The Age of Barbieheimer

Okay, with all the chaos going on in the political world, are we the United States ready as a nation to handle a cultural moment like having two movies not compete but complement and co-exist with each other?

Because we're at that moment July 21 2023 where the Hollywood tradition of "counterprogramming" - where a movie release of obvious blockbuster proportions makes it difficult to release other films, except  giving a smaller sometimes more artistic movie a chance to attract audiences that are not attuned to that blockbuster - offered us the movie Barbie - a comedic, lighthearted, brightly colored goofball type of movie based on "Intellectual Property" (IP) bringing in an established and fervent fanbase designed solely to entertain and make $500 million at the box office - versus Oppenheimer - a dramatic, darkly lit serious biographical epic focusing on the man most responsible for the atomic bomb and the world-shattering implications of such a weapon, and designed to be Oscar Awards bait - to be the highlights of a movie summer season.

Except something weird happened. The movie-going fanbases got into the "counterprogramming" effort - we are now as a species in a kind of post-modern awareness of tropes - and started complementing each other's films to where a contingent of filmgoers openly planned to watch both films as a double-header.

The event got its own Wikipedia page: Barbieheimer. The meme of the year.

Via Rebecca Rubin at Variety:

At a glance, the audience overlap isn’t clear. “Oppenheimer,” starring Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. and Emily Blunt, is a somber character study about the theoretical physicist who led the development of the atomic bomb. “Barbie,” featuring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, is a neon-hued fantasy comedy about Barbie-Land expats who go on a quest for self-discovery in the real world. Visually, “Oppenheimer” is moody and intense, while “Barbie” is a physical manifestation of the color pink. Yet the contrast is the very thing that’s galvanizing film lovers.

“This could have been something dividing the masses, but instead it’s bringing everyone together,” says Nicole Boisseau, a 21-year-old Richmond, Va. student. Her dad, Jay Boisseau, who also has tickets to both films at Alamo Drafthouse on opening weekend, says that jokes aside, the mismatched scheduling works out for viewers. “Since they are so different, it’s not like you’re going to spend six hours watching the same thing,” he notes.

And as Rubin points out, as the fandoms got more into the idea of the double-feature, the situation got weirder as people noticed that the two films are going to be stunningly similar in archetypal ways:

But his daughter believes the movies have more in common than meets the eye. “They’re both questioning the nature of humanity.” (She’s serious. During one hilarious scene in the “Barbie” trailer, Margot Robbie’s life-size doll turns to her friends at a dance party to ask: “Do you guys ever think about dying?”)

That wham line from the trailer did indeed spark a new wave of discussions among the Barbie faithful, as more clues from other trailers and teasers pointed to that film sending their character on a Hero's Journey to find out what is wrong with herself (more specifically, what is wrong with the young girl that Barbie represents). The "something weird" got weirder... and more profound.

The audiences began realizing that instead of a cheap, fun, almost perfunctory piece of entertainment - like the animated Super Mario Bros movie released earlier this year that performed to box office expectations - they were getting a Barbie movie from a film auteur willing to explore the deeper ramifications of the doll's cultural impact since its introduction in 1959, alongside a bioepic film about the inventor of nuclear Armageddon from an equally imposing film auteur who knows how to stir emotional awe and enlightenment out of the darkness itself:

Some cinephiles believe it’s because the two filmmakers inspire a particular kind of loyalty in their fans. Nolan, who has delivered commercial winners like “The Dark Knight,” “Inception” and “Interstellar,” and Gerwig, the indie favorite behind “Lady Bird” and “Little Women,” are the rare directors who can draw audiences on their name alone.

“It comes down to the filmmakers, who are widely respected. They complement each other in a weird way,” says Meredith Loftus, 30, of Los Angeles. She compared the scheduling to an unusual double-header in 2008 of Nolan’s superhero epic “The Dark Knight” and the kitschy musical “Mamma Mia!,” which opened on the same day...

I'd discussed Nolan's Dark Knight before, when honoring Tiny Lister's passing, and how Nolan took an IP themed "product" - Batman - and crafted a noir-ish operatic epic that not only won the box office but wowed the film critics. I'd written elsewhere how The Dark Knight deserved Oscar love and yet got snubbed in such a way that the outrage reshaped the awards to accept more films for Best Picture (and opened the door for action thriller-type movies like Mad Max Fury Road to achieve the honor of getting nominated).

We're now facing a similar moment with Greta Gerwig taking an IP themed Barbie and turning it into an Oscar contender. Seriously, more than just the (deserved) Set Design and Costuming nods the film's likely to get (just the fact alone that the production used up every pink paint and dye on the planet should get the awards).

We're talking about a movie where the early reports about the plot - confronting the themes of Stepford Wives-ish suburban conformity, the gender roles that Barbie (and Ken) impart to the girls and boys who play with them (and reflect back onto themselves), the struggle between matriarchy and patriarchy as the fantasy of Barbies who can do everything - doctor, lawyer, President, mermaid - crash into the harsh real world where men are mostly in control and Barbies are treated as sex objects, even the fact that Barbie is an "Intellectual Property" of Mattel that the company (represented by Will Ferrell's CEO) insists on "keeping in a box" ("biting the hand" humor indeed) - that clearly makes the film more philosophical and wistful than a simple Product Placement movie is expected to be.

Anchoring all that are performances that fans are already expecting to be excellent. Margot Robbie arguably was born to play Barbie her whole life - naturally blond, dancer's legs, the slim body that the Barbie doll is (in)famous for - but with an expressive face that can convey incredible gravitas (and she's been Oscar nominated before, so unless Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren and Natalie Portman and Jennifer Lawrence and Angela Bassett all come out with jaw-dropping lead actress roles this autumn, Robbie should get her due). Ryan Gosling - he of the Photoshopped washboard abs - is also getting critical acclaim for his role as Ken, the "boyfriend" that culturally has been reduced to just another accessory for Barbie but whose exposure to the real-world "Alpha Male" movement threatens the stability of the fantasy Barbieland back home (Gosling has also received Oscar nominations before, so as long as Leo DeCaprio and Jamie Foxx and Timothee Chalamet and Andrew Garfield and Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks don't come out with serious lead actor roles this autumn, Gosling should get his due).

In the face of all that, the expectations for Oppenheimer are lower in terms of box office but higher in terms of critical acclaim: There is already Oscar talk for actor Cillian Murphy, and Nolan is bound to get another shot at Best Director. Given the A-list talent - Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr, Emily Blunt, Kenneth Branagh, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek - on-board other acting nominations are likely, and a lot of technical award nominations as well.

There's not much spoilers to what the audiences will know about the plot: We all know what happened July 16th 1945 when the Trinity Bomb test took place and the Atomic Age was no longer a product of Science Fiction. We all know there were serious debates among the physicists, military leaders, and politicians about the ramifications of weaponizing the atom. And we all endured the decades of Duck And Cover, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Doomsday Clock, Mutually Assured Destruction, "Shall We Play A Game?", and the post-Cold War nightmare of rogue nations carrying suitcase bombs.

Like all the other epic biographical films of before - Lawrence of Arabia, Gandhi, Weird: The Weird Al Story - Oppenheimer tries to delve into the background and motivations of a real-world figure whose personal life is still not well-known or understood. The general awareness is of a scientist who pushed during the Second World War for the creation of nuclear weapons before Nazi Germany could unleash them first, only to realize the dangers he himself brought to the world and later tried to atone for the damage he'd caused.

The best we remember Oppenheimer is his famous quote about what he thought when he saw the first nuclear mushroom cloud: 

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'

From all this, director Nolan is clearly creating a serious, almost bleak film that is going to be more adult, more frank about the human condition than Barbie ever could be. And yet, Nolan has a visual style - a desire to make things as realistic as possible, and yet as stunning as possible - that will also clearly dazzle the eye and leave audiences gasping. Look to his earlier stand-alone works like Inception or Interstellar: While based on Science Fiction/Fantasy, the visuals and technology on display were grounded in realism to where audiences could believe such things were possible. One of the fun facts of Interstellar was how Nolan's push to computer-generate an actual black hole (singularity) led to scientists discovering - and proving - previously unknown traits that black holes exhibit in real life. 

The fact that Nolan is claiming his film contains no CGI - no computer animation to enhance images, implying he's somehow mocked-up a nuclear explosion using practical effects - is going to be a major draw for people wondering how he pulled that off.

And in this telling, Nolan is likely going to use the similar Hero's Journey framework - detailing Oppenheimer's path from a student of nuclear physics to Destroyer Of Worlds - that Barbie will follow, creating a compare-and-contrast of two major figures that affected the entire post-war world of the last-half of the 20th Century.

It's no wonder Barbieheimer (or Barbienheimer?) is a thing.

This will be a day long remembered by the geekdom:

The only remaining argument is "Which order to see both movies?" If you go see Barbie first, you want to get the frivolity and fun out of the way before dealing with the nuclear nightmares that Oppenheimer elicits, and coming to terms with death in a sober manner. If you see Oppenheimer first, it means you want to wrap up the day/evening with the floating party that is the Barbie life by seeing the movies and then dance the hidden pains away.

Go to it, America.

Today is the day.

Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Barbie Worlds...

Update 7/23/23: I survived Barbieheimer. I went to Barbie first at 11:15 AM and then Oppenheimer at 1:40 PM.

Wait, why was Barbie more expensive than Oppenheimer? Barbie was the first showing, isn't that usually a cheaper deal?!

Gorbachev, Accidental Breaker of Wheels

Daenerys: Lannister, Targaryen, Baratheon, Stark, Tyrell: they're all just spokes on a wheel. This one's on top, then that one's on top, and on and on it spins, crushing those on the ground.

Tyrion: It's a beautiful dream, stopping the wheel. You're not the first person who's ever dreamt it.

Daenerys: I'm not going to stop the wheel, I'm going to break the wheel.

-- Daenerys' famous "Break the Wheel" speech from Game of Thrones. Tyrion didn't realize she meant she was going to wipe out all the warring Houses completely.

We had just witnessed last December the anniversary of the Fall of the Soviet Union, a monumental historical moment at the beginning of the 1990s that had ended more than 80 years of political division that affected Europe and the world.

One of the architects of that historic moment, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, just passed away yesterday, and in such moments those of us who follow history and politics are going to need to pause and reflect on the impact a man like Gorbachev had on the great march of humanity.

There is some irony to consider when thinking of Gorbachev as one of those Great Men (and Women) of History, the individuals who rise to the challenges of a crisis and affect the world with tough decisions and glorious outcomes. Because what Gorbachev accomplished - an end to a Cold War that could well have ended in nuclear fire, the breaking up of East/West divisions in Europe to allow for a more unified continent to emerge under more peaceful, conciliatory conditions - were things Gorbachev didn't plan on doing.

Gorbachev didn't mean to end the Soviet Union. His importance to human history is totally by accident.

As I wrote in my take on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the USSR:

It would take a book - no, a library full of books - to go into how the Communist Utopian ideals of the 19th Century gave way to the revolutionary violence of Lenin's overthrow of Tsarist Russia, and the steps towards corruption - the rise of Party elites, the rise of Stalin to place all power into autocratic rule, the buildup of party bureaucracy that calcified Soviet society, the Greed of elites that always threatens every economic system we know, and everyday state-sanctioned brutality that dulled the Russian population into despair - that created by the 1980s a Soviet empire incapable of maintaining itself without serious reforms.

With respect to Gorbachev, it was that need for reform that led to his rise to high office in the first place. Problem was, the reforms that were needed most - honesty from leadership, cracking down on party corruption, curtailing the high costs of maintaining a war footing in a 40-year-long Cold War that included policing their own Eastern European "allies" (occupied territories, really) - were reforms that Gorbachev's own party couldn't abide.

During all of Gorbachev's early steps to fix a broken empire, the Soviet Union was hit hard by the reality of their own corruption causing for example the meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor, exposing not only their engineering failures but their political failures to respond effectively to crises. The empire itself came to an end when Gorbachev freed the Eastern European nations to decide their own policies to enact local reforms: Instead, nearly every nation from Poland to Bulgaria to Czechoslovakia to Hungary to East Germany broke off from Soviet influence as their Communist regimes collapsed with mass uprisings and protests overthrowing them...

Whatever ideology Gorbachev was trying to use to keep the Soviet Union itself intact wasn't sticking. The push for Glasnost - open transparency of the political bureaucracy - and Perestroika - economic reforms to shift away from Communism to a more Socialist model - met with pushback by lower rungs of the system that preferred the corrupt status quo...

Gorbachev was, to his credit, sincere in his calls for reform and willingness to liberalize in more humane ways. He was reluctant to apply force, refusing to fall back on the traditional power moves of Russian leaders to brutalize the population into submission. There were attempts to impose force here and there, but they gave way to acts of compromise. Gorbachev was genuinely trying to lead the Soviet Union... it was just that empire didn't want to go where he wanted it to go. The Soviets were so calcified by their corruption they chose Death By Incompetency when the inevitable coup attempt by old-liners that took place in August 1991 failed through sheer cluelessness by the plotters.

Anne Applebaum over at the Atlantic shared some of the same observations (paywalled):

The one time I saw Mikhail Gorbachev in public was on November 9, 2014. I can pin the day down because it was the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. We were in a very large, very crowded Berlin reception room, and he was sitting at a cocktail table, looking rather lost.

Gorbachev had been invited to this event as a trophy, a living, breathing souvenir of the 1980s. He was not expected to say much of interest. The fall of the Berlin Wall had happened by accident, after all; it was not something Gorbachev had ever planned. He had not set out to break up the Soviet Union, to end its tyranny, or to promote freedom. He presided over the end of a cruel and bloody empire, but without intending to do so. Almost nobody in history has ever had such a profound impact on his era, while at the same time understanding so little about it...

Real change had to wait until the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe of April 1986. News of the accident was initially hushed up, just as bad news was always hushed up in the USSR. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were allowed to march in the Kyiv May Day parade even as radioactivity spread silently across the city. But the scale of the disaster finally convinced Gorbachev that the real problem with his country was not alcohol, but its obsession with secrecy. His solution was glasnost—openness—which, like the anti-alcohol campaign, was originally meant to promote economic efficiency. Open conversation about the Soviet Union’s problems would, Gorbachev believed, strengthen communism. Managers and workers would talk about what was going wrong in their factories and workplaces, find solutions, fix the problem...

But once glasnost became official policy, once Soviet citizens could talk about whatever they wanted to talk about, then factory efficiency was not their first choice of topic. Nor did they want to rescue the sinking ship of socialism. Instead, there was an explosion of debate and discussion about the past, about the history of mass arrests and mass murders, about the Gulag and Soviet political prisons. Historical accounts, memoirs and diaries that had been hidden in desk drawers raced off the printing presses and became best-sellers. Newspapers printed stories of sleaze and mismanagement in the economy, politics, culture, and everything else. Calls for the creation of a different kind of society, a more democratic society, a more law-abiding society, began immediately. The economists whom Gorbachev had silenced started openly talking about the end of central planning. Poles, Czechs, East Germans, Ukrainians, Balts, Georgians, and others then inside the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union itself all began talking about the end of the empire too. Contrary to the retrospective Putinist historiography now prevalent in Russia, the glasnost era was a creative, exciting, hopeful time for millions of people, even millions of Russians.

Gorbachev seemed bewildered, and no wonder. Having lived much of his life at the top of the Soviet nomenklatura, he never understood the depth of cynicism in his own country or the depth of anger in the occupied Soviet satellite states, most of whose inhabitants rejected even the reformed communism of his youth: They didn’t want the Prague Spring; they wanted to join Western Europe. He never understood the depth of the rot inside Soviet bureaucracies or the amorality of the bureaucrats. In the end he wound up racing to catch up with history, rather than making it himself...

If we speak of Mikhail Gorbachev anymore, it was how he was both a victim of circumstance - put in charge of an empire caught in a death spiral no one could have stopped without mass violence - and a good man who ultimately refused to use violence to keep himself in power. He did see the need to cut back on the arms race between Soviet Russia and the United States, leading to the "trust but verify" disarmament treaties with Reagan and Bush in the late 1980s, which reduced the likelihood of Nuclear Armageddon and one of the truly great strides towards world peace we've seen in our lifetimes.

He himself was not remembered fondly in Russia after his fall from power and his retirement/exile from the international stage. If Gorbachev still had any fans or acceptance, it was in the European states - like Germany, who invited him to that 25th anniversary as gentle "um, thanks" gesture - who felt relief from the end of a nuclear stalemate that had their continent as a giant bullseye.

Most of what happened after he ended the Soviet Union and walked away isn't entirely his fault: The rise of an autocrat to dominate a still-corrupt Russian federation seemed like an eventuality even back in the 1990s. Historians and sociologists who were still paying attention were dropping warning signs of how the government wasn't fixing its corruption and that the population were receptive for another "strongman" to rise up. The difference in world-views between Russians and the rest of Western culture when it comes to democratic norms never improved, and even Gorbachev seemed unable to understand what "democracy" could really do.

Gorbachev didn't want to end the Soviet Union, but he was the one who had to end it. It may not have been the legacy he wanted to leave the world, but it was for the world a good legacy to leave behind.

Presidential Character: Week Twenty-Five, The Forgotten Man At The Turn Of the Century

We remember the assassinated Presidents.  We remember Lincoln as the Great Emancipator, the martyr, a peaceful man who had the misfortune of leading our nation through its darkest and bloodiest hour.  We remember Garfield, dying for a crazed man's obsession with spoils, becoming the cause for civil service reform fixing decades of prolonged corrupt practices.  We remember Kennedy, the supposed promise of Camelot, but that can be mourned for another week, another review.

Who mourns for William McKinley?

Through no fault of his own, McKinley is one of the forgotten Presidents, lumped in with the meager One-Termers of the 19th Century who mattered little (or made things worse).  The more dedicated historians will know him, will debate the effects of his administration, but history itself had passed the man by.  Mostly because the man who followed him into office was the most active, most unstoppable, most reform-minded, most BADASS President we've ever had.  But partly because McKinley died for no damn good reason.

The 19th Century was awash across Europe and the Western hemisphere with various political ideological movements, unleashed from the tumult of the French Revolution, the fall of various monarchies, and the merging of divided states into nations (Italy, Greece, Prussia/Germany).  You had the democrats, the monarchists, the republicans, the communists, and the anarchists.  Of these, the anarchists gave birth to a violent strain of protests: a minority among the anarchist movements who sought to overthrow/end organized governments by any means, usually the assassination of key political figures.  Or worse, public figures with no political power but whose murders would attract attention.

The man who assassinated McKinley didn't do so because of any action McKinley took.  The assassin wasn't protesting McKinley's China policy, or the violence of the Spanish-American War, or the spread of American imperialism.  The assassin wanted to shoot somebody to prove his "heroic" deed of anarchism.  All it really did was kill two men, the victim and the shooter.  And the American government did not collapse: anarchism did not prosper.  And I ain't naming the SOB because we really shouldn't name these assassins who were in for their egos.  I've already written more about what this SOB did instead of writing what McKinley did, and what Character McKinley had as President.

McKinley served as President at a key change in the nation's history: from global backwater of the thirteen colonies to a major player on the international stage.  Elected into office at a time of economic depression, he worked with Congress more often than not to pass legislation stabilizing the economy (it helped the gold standard cause at the time when gold was discovered in the Alaska Yukon, improving the U.S.'s holdings).

The biggest aspect of McKinley's administration was the Spanish-American War, ostensibly started over the nation's outrage - stirred up by the yellow journalism of the day (just think of Fox Not-News today, but with better writers) - over Spain's mistreatment of Cubans during that colony's then-ongoing uprising.  While the Monroe Doctrine said the United States wouldn't directly interfere with any European nation's then-control of existing American hemisphere colonies, it was hard for the nation to ignore what was going on 90 miles off-shore.  Claiming the U.S. had interests in Cuba to keep safe - mostly businesses and personal property - McKinley sent a representative naval ship - the Maine - as a symbol of U.S. concerns.

And then the Maine blew up.

Current technology makes the case that the explosion was internal, but at the time enough evidence pointed to a mine or external attack.  Claiming the Spanish forces in Cuba had attacked a U.S. vessel, proponents for war had their casus belli, and thus war was beginning.

The war turned into one of the biggest curb stomp battles of the ages.  Building on 20-plus years of upgrades to the U.S. Navy, McKinley benefited from two naval victories in Cuba and the Philippines over an outmatched outgunned Spanish force.  The ground war in Cuba was messier but U.S. forces allied with Cuban uprisers managed to drive Spanish forces into a siege at Santiago.

How McKinley managed the war effort helps describe his character: while arming for war he kept diplomatic channels working; the scope of the war effort stayed focused on Spain even as the nascent German government was sending their fleet in to disrupt things; when it became clear that American forces in Cuba were dying not from the war but from illness - yellow fever - McKinley had the majority of men returned to the states for medical treatment rather than keep them there as a show of force (the naval victories had made the need for ground forces unnecessary).

In terms of the war results, McKinley's legacy is controversial at the least.  While Cuban independence was assured, the U.S. still annexed Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines from Spain (on a side note, we also finished our takeover of Hawaii as well during his tenure).  It certainly put the United States on the global stage: it also marked the true beginning of American imperialism, creating a debate between Isolationists and Interventionists for the next 100 years (all the way up to today).  The handling of the Philippines itself - especially the start of another uprising that turned into a brutal suppression - was one of the biggest issues McKinley faced as he entered his second term of office, having handily won re-election due to an improved economy and victorious end to the war.  His final speech in Buffalo focused on tariffs and treaties, using their international prestige to improve the American economy through global trade.

If you bought into the legends of McKinley being a puppet of the machine politicians like Hanna, you'd think McKinley was a Passive-Positive.  He certainly leaned towards the temperament of being liked and socializing, and on some issues didn't so much lead the discussion but made his voice known.  However, a more thorough review of McKinley's administration shows someone who was hands-on, active in foreign policy resolutions and debates, active with Congress in passing legislation, open-eyed about the Cuban crisis and resulting conflict, willing to dismiss his friends and allies from office if they proved unfit or unable to the tasks at hand (on a side note, McKinley was one of the few Presidents on good terms with his Vice Presidents, especially the one serving his first term, Garrett Hobart.  Hobart was the one who helped manage the Cabinet and made sure the resignation of Secretary of War Algar went smoothly.  If Hobart hadn't died in office, he could have been the Veep for the Second Term... and what a huge twist in American history that would have been...).  These are the markings of an Active-Positive President: engaged, dealing, amicable to factions within (and without) his party but not beholden to one...

McKinley also set a legacy of party leadership for the early half of the 20th Century: every major player in the Republican Party well into the 1930s - including the guy who overshadows him - had ties to McKinley and was influenced in some degree by the tenor of his administration.  The impact of a Presidency is how it affects the administrations that follow: Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Polk, Lincoln... McKinley could have made this list.

Whether or not McKinley was a great President - he lucked out with the Yukon Gold Rush resolving the gold standard issue for another day, his empire building of taking the Philippines and Hawaii had serious repercussions for American foreign and domestic policy for most of the 20th Century, and had he lived his responses could have tainted his legacy - remains debatable, and won't be resolved here or any time soon.  But he deserves better recognition in the history books: it's just, well, the next guy really takes all the attention...

Next Up: the Anti-Jackson.  The Good Badass Our Nation Deserves.