Greta Gerwig is everything. He's just Christopher Nolan.
Some thoughts about how entertainment writers are framing Barbie and Oppenheimer
I didn’t grow up in a particularly girly house, considering that I had two other sisters and no brothers. We lived in the country and our grandfather was a miner-turned-contractor, so we spent our summers outside playing around the giant backhoe, exploring the vast woods behind our house, searching for ripe blackberries, avoiding yellowjacket nests (or sometimes not avoiding them), riding our bikes everywhere, and playing in the giant pipe in the creek that I’m pretty sure had raw sewage flowing through it.
But despite that, my sisters and I spent plenty of time inside playing with our Barbies in their Dreamhouse. My grandmother sewed clothes for our Barbies, so sometimes I forget what Barbies we actually had, because we had so many different clothes for them. The one that remains in my mind the most is Magic Curl Barbie. She had a perm, but you were supposed to be able to relax it with some kind of solution. I tried to dry it with our hair dryer and she then became Melted Hair Barbie.
All that to say, I high-key love Barbie and I have been excited for the new movie since we first heard about it last year. The fact that the movie was written by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach and directed by Gerwig has me in an absolute tizzy and extremely excited about the possibilities.
The marketing for the movie has been brilliant. From the teaser trailer with a giant Margot Robbie in an OG Barbie swimsuit and little girls throwing their baby dolls away in some Kubrick-inspired frenzy, to the latest song (!!!) featuring Ryan Gosling as Ken singing about how “he’s Ken and he’s enough and great at doing stuff,” every single bit of media has been pitch perfect.
And it’s not just women like me who are excited. The inclusion of trans icon Hari Nef as a Barbie, having Ken’s friend Allan as a character, and pink so over the top that it caused a worldwide shortage of that color paint means that there is a significant amount of excitement from many in the LGBTQ community as well. It is definitely one of the most anticipated movies of the summer, with opening weekend projections nearing $100 million.
In addition to all of the hype around Barbie, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is also releasing the same weekend. Two big blockbusters by two beloved directors on the same weekend with tones that could not be more divergent have made for a fun meme culture this summer. I have thoroughly enjoyed every Barbenheimer meme I have come across. My favorite is definitely this TikTok mashup of the two trailers.
The casts and directors seem to be in on the fun. There have been photos of Gerwig and Robbie at a screening for Oppenheimer and Cillian Murphy has encouraged people to see both films. The theater industry has been struggling since Covid shut everything down and many of the expected blockbusters this summer have flopped spectacularly, the potential for a huge box office weekend has lots of people energized.
But despite the fact that both of these movies are helmed by Oscar-nominated directors, in lots of discussions about Barbenheimer, only one gets mentioned. And surprise, surprise, it’s not the girl director.
I first noticed it when I read a piece a couple weeks ago in Deadline talking about the expected box office takes for the two films. It’s not long, but in it, Christopher Nolan’s name is mentioned three times, and Greta Gerwig is never mentioned at all. Barbie belongs to the studio, but Oppenheimer belongs to the director.
They’re not the only ones to do it. This piece in SyFy about which film to watch first only ever mentions Nolan. This piece from the Hollywood Reporter does mention Gerwig at the top, but Nolan’s name shows up three times in the piece to her one.This piece from ScreenRant that is almost entirely about Barbie still only uses Nolan’s name in the title and the subtitle.
I would be going to see Barbie no matter what, but the reason that I am excited to see Barbie is because Greta Gerwig is attached to it. Her version of Little Women was absolutely revelatory and Lady Bird amassed all of the critical acclaim. Calling one film the director’s and the other film the studio’s when both have directors of note behind them is hard to see as anything but sexist.
Yesterday, I saw this post when fellow critic and writer Your Friendly Neighborhood Blerd included it in their stories. They were talking about how it is silly to shame people about their interests when most people are able to carry more than one thing in their brain at a time.
What I noticed was that we could include literally any movie as “the problem,” but the tweeter specifically mentioned the movie that has captured the excitement of women and queer folks. Rather than expressing frustration about spending money and energy on films instead of the climate crisis, it sets its sights on a very specific movie and therefore a very specific audience.
And that brings me to my main point which is that Barbie is exposing a lot of unconscious sexism and homophobia.
I do not think that these men are out there intentionally trying to prop up the patriarchy. I don’t think they have a “no girls allowed” sign on the door of their writer’s room. I don’t think they are all beating up queer folks on the weekend. But I do think that the idea that a movie that isn’t specifically marketed toward men will likely blow the doors off of the “boy” movie has some men in their feelings a little bit.
Yes, Barbie is a major IP and that is no doubt a draw for plenty of people. And Nolan, having directed a successful Batman trilogy, is absolutely a draw. I am more excited to see a Nolan directed biopic than one by just any director.
Women are wildly underrepresented behind the camera, as directors, cinematographers, editors, writers, and composers and it hasn’t improved in a quarter of a century. So it is incredibly frustrating to see a major film being directed by a major female director still being called the studio’s film by significant players in the entertainment industry and then seeing the people excited to see that movie called stupid by well-meaning activists.
Unconscious bias is something that we all likely deal with now and again. As a white woman, I know that my relationship with an IP like Little Women is different from a black woman’s. I know that as a cis woman, my relationship to Barbie is different from that of a trans woman. Those kinds of things exist and try as I might to recognize them, sometimes I just won’t.
But there are things we can do. Choose movies directed by women, and especially movies directed by women of color. Choose to read or watch reviews from women (women are only about 18% of film critics, so consider financially supporting this one). Email editors when you see media companies name male directors by name while ignoring their female counterparts.
We can’t change everything, but we can change our behaviors and what we are consuming.
And next weekend, we can all go enjoy Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.
I can’t wait for the Barbie movie! So excited!