This article is in the London Times, which I subscribe to and would like to trust to report the relevant facts, but I can't figure out what the "Muslim youths" did that shut down the Barbie screening. We're told there was an "incident" but not what it was and why it was enough to shut down what was to have been a free outdoor screening. The article quickly moves to the topic of "widespread anxiety" about Muslims "impos[ing] their traditions on French life."
The mayor is quoted saying "An incident at Noisy has been taken over by the far-right fringe to stigmatise a neighbourhood." If the "far-right" is spinning the incident, tell us what is the left-wing or moderate spin? Is not detailing what happened the best you can do? As for the mayor, he made a point of saying that "he had not mentioned the religion of the youths."
"Whether [Greta] Gerwig intended it or not, Gosling’s performance as Ken proved more memorable and entertaining than anything [Margot] Robbie could’ve produced with the material she had to work with. Compared to Barbie’s pretty standard character arc, Ken’s story made audiences ponder the complexities of the male experience in a world that penalizes their inherent maleness.... Compared to nominees Emma Stone, who portrayed Bella Baxter in 'Poor Things'... or Lily Gladstone as Mollie Burkhart in 'Killers of a Flower Moon'... Robbie’s heartfelt performance as Barbie proved not 'Kenough' for the Academy...."
I saw "Barbie" and blogged about it (here): "Last night, we actually watched 'Barbie,' which just started streaming on Max. 'Barbie' is one of those movies where I had one favorite line (and one favorite character)...." The line is in this Ken highlights reel:
"To be honest, when I found out the patriarchy wasn't about horses, I lost interest anyway."
The New York Post collects 93 looks from The Golden Globes — all displayed on one page.
My general impression is that women are hiding within great rolls and flows of fabric and armoring their breasts inside stiff structures.
My specific impression is that Karen Gillan (#28) is wearing the dress of the future. I don't know how that was made, but I'm thinking: A.I.
I actually started watching the Golden Globes. We signed up for a free trial of Fubo so we could watch the Packers game, and with old-time-y "live" TV again, we rediscovered the lost art of channel surfing and ended up on the GGs. It was the opening monologue, some comedian I didn't know, and he was terrible. He absolutely did not belong there, taking shots at the stars, as if he were Ricky Gervais. Who turned down this work before they got to him? He referred to Barbie's "boobies" and we, the home audience, saw Greta Gerwig giving him the stinkeye, like Who the hell are you? You're nobody and now you've ensured that you will never be anybody.
So I guess you don't need to learn the poor guy's name, but, for reference, it's Jo Koy. Here's the whole disaster:
Anyway, we had to turn it off, but I'll just say I'm glad Kieran Culkin won. And glad the Packers won.
"The insane include the people who stormed the capitol. He calls them nuts, before adding: 'but fun.' Then he grew more animated describing the insufferable by their 'NPR tote-bag energy' and 'hall monitor' tendencies.... Minhaj... repositions him[self] less as a righteous political comic than a more self-questioning, personal comic, a move he had already begun to make; this scandal may have accelerated the shift...."
Zinoman likes that Minaj isn't "playing the victim," like "seemingly everyone" these days, including Elon Musk and Taylor Swift. And Zinoman, in a sidetrack, praises the filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli, and gives a tip about a new movie I might want to see:
In one obvious snub, “The Color Purple,” based on the Broadway version of the story and backed by Oprah Winfrey, was left out of the best film, musical or comedy category. In a surprise, voters found a way to invite Taylor Swift to the ceremony, nominating her “Eras Tour” concert film in a new category for blockbusters....
From a Washington Post headline I didn't click on. It promised: "Here’s how to understand the phenomenon."
I'm just going to guess that what explains the purported inescapability is that mainstream media puts it on their front page every damned day. If I click, it should say, ha ha, your click is the reason. I resist this recursive madness.
And yet, I think Captain America was, recently, a woman, so perhaps the answer is: We always need a beautiful woman upon whom to project our hopes and dreams.
ADDED: It's a kind of serial monogamy. Not long ago, it was Barbie every day. They're not doing Barbie anymore. It's Taylor Swift every day.
"... The Kelpies in Falkirk, a pair of gargantuan horse heads by Andy Scott that could only be any worse if they actually neighed; and, most terrible of all, Maggi Hambling’s unfeasibly awful memorial to Mary Wollstonecraft in Newington Green, north London, a silver Barbie doll (with full pubic hair) I have to pass at least once a week, and never without grimacing.... There is an awful lot of bad public art around, and the pity of it is that, once it has landed, it hangs about like some alien spaceship on a hostile planet."
"For [Karen] Carpenter, this precedes an attempt at healing, away from well-meaning if destructive family dynamics. For Margot Robbie’s Barbie, her journey leads her to discovering true power in the real world, outside Barbieland’s colourful confines. Both films imagine the home as a place of repression, and dolls as a vessel for often contradictory ideas about domesticity, femininity and self-realisation."
The Todd Haynes film using Barbie as Karen is "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story." It's existed since 1987, but litigation made it unavailable until recently. You can watch the whole thing at that link. From the Guardian article:
"Eva Longoria recently directed the Cheetos dramedy 'Flamin’ Hot'; Jerry Seinfeld is at work on 'Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story.' I.P.-based filmmaking has become so commonplace that [Greta] Gerwig—who made her name acting in tiny mumblecore projects—was caught off guard by complaints that she’d sold out. (One viral tweet: 'i know this is an unpopular opinion but i feel like . . . completely repelled by the barbie movie. branded content with a wink and movie stars is still branded content!') Gerwig told me that adapting Barbie felt as natural as adapting 'Little Women,' though she did use a toy metaphor to describe the process: creating 'a story where there hadn’t been a story' felt like solving 'an intellectual Rubik’s Cube.'... 'Barbie' is somehow simultaneously a critique of corporate feminism, a love letter to a doll that has been a lightning rod for more than half a century, and a sendup of the company that actively participated in the adaptation...."
It's hard to imagine how this could happen. There is a "Barbie Selfie Generator" offered by the promoters of the new "Barbie" movie. That explains why random people are displaying themselves on Twitter with Barbie branding, but it doesn't explain why the FA would deem this appropriate... especially the one with "This Barbie is a Bunny"!
Cox herself said: "I hope all the kids who are feeling stigmatized when their health care is being jeopardized, whose ability to play sports [is curtailed], I hope they can see this Barbie and feel a sense of hope and possibility."
ADDED: I had an additional thing I was going to say. Then I checked out the comments over there and saw the top comment is pretty close to what I'd self-censored : "I thought Ken was the first transgender Barbie doll. Look in his pants."
Ha ha. I got the original Ken doll when it came out, and I was quite interested to see what was in his pants. It was 1961. I was 10. Should Mattel have dangled that in front of me?
"The dolls come in a variety of skin tones, with extensions so they can have short or long hair and wear contemporary clothing styles that men and women have shared for decades."
Does Mattel really call them "gender neutral" dolls? I'm also seeing the term "gender-fluid" in the article. They look like girl dolls to me. Lots of girls have short hair and like to wear jeans and t-shirts.
I'm looking at the Mattel website, and the words I'm seeing are the name of the product line, Creatable World, the slogan "Making Doll Play More Inclusive," and this copy:
In our world, dolls are as limitless as the kids who play with them. Introducing Creatable World™, a doll line designed to keep labels out and invite everyone in—giving kids the freedom to create their own customizable characters again and again.
So Mattel is ostensibly against "labels," but the journalists carrying their PR forward are introducing "gender neutral" and "gender-fluid." Frankly, I find this unfriendly to lesbians. And it's annoying to girls who like short hair and play clothes but feel like girls (whether they're lesbian or not). That is or should be most girls. Why slap the label "gender neutral" or "gender-fluid" on that? Mattel doesn't, and there's no reason why girls (or boys) at the playing-with-dolls age should be bothered with these labels. The idea of "Creatable World" seems to be to leave the kids to come up with their own ideas not to foist some additional adult concept onto them. Let children be children.
The Daily Beast reports on the lawsuit brought by the "Sesame Street" company to stop the distribution of the film, which, of course, it did not license or authorize in any way. The film is directed by "one of Jim Henson's family member."
“Sesame seeks an injunction that forces Defendants to cease and desist their trading upon the goodwill associated with Sesame Street in furtherance of box office receipts,” the lawsuit says. “The promotion of The Happytime Murders should succeed or fail on its own merits, not on a cynical, unlawful attempt to deceive and confuse the public into associating it with the most celebrated children’s program in history.”
I assume "deceive and confuse" relates to trademark law. Is it deceptive and confusing or will pretty much everyone know it's a send-up, a satire or parody? When do the rights to characters you've created give way to the right of expression of those who want to make fun of them?
[ADDED: I’m now thinking the headline to this post misstates the facts. I think there’s just a Muppet character that is not a “Sesame Street” character and the poster slogan “No Sesame. All Street.”]
[MORE: I put up a new post with the "restricted" trailer for the movie that makes the overlap with "Sesame Street" very clear. Having seen that — not saying I liked it, but having seen it — I think it's easily within the zone of satire that should be protected.]
This makes me think of "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story" — "a 1987 American short biographical film portraying the last 17 years of singer Karen Carpenter's life. Directed by Todd Haynes, the film uses Barbie dolls as actors, as well as documentary and artistic footage... [and] an unauthorized soundtrack consisting mostly of the hit songs of The Carpenters."
"Superstar" was never distributed because it was stopped by claims of copyright in the music. But what about the use of Barbie dolls?
... Haynes detailed Karen's worsening anorexia by subtly whittling away at the face and arms of the "Karen" Barbie doll.
This is only tangentially related, from Woodward and Armstrong's "The Brethren," an account of the Supreme Court in the early 70s:
The National Lampoon, a humor magazine, had just released its February issue. The centerfold was entitled “Amicae Curiae”—Friends of the Court—and it depicted, in a color cartoon, all nine of the Justices engaged in a variety of sexual activity.
The Chief, naked except for holster and pistol, was on the floor licking the boot of an otherwise naked young woman. Brennan was standing in front of two very young girls holding his robe open. Stewart was measuring the throat of a young woman with a ruler, apparently in preparation for oral sex. Rehnquist, clad in a woman’s bra and red garter belt, was parading before the others cracking a black whip.
The toy firm unveiled its Kahlo Barbie after striking a deal with the Panama-based Frida Kahlo Corporation, which got the rights to Kahlo’s image from one of her nieces, Isolda Pinedo Kahlo, more than a decade ago.... Other members of the family have long been against this commercialization of the distinctive, uni-browed Kahlo image. Last year they accused the Corporation of a breach of contract that AFP now reports (details were held back at the time) was the result of the Corporation “failing to inform Kahlo’s relatives about the uses of her image.” This breach, they say, nullifies the Corporation’s right to continue licensing the image.
I have no opinion about this other than... families, fighting each other over the remains of a loved one. But if money is to be made, people look to see if they can get a cut. But maybe it really is about lofty ideas about the dead artist's image and how it should be used. And yet you signed that power away, didn't you?
"It’s hard to believe, but 60 years ago entertainers had more guts. If you want proof, tune into 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel' on Amazon, an excellent new show about a fictional woman named Midge — clearly based on Joan Rivers — who starts a risky career as a stand-up comedienne in Greenwich Village in 1958. On stage, Midge makes jokes about her sex life, her Jewish upbringing and even rips off her top, exposing her breasts. As the crowd laps up the routine, the police arrest Midge for breaking obscenity laws. That kind of courage, that willingness to shock and offend, is what made Rivers so exciting to watch. It’s what makes great comedy. But today’s comics are afraid to go too far, out of fear of the woke police.... Here’s another: How is show business going to survive if it suddenly censors itself?"
1. I don't remember Joan Rivers ever whipping off her shirt and exposing her breasts, nor can I even imagine such a move, given that there would have to be a layer of undergarment, not susceptible to whipping off, and I've seen "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," which is, indeed, an excellent show.
2. Some people were modestly entertained over the weekend when a South Korean ice skater's costume got unclasped and threatened to fall off. "I was like, ‘Oh no!’ If that comes undone, the whole thing could just pop off. I was terrified the entire program.... I didn’t stop because you get a deduction if you stop in the middle of a program. In my head, I was thinking, 'Is it better to stop and fix it and get the deduction or keep going?'" She kept going and we kept thinking: Is that thing going to fall off? And some of us, I'm sure, will continue to watch ice skating, now thinking, will the lady's costume — the whole thing — just pop off?
3. I don't think you need to be obscene to entertain. In fact, it was much easier to be shocking with sexual things in the old days, when you could get arrested for obscenity. But half a century later, sexual frankness isn't shocking, and the "woke police" are out to ruin you not because of sex, but because they're vigilant about the subordination of women. It's not easy to figure out how to avoid committing the kind of offenses that will get the "woke police" after you, but you men who complain about it are like the Ken counterpart to the talking Barbie who said "math class is tough" — Women's Studies class is tough.
4. Hollywood entertain — and the culture of Hollywood celebrities — has been awful for a lot of reasons for a long, long time. Can't you please just continue to entertain us? is a pathetic whine.
Are you not entertained? You shouldn't be! Man, "Gladiator" is putrid. I knew it at the time and stayed away, but can anyone justify the adulation that movie received? The answer to Russell Crowe's famous question is: no!
5. Meanwhile, speaking of bared breasts and slabs of man meat, over at the New York Times, Ross Douthat says "Let’s Ban Porn."
[W]e are supposed to be in the midst of a great sexual reassessment, a clearing-out of assumptions that serve misogyny and impose bad sex on semi-willing women.... It was only a generation ago that the unlikely (or was it?) alliance of feminists and religious conservatives made the regulation of pornography a live political debate. But between the individualistic drift of society, the invention of the internet, and the failure of the Dworkin-Falwell alliance’s predictions that porn would lead to rising rates of rape, the anti-porn case was marginalized — with religious conservatism’s surrender to Donald Trump’s playboy candidacy a seeming coup de grace.
Except it doesn’t have to be. Trump’s grotesqueries have stirred up a feminist reaction that’s more moralistic and less gamely sex-positive than the Clinton-justifying variety, and there’s no necessary reason why its moralistic gaze can’t extend to our porn addiction....
In many of them, you see a kind of female revulsion, not against Harvey Weinstein-style apex predators, but against the very different sort of male personality that a pornographic education seems to produce: a breed at once entitled and resentful, angry and undermotivated, “woke” and caddish, shaped by unprecedented possibilities for sexual gratification and frustrated that real women are less available and more complicated than the version on their screen....
Just when the prestige movies of Hollywood retreat from whatever entertainment they might have been providing, the social cons want to team up with the progressives — one more time, like it's the 80s — and scare you with proposals about banning pornography.
6. You don't have to actually ban pornography. Just have angry, righteous women go public about the pornography habits various famous men and demand that they be fired from their jobs. I'm sure there are some members of Congress who can be Al-Frankened over porn. I'm sure a porn hysteria could be set in motion around various Trump men to generate an endless chain of headlines in the NYT like "Porn Claims Against Aide Further Roil White House." Could the White House be even more roiled that it already is? Yes!
Actually, I have the original Ken doll and the only clothes he ever had were, essentially, shorts — that is, his little red swim trunks. And I don't really care if the child's toy Ken wears shorts. My men-in-shorts problem is not a Ken-in-shorts problem because it is about adult men looking like children. But girls are playing with Ken, so let him be a boy.
IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt asked, "How could anyone not like her?," and I answered:
There's something robotic and trancelike about her demeanor. It's interesting to me that people don't dislike her for that glossy, plastic, stage-y quality, which actually reminds me of Hillary Clinton. I don't myself dislike her, but I'm fascinated that people don't call her out for the Stepford Wives aura that so many political women have been mocked for.
But Jackie Kennedy was a similar case. People loved it in her. I guess if you read as beautiful and you don't misbehave, people will accept a woman who seems anesthetized.
And AReasonableMan says, "Drudge's front page currently featuring Ivanka is pretty funny." Here's the part he means, with Ivanka in the middle — looking like a sensibly beautiful woman — flanked by Madonna displaying elongated Jayne-Mansfield-style breasts and some absurdly plastic-surgeried human Barbie doll. Click to enlarge:
In the end, Warren writes, [her husband, Bruce] Mann gave his blessing to her potential candidacy, but she realized it wasn’t her next step.
“Talking with Bruce and asking the question out loud had settled it,” Warren writes. “I wanted to stay buckled down and keep doing my job — my Senate job — as completely and as effectively as I could.”
And you wonder why we haven't had a woman President.
Note: I don't really believe that was her reason. I just don't enjoy bullshit that leverages the stereotype that women won't do work that is too strenuous.
As long as we're talking about the stereotype about women, let me show you something I've been listening to that's kind of blowing my mind — even though I heard it when it originally aired in 2002 — the recently rebroadcast "Testosterone" episode of "This American Life." There's so much fascinating/disturbing material, but I just want to focus on what feels relevant here, which is the interview with a man who had had a medical condition that took his testosterone level to zero. He's asked "And during those months, how are you behaving? What was different?"
It wasn't that I was behaving. It was that I was not behaving at all. I was, when I was awake, literally sitting in bed and staring at the wall with neither interest nor disinterest for three, four hours at a time. If you'd had a camera in the room, you would have thought I was comatose. I would go out. I would buy some groceries early in the morning. And that would be it. My day had no content. I had no interest in even watching TV, much less reading the newspaper or a book. Food-- I didn't want my food to taste good or interesting. And when you're blessed with that lack of desire, you can eat a loaf of Wonder Bread with mayonnaise. And that will be your day.... People who are deprived of testosterone don't become Spock-like and incredibly rational. They become nonsensical because they're unable to distinguish between what is and isn't interesting, and what is worth noting and what isn't.... You just have to remember that it doesn't matter if you have nothing if you want nothing. Very tricky to get inside that mindset. In some ways, it's difficult for me to even remember it now. But it had its allure.
In case you're wondering how much testosterone women normally have, here are some numbers. It's not zero but it's a lot less than men. And postmenopausal women — like, presumably, Warren — are much lower than premenopausal women.
The NYT reports on Cher's speech at a very Cher-friendly fundraiser in Provincetown, Massachusetts. And I watched the full video here and did my own transcription.
Cher is talking about getting to know Hillary through much experience doing teas with her, and Cher says she told Hillary, "You are so much fun and you are so warm and you are all these things I've never seen when you speak."
Cher asked Hillary why and, as Cher tells it:
She said because she got so crushed — I hope she doesn't mind my telling this story — too late now!— and she said because she got so crushed by the G.O.P., just for trying to set up health care, and she never thought it would be so personal, and she said it made her kind of pull in and she's shy, so it was difficult, and so she kind of kept that with her, but, you know, she is shy, and she's not the greatest speaker in the world, but...and this is what I believe, and this is what I know: She will work every moment of every day.... This chick is just tougher than Chinese algebra.
So she's tougher than Chinese algebra, but she got so crushed when the GOP opposed her health care plan. Which is it? Maybe she's tough in private, after she kind of pulls in. She's so shy and kind of kept that with her. Kept what with her? That crushed, pulled in feeling that she got when Congress didn't go along with that plan she worked so hard on?
She might not be that good at speaking, but she'll pull back into herself and work every moment of every day. Work work work! She may not talk too much — and we know she won't take questions from the press. It's just so crushing when they don't go along with everything she worked so hard on. But she will pull in and turn that crushing into hours and hours of work work work and if only you really knew her, as Cher does, you would know she's so much fun and so warm and... all these things.
But let's take a closer look at that Chinese algebra. Is that racist? Is that sexist? Math class is tough...
... as Barbie said long ago, outraging feminists. And I guess you throw "Chinese" on top of that and get some kind of reference to the stereotype that Chinese students are especially good at math. Why carelessly throw "Chinese" around to try to be funny?
But Cher didn't put those 2 words together all on her own. "Chinese algebra" is enough of an expression that it has an Urban Dictionary definition going all the way back to 2003: "a hard type of math." But I don't know if it was ever used to talk about math. It seems all along to have been a way to talk about erections. It looks as though the original use of the word was from Tom Waits, back in 1976, "Pasties And A G-String":
She's a-hot and ready, creamy and sugared
And the band is awful and so are the tunes
Crawlin' on her belly, and shakin' like jelly
And I'm gettin' harder than Chinese algebra-ssieres...
So Cher thinks Hillary is as hard as Tom Waits watching an erotic dancer. But shy, too! Very very shy. Shy and crushed and pulled in. It's so difficult! So keep it all deep within you and work — work every moment of every day.
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