is playing with her is causing her to have this crisis. And so she has to go to the
00:02:03.360 real world to find the girl, make her happy again, so she can be happy again and normal. And you might
00:02:09.440 think this is going to be similar to Enchanted, where the princess in the cartoon goes to the real
00:02:14.200 world and discovers that there's so much more to life than just being in a cartoon, and ends up
00:02:19.000 learning some lessons about what real life is about. But no, that's not what the main part of
00:02:23.560 this movie is about, although it does try to pretend that that's the point. Really what happens is
00:02:29.240 Barbie and Ken go to the real world, and Ken discovers patriarchy. Literally, it's called patriarchy.
00:02:36.380 He brings it back to Barbie land, takes over. Barbie and her girls have to win back Barbie land
00:02:43.300 for feminists. And at the end, for some reason, Barbie decides to go back to the real world because
00:02:49.960 she wants to be a real girl. Now, the question, is it watchable? I wanted this to be watchable. So what
00:02:56.720 I'll say is, there are plenty of movies out there that are woke or that have a totally different
00:03:02.080 political viewpoint than I have. And I still enjoy watching them. They're funny, they're interesting,
00:03:07.140 they're girly, whatever it is, I still enjoy watching it. And honestly, I was curious to see
00:03:13.660 if this was going to be that kind of a movie. A movie I didn't agree with, I couldn't, you know,
00:03:18.080 back or stand behind, but could enjoy watching. It was not. It simply was not. And there's a few
00:03:24.980 different reasons for why this was not watchable. The plot, the characters, and honestly, the design.
00:03:32.400 The design in the movie was beautiful. Of course, everyone couldn't stop talking about how it was a
00:03:36.880 giant set, a giant version of what we've all played with as little kids, as little girls.
00:03:41.940 But the truth is, that as a concept gets really boring after like the first scene. Because we're
00:03:48.860 just seeing the same sets over and over. And it really feels more like a Broadway show than it does
00:03:55.020 a movie, which I have no issue with Broadway shows. I have no issue with musicals. But the thing about
00:04:00.060 this movie, the thing that made it stand out, the reason that it would have been fun would be the
00:04:04.980 visual aspect. And it gets stale after you've seen it once or twice. Because okay, cool. It's a Barbie
00:04:12.420 dream house. We get it. Now that's all it is. And I'm ready to move on. So even though the sets were
00:04:18.580 cool, even though the costumes were fun, it really didn't go beyond that. Now talking about the plot,
00:04:25.920 the issue with the plot is that it was so scattered. They were trying to make so many different
00:04:30.900 points because this is a feminist diatribe that nothing was stayed on long enough to actually
00:04:37.460 have full impact. There's a mother and daughter in the film. The mother is the woman who was playing
00:04:42.500 with stereotypical Barbie, the reason that she has this existential crisis. The mother and daughter
00:04:47.520 are not doing well. They're not connecting anymore. And there's no apotheosis for that relationship that
00:04:55.420 makes sense. It just kind of happens too quickly because it's one of a million points that the
00:05:00.660 director, Greta Gerwig, is trying to get across, is trying to make. And it's just, it makes nothing
00:05:06.940 potent. Everything is fleeting. Everything feels empty. Nothing actually gets through to your emotions.
00:05:13.980 Now I will say, you can see something where a character cries on screen. It can be two minutes
00:05:18.760 long. And if it has the right music, it'll make you cry. So you'll think, ah, I had an emotional
00:05:23.220 response. But if you actually sit there and take it in and watch it for what it is, you'll realize that
00:05:30.400 there's no there there. As well, there are two parallel storylines that absolutely do not cohere.
00:05:35.960 The storyline with Ken, the patriarchy, and the real world does not cohere with the fact that Barbie
00:05:42.960 decides she wants to become a real girl, a real woman. Because in the story, the real world is
00:05:48.420 portrayed as this horrible patriarchy where women are treated horribly by literally everyone. When the
00:05:54.880 Barbies reclaim Barbie land from the patriarchy, from Ken, it's back to being a utopia. The men are
00:06:01.600 still kept down as second class citizens because apparently that imitates what women are like
00:06:06.060 going through in the real world. And the women get to be in charge. Like that's their thing. Barbie
00:06:12.280 fought for this amazing utopia. Now she wants to be a real woman in the real world when she's been
00:06:18.120 there and knows that it's not good. The director and writer want to have their cake and eat it too.
00:06:23.260 That humanity, being a person, being alive, all of the struggles of that are so important and so
00:06:29.840 beautiful and more than being a doll. But at the same time, the real world is disgusting. Nothing
00:06:35.660 in here is good. You as a woman will always be a second class citizen. You will always be a victim.
00:06:40.480 That does not work together. You cannot have both storylines where feminism, utopia, women getting
00:06:47.120 everything they want is amazing, is right up against Barbie not wanting that and actually wanting to
00:06:53.240 be a real girl. Which is just an added on ending to give the people what they want. Last but not least,
00:06:59.520 let's talk about the performances. People are going to say up and down the wazoo that Ryan Gosling was
00:07:04.720 amazing, that Margot Robbie was amazing. Everyone was fine. Like it didn't stand out. The story was not
00:07:11.200 good enough for the actors to do well in it, to prove themselves. The plot just didn't give them
00:07:17.860 enough to work with. Ryan Gosling is always funny and they gave him horrible lines and it was so
00:07:24.240 stereotypically silly. And I get that that's kind of the point, but it was so stereotypically silly
00:07:28.940 that it wasn't funny. Margot Robbie, fine, but her character was so poorly developed that it didn't
00:07:36.900 make sense the character changes she was making. Again, going back to how the plot was so scattered
00:07:42.460 and every point was too short to actually be made. So, is this movie watchable? No. I don't think it's
00:07:49.520 fun. Like you want to think it's fun? Watch the preview. You want to watch a clip of it? Sure. But
00:07:55.100 sitting through two hours of this movie? No thank you. Part two, the wokeness meter. On a scale of one
00:08:03.100 to ten. How woke is this movie? I am going to give this movie a ten. Any movie that talks about the
00:08:10.960 patriarchy this much, that portrays women as being second-class citizens in the real world this much,
00:08:18.360 that literally has a monologue about how women can never get anything right, it must be a ten.
00:08:23.900 I've got to talk about something I think is so important about the point that Greta Gerwig is
00:08:29.420 trying to make in this film that I think really falls flat that I don't think a lot of people are
00:08:34.900 talking about. So, the comparison between the two worlds is the real world is patriarchal,
00:08:39.960 women are oppressed, and in Barbie Land, women get to do everything and men have literally nothing to
00:08:46.240 do. Here's the problem. Barbie Land has no children in it. They don't have babies. Men and women in this
00:08:54.460 scenario are actually sort of interchangeable. So, men and women really don't have differing
00:09:00.040 responsibilities in that world. The idea that in the best possible version of the world, women
00:09:06.300 wouldn't have anything holding them back from holding all of these positions and men would do
00:09:12.080 nothing doesn't make sense because in the real world, women who are not in the workplace find their
00:09:20.380 fulfillment at home, find their fulfillment with raising children, and choose not to be in the
00:09:25.280 workplace and choose not to go to the highest level of their careers. Where in Barbie Land, the men have
00:09:30.100 nothing to do, that is not parallel to women who are not in the workplace because they have children
00:09:36.320 they want to take care of. Do you see how those don't compare to each other? It's not that the men are
00:09:41.260 at home with the kids. It's that the men have nothing to do. And I will also say that the dream
00:09:46.620 for a lot of people is to not have anything to do and have their whole lives provided for.
00:09:52.420 That they don't have to have work to find meaning. That work itself does not equal meaning. In the
00:09:58.480 real world, men and women have different roles because men and women are different. In Barbie Land,
00:10:04.580 men and women are the same, which is why they have a trans woman playing a Barbie. The movie literally
00:10:09.000 starts with an attack on motherhood. There's a quote, baby dolls and motherhood is only fun for a while.
00:10:14.640 Ask your mother. Yeah, ask your mother how much she hated being your mom. Then the rest of the movie
00:10:20.000 tries to walk that back as if that wasn't the initial point they made and is trying to throw a
00:10:25.820 bone to conservatives and traditional women who want to believe that the left embraces motherhood
00:10:34.240 when in truth, they don't. They don't embrace motherhood. They embrace women's choices as long as
00:10:40.920 they don't interfere with their goals in feminism and their goals to hate men. So if you want to be
00:10:47.540 a mom, that's fine. But if you want to be a mom, that also probably means that you're brainwashed by
00:10:51.900 the patriarchy and you don't want more than that. If you want to like men and enjoy men, it's also
00:10:56.740 because you've been brainwashed. And the truth is you're really doing so many things just to get
00:11:01.760 men to pay attention to you. Motherhood is absolutely despised by the people who make this movie
00:11:06.980 and they try to hide behind that by just randomly throwing in little comments like,
00:11:12.780 we should have an ordinary Barbie who's just a mom or maybe she's not a mom. As I said in my
00:11:17.240 previous video, motherhood is not an equal choice to not motherhood. So this movie obviously believes
00:11:24.620 that. I mean, more than believes that, probably believes that not having children is even more
00:11:28.920 fulfilling for women. So that's an issue. And I want to address one more thing as far as the
00:11:34.200 wokeness meter, which is what is femininity? This movie appealed before anyone knew what it was
00:11:40.100 about. It appealed to so many conservatives who were so excited to see a vision of femininity on
00:11:46.640 screen. The pink dresses, the beauty, embracing those things. But the fact of the matter is this is
00:11:54.160 the emptiest, shallowest version of femininity, right? Femininity that could literally be appropriated
00:12:00.460 by men, if they so choose, by wearing dresses and putting on makeup. I am not saying that there is
00:12:06.720 not beauty to the outward appearance of femininity. It is so fun. I love it. It's something I embrace
00:12:14.280 and I enjoy. But real femininity is about taking care of others, being the kind of woman people can
00:12:20.340 depend on, being strong, and building up the next generation of civilization. So femininity is a lot
00:12:27.660 more than just pink dresses and pretty blowouts. I don't like that this movie has so enraptured
00:12:36.800 women who want to embrace femininity as a costume and have no interest in actually taking on the
00:12:43.660 feminine roles that make women so special and different from men. And I'll finish off the wokeness
00:12:49.840 meter segment by reading two more quotes from this movie. It is literally impossible to be a woman.
00:12:54.860 That is the opening line in a monologue by America Ferreira where she says, we have to be this,
00:13:00.440 but we can't be that. We have to be this. You've heard this monologue about a million times on the
00:13:04.420 internet at this point. You have to be thin, but not too thin. You have to have a big butt,
00:13:08.000 but not too big of a butt. Nobody cares. If you prioritize faith, family, and community,
00:13:14.640 the people you spend your time with are not going to put you in these boxes that you are saying are
00:13:19.160 necessary parts of womanhood. It's just not true. As a woman who lives amongst an amazing religious
00:13:25.640 community with an amazing husband who's having sons, I can't get behind this idea that women are
00:13:32.560 just always losing. We're not. Stop putting yourself in stupid situations. Stop taking on things that
00:13:40.040 nobody is actually putting on you. Stop prioritizing vanity over just genuine beauty. If you are beautiful
00:13:46.860 to your husband, you are beautiful. Done. Solved. And here's the other quote. We mothers stand still
00:13:52.880 so our daughters can look back and see how far they've come. They thought that line was so meaningful
00:13:59.540 when they wrote it. And I want to throw it in the trash can. Yeah. Being a mom is just so bad
00:14:06.920 that we have to hold ourselves back so that you can not be a mother, hopefully, so you can actually
00:14:14.260 fulfill your full potential, right? That phrase I hate, fulfilling your potential, whatever that
00:14:19.420 means. Being a mother is not living a life half-lived. And if you teach your daughter that, you are doing
00:14:25.380 her a huge disservice. Which brings us to part number three. Should you take your children to see this?
00:14:31.700 I would actually legitimately ask that you don't. I think this is different than taking your child to
00:14:39.400 see something that's just like not super fun. Or maybe has some under the radar woke stuff. This is
00:14:45.940 the kind of movie that would demoralize any young woman who doesn't know enough to understand that
00:14:51.880 this is trying to brainwash them. If young girls think that they are victims of a society that is run
00:14:57.760 by men, and that there's nothing they can do to win, they will ultimately be unhappy. And this whole
00:15:03.560 movie, it's about everything that you could do to be unhappy as a woman. And it champions those
00:15:09.800 things, right? That was the point. The movie is very glittery and shiny, and so could really make a
00:15:16.020 little girl want to watch it again without realizing the lesson and the moral. And the moral of the story
00:15:22.260 is not moral. It's the opposite. It also is inappropriate. This movie is too old for little
00:15:28.280 girls. Like there are things in it that there are jokes, there are lines that are just inappropriate
00:15:33.080 for children, and they should not see that. So on top of, you know, the woke stuff, this movie is also
00:15:38.780 just too old for little kids. So I would not bring them. But I would say this is not a good movie for
00:15:43.580 your kids. It's not a good movie for you. And I would not recommend going to see it. I want to finish
00:15:49.040 off today's video by making one point. The whole premise of the movie is that Ken is only Ken in relation
00:15:55.380 to Barbie. Barbie is the toy that people play with, and Ken is just ancillary. I really think
00:16:00.380 that the way you played with Barbies is based on how you grew up. So for me, I grew up playing with
00:16:07.960 Barbie and Ken consistently. I would get Barbie dressed, but then Ken and Barbie were a couple,
00:16:14.580 and so I would constantly play with the two of them, and then they might start a family. I usually
00:16:18.300 bought the baby dolls as well, by the way. So what's funny about the idea that Barbie gave women agency,
00:16:24.300 because that's the concept at the beginning of the film, is that for someone like me,
00:16:29.220 I basically played motherhood with my Barbie, but the Barbie stood in for me, and then her baby
00:16:35.660 stood in for my baby, as opposed to having a baby doll of my own, which is kind of funny,
00:16:40.780 if you think about it. So I just want to finish with that, because I didn't relate to the concept
00:16:46.220 that Ken was just random and didn't have a relationship with Barbie. Barbie and Ken were
00:16:51.160 married when I played with them as kids. I'd like to hear your thoughts on that. How did you play
00:16:55.140 with Barbie when you were little? Did you play with Barbie and Ken, or was it just Barbie?
00:16:58.940 So that is my Barbie movie review. Thank you so much for watching, and let me know in the comments
00:17:03.720 what you'd like me to review next. See you next time. Bye!
00:17:06.780 Bye!