Happy Barbenheimer to those of us who celebrate.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve been looking forward to this week for ages. Two excellent, innovative directors with two very different, exceptionally bold films out on one day! I don’t go to the movies very often, as the atmosphere tends to not be my favourite (couch movies > cinema movies, don’t @ me. Introverts and neurospicies know). But whenever Christopher Nolan releases something, I’m there. And BARBIE? Please. Obviously went to opening night.
I'm a huge movie nerd. I have been my whole life. For a kind of solitary kid who both loved escapism and was also trying desperately to find some kind of a template for "How to Act in the Real World" when everything seemed confusing and strange, movies were a bit of a guidepost for me. I only realised much later that they were not an extraordinarily helpful one. I also learned that many autistic people undergo the same experience as young people, adopting entire chunks of movies lines and aspects of characters as personality traits in a world they're often puzzled by navigating.
I've largely shed whatever parasocial relationship I used to have with films, and now just appreciate the art, the writing, the stories. I especially love filmmakers who aren't afraid to make unusual, bold, splashy films – and Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan both certainly fit that bill.
I went to the Barbie premier last night, and will see Oppenheimer tonight. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I thought this week I’d take a look at one of my other favourite Greta Gerwig films, plus do a bit of a dig through the lore of the extremely gay Magic Earring Ken, because frankly, his ridiculous story deserves to be told.
I will briefly go into what I loved about Barbie as well, but I promise not to spoil anything. And I included the Barbie playlist because we all need a little pink and peppy in our lives on occasion.
But first:
Greta Gerwig’s Little Women – Meta Feminism Done Right
Okay so first, let me say that Little Women is probably my favourite book of all time. Note that I do not entertain some fantasy that it's high literature or whatever. I don’t care. It's a comfort book. I have read it at least ten or twelve times. I will never NOT love it. And as far as film adaptations go, in my humble opinion, nothing will ever beat the 1994 film with Winona Ryder as Jo, Claire Danes as Beth, Kirsten Dunst as Amy and Susan Sarandon as Marmee. Plus baby Christian Bale as Laurie. It's the best actual adaptation of the book I've ever seen and also my all-time favourite comfort movie. I adore it.
However, I absolutely loved what Greta Gerwig did with Little Women. It was unexpected and exceptionally well done. And even though it wasn’t the most faithful adaptation, it absolutely nailed the spirit of the book, perhaps more than any other.
Little Women, as a book, could be read as fairly conservative, which is, I suppose why so many conservative women love it (more on the irony of this later). All the sisters (save Beth) eventually get married and "settle down." Even wild, boyish, full-of-dreams Jo meets her match and softens. The March family is wholesome and modest, drinking only medicinally, embracing the values of charity, virtue and prudence in lieu of money, status and material concerns. Christian family values through and through. Like actual Christians. Not MAGA psychopaths.
But scratch the surface and there are hints of subversion. Marmee is what might be colloquially referred to as a "social justice warrior" nowadays, and all of the sisters display an agency unusual for the age. Meg marries for love, Amy ostensibly for money – but both choose for themselves. Jo succeeds in making some kind of a living from her pen. The family are vocally anti-slavery in Civil War-era America and espouse fairly avant-garde alignment with German transcendental philosophy. They express what was a radical idea at the time: that women have rich interior lives, capability to exist and thrive in the world alongside men (personally and professionally), and that they deserve the agency to choose the path their lives will take for themselves. It's a feminist novel, in my eyes, through and through. It’s about women, their dreams and their lives.
It's this undercurrent of feminist subversion that Greta Gerwig's Little Women latches onto and places in the spotlight. In her adaptation, the March sisters are fully aware of the limitations society places upon them and how unjust they are. For example, Amy is given a frank monologue (that isn't in the book) about the reality of marriage, for women, at that time, being an economic decision over which they often had little control and yet, were always be judged for.
And the end... Well. It’s a delicious twist on what the book actually offers as a resolution for Jo and I think Louisa May Alcott (who was far from conservative and who was actually almost certainly what would be recognised today as a trans person) would definitely agree.
Publishers won’t let authors finish up as they like but insist on having people married off in a wholesale manner which much afflicts me. I won’t marry Jo to Laurie to please anyone. – Louisa May Alcott
PS – If you want me to get further in depth with Louisa May Alcott's incredible life and queerness, let me know in the comments! It's a topic I love and would love to share with the other people.
Very sweet and pretty; but I would rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe. Liberty is a better husband than love. – Louisa May Alcott
A Brief Word on Barbie
I won’t spoil anything. But what I will say is going to Barbie on opening night was a joyous experience. As I walked towards the cinema, there was a sea of pink that instantly set me smiling. Shes, hes and thems were everywhere in groups of friends, dressed to the nines and having a blast. As you walked into the cinema, an unknown voice on a microphone boomed, “HI BARBIE!”
The film was gorgeous to look at, so funny and clever and full of pitch-perfect love notes to Millennial women in particular that I wanted to burst: Weird Barbie, constantly in the splits for some reason we don’t understand, but all recognise. Emotional car singing to the Indigo Girls’ “The Closer I Am to Fine.” The crushing weight every young girl feels when they realise the real world will never be as fair, romantic and beautiful as their childhood dreams. The inescapable allure of Birkenstocks. It’s all here. It’s all brilliant. Go see it.
It is also, by far, the best thing Ryan Gosling has ever done. And that is very much including this:
The Legend of Earring Magic Ken, Barbie’s Super-Gay Boyfriend
I was delighted to see a brief cameo from Earring Magic Ken in the Barbie movie. The story of how this super-gay doll got made and distributed is one of my favourite branding stories of all time. And if you haven’t heard it? Gather round children, for the story of accidentally gay Ken must be told.
Earring Magic Ken was born out of a focus group consisting of mostly five-year old girls. Ken dolls had never sold well, and Mattel was determined to find out what five-year-olds thought was cool and what would make them nag their parents to buy a Ken doll alongside their favourite Barbie.
So, what did “cool guys” look like to five-year-olds? Cool guys wore mesh shirts. And tight pants. And a leather jacket. And jewellery. In other words, it seems to five-year-olds, the gays and their general 90s aesthetic were just super neat.
Mattel execs took this focus group to heart. The result was Earring Magic Ken, complete with a lavender mesh shirt and matching leather vest, tight pants and an earring – which, as you know, in the early 90s, almost no straight man in America was sporting.
But it was Earring Magic Ken’s big chrome necklace that made him the gay icon he is. It not only highlighted the dangers of letting five-year-olds dictate your fashion choices, but also the mind-boggling naiveté of Mattel execs – you’re telling me they had not one gay among them who could point out what Earring Magic Ken’s necklace really was? Really?
As Dan Savage pointed out in his still fucking hilarious column about the toy… it’s a cock ring, guys. Magic Earring Ken was wearing a cock ring around his neck.
As Savage explains, it was common, at this time, for gay, queer and gay adjacent people in the community to wear these necklaces… you’ll see them in music videos and awards-show appearances on members of Right Said Fred, on Madonna’s backup dancers, on Prince. And in the real world? On a lot of members of the leather and LGBTQIA+ community in clubs around North America and beyond. And now? On Ken.
It created a frenzy. Queers rushed out to buy the doll they renamed “Cock Ring Magic Ken.” He quickly became a collectors item. Mattel, horrified, pulled the doll from shelves with an apology for accidentally marketing sex toys to five-year-olds. You can still find the odd Earring Magic Ken on eBay for a couple hundred bucks. A decent price to pay, in my humble opinion, to own a piece of queer history.
This Week’s Playlist
Obviously it’s Barbie, guys.
Further Reads/Listens of the Week
“Ken Comes Out” by Dan Savage – Savage’s original op-ed pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes… But he does have a cock ring.
Country Music’s Culture Wars and the Remaking of Nashville by Emily Nussbaum for The New Yorker. As a fan of Americana music (I literally just learned that that is what you apparently call progressive, non-commercial country), this was an eye-opening and super interesting read.
My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff – A really cute memoir about a year working in the literary office that represents JD Salinger.
A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold – This is a heavy one. Sue Klebold is the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the Columbine shooters. This memoir is harrowing, heartbreaking and illuminating, shedding light on a situation very few of us could possibly imagine. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it’s been a really enlightening and gripping read.
“Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P Feynman. In preparation for Oppenheimer, reading this memoir from one of physics’ greatest minds and most inimitable characters. One of the earliest recruits for the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, Robert J. Oppenheimer said of the then-24-year-old Feynman: “By all odds the most brilliant young physicist here, and everyone knows this.”
That’s all from me this week! Thank you so much for reading.
I wanna know about Louisa May Alcott's incredible life and queerness please!
Now I will see Barbie! Even if pink makes me hork