Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
id583732982
A group truly assured of its own power not only permits protest, but also sets the parameters for acceptable opposition, politely humouring its dissenters safe in the knowledge that they, too, will inevitably be eclipsed by the machine
✏️ Not exactly of the same vein, but this is making me think about how gay pride and pride parades get overtaken by corporate forces wanting to cash in on the PR, not to mention police trying to have their own floats. Which flies in the face of the pride parades in the first place, which were meant to be protests against police violence targeted at queer people. Also thinking about how most of these parades are “controlled” by police placement of barriers and such, to separate the people from the parades, etc. Under the guise of “safety”, this is just another method of control and setting the parameters for acceptable opposition. 🔗 View Highlight
id583733837
The film uses self-awareness not only to drive the narrative – Stereotypical Barbie’s development of self-consciousness brings to mind humanity after the fall, as well as a child coming into adolescence – but also to glue together its contradictions, with the same self-awareness serving as a kind of pre-emptive defence for the project as a whole.
✏️ This is how the film is complicated.. it is self-aware of its contradictions, thereby trying to defend its existence. It’s feminist, but still corporate-owned and controlled. It protests patriarchy, but under the terms approved by corporations and patriarchy as a whole. 🔗 View Highlight
id583734591
the film feels more ambivalent about the thing, unsure of what exactly it wants to say about its corporate roots besides ‘they exist, we know.’
✏️ At the end of the day, there has to be a difference between pointing out injustice or hypocrisy and actually offering critiques and solutions to it. In art, pointing out the injustice generally saves the day and solves everything.. that’s hardly the case in the real world. #xref with what I was reading about the artist Noname (I think). 🔗 View Highlight
id583735389
Barbie performs a great trick: it takes in crowds aching for fantasy and switches the script, telling them that reality and their flawed, beautiful selves is all they have to love. (This is also an inversion of traditional literary narratives about women that position girlhood as a time full of adventure and promise and adulthood one of limitations and disappointments. In Barbie, the arrival of self-consciousness rings in a richer future, rather than forecloses it.)
✏️ Giving a pro argument towards the movie 🔗 View Highlight