Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in. We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.
Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered. We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.
I’m heading out of town in the morning, but for tonight’s Medium Cool, you can talk Barbie. Yes, Barbie. I guess this movie is a cultural phenomenon?
You guys have been all over this in the comments, and Martin suggested that this would be a good Medium Cool discussion. The Thin Black Duke had some interesting thoughts in that thread, as well, but I don’t know which thread it was so I can’t add them here.
PaulWartenberg
I survived Barbieheimer today. Barbie at 11:15 AM and then Oppenheimer at 1:40 PM.
Paul in Jacksonville
@PaulWartenberg: I’ve read that is the correct order to view them. Did they meet your expectations (if you had any), and did you enjoy them? Which was better, and why?
NotMax
::Yawn:: Have less than zero interest in seeing it.
Phylllis
We are going to see Oppenheimer Tuesday. I will watch Barbie when it hits streaming. It’s giving off Down With Love vibes, which I think is an underappreciated classic.
Baud
I’ll save this thread for a year and a half from now when I watch it on streaming.
MagdaInBlack
I’m not sure which entertains me more: the movie or the right and their whiny pearl clutching over it.
SpaceUnit
I read a review of Barbie the other day and I still couldn’t understand what it was supposed to be about.
Urza
@Baud: Most things make it to streaming within a few weeks of leaving the theater now.
eclare
@SpaceUnit:
Yeah I have the same issue, what is the story?
JPL
Okay, I admit it, I loved Barbie and attended the show today with two very accomplished females who are part of my life, my DIL and my neice. The writing was amazing and since I am 70 plus, I’m sure I missed some quips. I did mention on our way home that I was so proud to attend the movie with them since they are both so successful. okay i did sorta mention the destructive nature of plastic .. hah
If you want to see the movie, don’t read more reviews, because they all add spoilers.
Yutsano
I know one of the voices of Barbie. Does that help?
JPL
@eclare: That is what surprised me most is that they were able to pull off a story about a doll. The first thirty minutes is kiddy romp and suddenly you are sucked into the adventure. I saw it and still can’t explain it.
I had two teary scenes and DIL only had one. It actually makes sense though. crazy
SpaceUnit
@eclare:
Beats me. Something about Barbie living in a different, all pink universe and then something forces her to come into our world. Or something.
p.a.
Guess I’ll see Barbie w girlfriend & her granddaughter.
Friend wants to see Opp but he’s read a lot Lot LOT on Manhattan Project & Los Alamos and is the type to get pissed if there’s any theatrical adjustments at all so I’ll try to avoid that. Not avoid the movie, just…
Starfish
@eclare: It is deconstructing the gender roles of the Barbie universe and making right-wingers mad.
It is taking a thing that some of us enjoyed as children and lampooning it.
Barbie floats down from the top level of her dream house because the Barbie dream houses had no stairs.
MagdaInBlack
@SpaceUnit: There is a thinning of the “veil” between Barbie World and Reality, emo sneaks in, Barbie starts to have thoughts of *gasp* mortality, her feet go flat and she must go and seek the source of this thinning of the veil.
JPL
@Starfish: haha and then she went plop. I missed the map scene or else there was no map scene.
p.a.
Sounds like that (Disney?) movie with Amy Adams, Susan Sarandon as the evil queen.
Brachiator
I made these notes prior to Barbie’s premier, noting that it was already being attacked by some men as being feminist, and by some women as not being feminist enough.
The movie just has to please it’s audience.
SpaceUnit
@MagdaInBlack:
Thanks. That clears everything up.
laura
There’s no shame in my Barbie game- it’s dialed up to 11, it’s cast with woman worth watching all working ensemble, Greta Gerwig makes interesting movies, it’s a Summer Comedy Blockbuster, but mostly, because it’s target demographic is not young men 18 to 30. So Much That.
CaseyL
I’ve already said how much I loved the movie, and won’t belabor the point. Just go see it. Don’t worry what it’s about; no one can explain what it’s about, short of spoiling you entirely, and it’s a movie best seen unspoiled.
I wanted to also see Oppenheimer this weekend, but I have at least one friend who wants to see that with me, and she was unable to go to any movies this weekend. Maybe next…?
None of the others currently showing interest me much. I can’t work up much fervor for Indiana Jones, even with Phoebe Waller Bridge in it, which is a shame because I used to adore that franchise. What else is out right now? They all kind of blur.
MagdaInBlack
@SpaceUnit: 🤗 Glad I could help 😉
Brachiator
From Variety, Barbie Box Office:
“Barbenheimer” is more than just a meme. It’s a full-fledged box office phenomenon.
Over the weekend, moviegoers turned out in force for Greta Gerwig’s neon-coated fantasy comedy “Barbie,” which smashed expectations with $155 million to land the biggest debut of the year. But they also showed up to see Christopher Nolan’s R-rated historical drama “Oppenheimer,” which collected a remarkable $80.5 million in its opening weekend.
Hundreds of thousands of ticket buyers refused to choose just one movie between the seemingly different blockbusters from auteur directors with sprawling casts and twin release dates. So they opted to attend same-day viewings of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” turning the box office battle into a double feature for the ages.
“This is an unequivocally great weekend for moviegoing,” says David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ are complementing each other at the box office, not taking audience from each other.”
The cultural craze known as “Barbenheimer” worked to fuel the biggest collective box office weekend of the pandemic era, as well as the fourth-biggest overall weekend in history. It’s worth noting the top three weekends were led by the debuts of sequels in massive franchises (“Avengers: Endgame,” “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”)…
Audiences and critics dug the PG-13 film, which landed an “A” CinemaScore and 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. Initial crowds were 65% female (which, duh…), but that’s notable because it’s almost always the inverse for any movie that generates over $100 million in its debut.
Among its many records, “Barbie” also scored the biggest opening weekend ever for a film directed by a woman. “Captain Marvel,” which was co-directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, previously held the title with $153 million in 2019. “Wonder Woman,” from filmmaker Patty Jenkins, stood as the record-holder for a movie solely directed by a woman with $103 million in 2017.
Elizabelle
@PaulWartenberg: I saw Dr. Strangelove on a big screen today.
Next up: Oppenheimer, and Barbie.
WaterGirl
@eclare: I don’t know, either. I have been to busy to do anything but see the Barbie stuff flying by.
NotMax
Topical.
Remember the BLO?
JPL
@laura: A friend who now wants to see after vowing not to see, I said don’t watch more reviews, Just go.
Suzanne
I’m super-excited to see it. Spawn the Elder went to see it on Friday with his boyfriend, and they both said it was fantastic.
Much of how Gen Z relates to Barbie is as a character in these direct-to-DVD movies, as well as the show “Life in the Dreamhouse” (which was funny as hell).
I bought him one of the collector Barbies for his birthday gift.
eclare
@JPL:
Wow, thanks so much for the review! I may go see it, it would be my first movie in a theater since the before times.
eclare
@Starfish:
Interesting!
JPL
@eclare: It was my first since the start of the pandemic and I still bought two extra seats so we didn’t have to seat next to anyone DIL was so excited that she bought the drinks, popcorn and candy. The full movie experience.
Brachiator
I will probably catch a weekday matinee of Barbie. I also want to see Oppenheimer, but I don’t think that I can sit through a three hour movie anymore, no matter how much I might enjoy it.
ETA. When I was a teen, I attended a dinner for students who had applied to a certain Ivy League college at the home of a Mattel executive who was an alumnus. Okay, it was a mansion in Bel Air, California. Very impressive. Barbie had been very good to this executive.
eclare
@Brachiator:
Holy shit! 155M? Wow!
Ken
@eclare: I do wonder if it brought in that much revenue in the alternate universe where Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro kept their mouths shut.
Then I remember that there are no alternate universes where Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro keep their mouths shut.
Baud
@Brachiator:
Go Woke Go to the Bank.
JPL
When I was pretty young, I met a family friend from Los Alamos and I didn’t understand the significance.. His dad was a scientist who worked on the base. He wasn’t born there but his sister was and he gave me pamphlets and stuff for school work. Mac understood the dangers associated with the findings.
I might see Oppenheimer but probably not on a big screen. We know what happened.
Joseph Patrick Lurker
I haven’t yet seen Barbie, but found these articles interesting
Did the ‘Barbie’ movie really cause a run on pink paint? Let’s get the full picture
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/05/1180133265/barbie-movie-pink-paint-shortage
Inside the Barbie Dreamhouse, a Fuchsia Fantasy Inspired by Palm Springs
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/inside-the-barbie-dreamhouse-a-fuchsia-fantasy-inspired-by-palm-springs
eclare
@JPL:
Barbie is playing at the theater near me. Thursday at 1 sounds perfect.
NotMax
Mars missed a bet if they didn’t crank out packets containing only green M&Ms to be sold at the concession stands.
:)
Suzanne
@Ken: This is gonna be rough for shitty men who get pissy when there’s something popular that doesn’t involve them. Seeing that women (and not a small amount of non-douchey men) will show up for a movie like this will, of course, make movie studios cater to this cohort.
Conservatives are just no fucken fun. God, just total bummers.
eclare
@JPL:
Sounds like a big day out! That’s the way to go back to the theater!
Hmmm, I just tried to buy a ticket, and it wanted me to pick my seat. This is new. I guess I’ll check on Wed to get the lay of the land, avoid where others are sitting.
MattF
@Ken: One does wonder if Shapiro is on the Barbie payroll. I suppose he’d deny it.
bbleh
Not particularly interested in seeing it, and not particularly surprised it’s a Big Entertainment Thing, but what DOES leave me a little gobsmacked is how worked up the wingnuts have got.
It’s a movie about a DOLL fercrissake. It’s PINK. It’s all in good fun, it’s blatantly exploitive and everyone knows it, it’s summer cotton candy that will melt into nothing, and everybody has a good time.
How is that bad? What in the name of all that is holy is WRONG with you people?!?!
delphinium
@JPL: Did you see the tv show Manhattan (from 2014), it explored the scientists and their families getting set up at Los Alamos and the drama therein. It ran for 2 seasons.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
I ❤️ it. The wingnut assholes tried to demonize Barbie, but to no avail. As Machiavelli once said,
“You come for Barbie, you best not miss”.
gene108
@Brachiator:
I’d love to see Barbie with giant mech’s and EXPLOSIONS!!!
A GI Joe-Barbie crossover would be fun.
Shana
@Phylllis: I really liked Down With Love. Hubby and I saw Theater Camp yesterday and liked it a bunch. We’ll see the other two during the day during the week when it’s oppressively hot
Trollhattan
OT gazing at my first Tesla Uber waiting for its rider. Am pleased to report there is a driver.
Heat just broke and it’s 10 degrees cooler in the last hour. Huzzah!
Suzanne
@bbleh: Conservatives are so neurotic and closed-minded that they can’t have fun.
schrodingers_cat
Barbie and Oppenheimer are getting so much traction because there has been a dearth of non-Superhero movies off late.
Going to Oppenheimer on Tuesday. With husband kitteh and a friend whose dad was a chemist from that era. He knew people who worked on the Manhattan project. My first movie in the theaters since COVID-19 hit us
I have heard Hans Bethe speak about nuclear disarmament at the big physics conference in March when APS was celebrating 100 years. He still had his thick German accent.
SpaceUnit
Before this thread I had no idea that right-wingers were all losing their shit over the Barbie movie.
Fuck’s sake.
dmsilev
Saw Oppenheimer this afternoon. It was very good. Theater lobby was filled with people wearing pink, for some …completely inexplicable reason. This week will be busy, so no evening movies for me; maybe I’ll do the other half of the set next weekend.
Baud
Via Reddit, apparently Musk has weighed in.
delphinium
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah, I haven’t been to a movie in the theater in ages, but am tempted by Oppenheimer. Will probably wait to see Barbie via streaming.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I thought Barbie was a superhero.
dmsilev
@schrodingers_cat:
I remember that talk. Grad school days…
MattF
@Baud: Dumb thing to say. Giving people ideas.
PaulWartenberg
Barbie was enjoyable in the context presented: An obvious “Intellectual Property” movie done by people who invested more emotion and gravitas into the storyline than expected, creating a film that was visually stunning in many respects, but with a narrative that once or twice forced the issue in order to create a conflict that wasn’t entirely needed. The conflict between “matriarchy” and “patriarchy” weren’t better debated – mostly because such a debate would take entire months to resolve, TBH – and not as neatly resolved as the movie would want. Where the movie DID work is where Barbie, undergoing a quest to resolve the sudden bouts of depression and thoughts of mortality, comes to terms with herself as an individual, created as an “idea” of what womanhood could accomplish but capable of discovering personal happiness she could achieve as a real woman. It’s during this last half of the movie where Margot Robbie deserves an Oscar nom, by the by.
CaseyL
@Suzanne: It’s so funny that they used to say that about liberals. We were the killjoys, because we were aware of things like racism and sexism in popular culture, and could no longer enjoy entertainment based on catering to racism and sexism. That made us “no fun.”
Hah. Now some, maybe even most, movies that want a wide audience try not to be too blatantly racist and sexist, and the RW has its collective scrotum in a wringer about it.
They should just stick with crap like the latest GI Joe/Transformer/Etc. movies, which are made for them anyway.
Trollhattan
Can this BIG BIG weekend be the catalyst to get the moneybags to pay up and settle the strike?
thruppence
I’ve got tickets for Oppenheimer on Tuesday, probably will see Barbie on Wednesday. Don’t own anything pink, though.
dmsilev
@SpaceUnit: I linked to it yesterday, but to get a sense of the RW freak out, the place to start is Alexandra Petri. One of her better columns.
schrodingers_cat
The Twitter discourse around Oppenheimer is very stupid. Tankies are sad that there are no Japanese voices in Oppenheimer.
eclare
@thruppence:
I own a purple shirt, that will have to do.
JPL
@Baud: haha We saw a dad with tweens with his pink shirt on. He said don’t mock me and we said we love it.
zhena gogolia
@JPL: I’ve said several times, I was getting sick of all the hype and had no interest, but then I watched the trailer, and Wow! Hilarious! Especially if you once were deeply involved with Barbies.
(but like baud, I’m waiting for streaming)
sab
@bbleh: These are the same people who want to deprive five year old girls of rainbow dresses.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Never did have a Barbie.
zhena gogolia
@thruppence: In my day, Barbie wasn’t so associated with pinkness.
Suzanne
@CaseyL:
All of their humor is essentially mockery and insult. They’re not witty or clever or self-deprecating. So when we said that they should stop being racist, sexist, homophobic, etc….. they don’t know how to make jokes any other way.
dmsilev
@schrodingers_cat: Even by tankie standards, that’s really really stupid.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: They were great for one’s imagination. Maybe not so good for body image!
Brachiator
@Trollhattan:
Oh hell no. But this box office weekend is an excellent reply to all the asswipe studio executives who claim that they can’t do right by actors and writers.
NotMax
@Trollhattan
Not on your tintype.
According to the studios’ green eyeshade wearing accounting drones, Gone With the Wind is expected to finally break even any month now.
SpaceUnit
@dmsilev:
Funny. So they’re mad because this movie does feminizms and they can’t stand it.
What a bunch of sad sacks.
NotMax
@thruppence
Wash something red and something white together.
;)
Brachiator
@JPL:
@Baud: haha
Somewhere on Twitter is a photo of a dad and his daughter at a Barbie screening. Both are wearing bright pink dresses.
And colorful hats.
Baud
The irony is that pink isn’t even one of the colors of the rainbow.
Miss Bianca
I am hoping we can get the Barbie movie for our theater the first weekend in August. My boss is looking into it. :)
Eyeroller
@schrodingers_cat:
The Barbies of my childhood were not anywhere near so oppressively pink as I see in the trailer. I don’t know exactly where that comes from. Maybe Gen X Barbies. (I am a second-half Boomer.) Looking at some history it looks like Barbie’s Dream Houses got pinker and pinker over the decades. But I tend to agree that there is pent-up demand for movies that aren’t superhero comic-book movies.
I don’t go to movies so I doubt I’ll see the Oppenheimer biopic but The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes is a classic for those interested in the history.
I spent two summers in graduate school at Lawrence Livermore National Lab (my work was entirely unrelated to their mission) and still remember getting a glimpse of Edward Teller stomping around with his cane and entourage.
Yutsano
@schrodingers_cat:
I have questions…
schrodingers_cat
@Eyeroller: I wonder who plays Teller in the movie?
Steeplejack
@Phylllis:
Down with Love is indeed an underappreciated classic. I particularly liked Sarah Paulson in the supporting Paula Prentiss-type role.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: Benny Safdie
Baud
@Brachiator:
Hopefully, they’re not in Florida.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: Ooh, that looks good.
Eyeroller
@zhena gogolia: As a young man Teller lost half his foot in a streetcar accident in Munich, hence the cane. Do they show his characteristic limp?
Sister Golden Bear
I wanted to see Across the Spider-Verse before it disappeared from the big screen before it disappeared from the big screen, so it was the first-half of today’s doubleheader. Absolutely gorgeous movie, once again taking animation in a new direction. The writers also had great fun playing around with all of the potential alternate Spider realities.
And yes, Spider Gwen is canonically trans. Change my mind. Although obviously Stan Lee never intended Spider Man and Spider Gwen to be LGBTQ, but both movies (haven’t read the comics) definitely capture the feeling of being closeted, unable to come out to those closest to you.
Next up is Barbie. Sadly, I discovered I no longer have any pink clothing, so I’m going to have to improvise.
Fun fact: Barbie used so much pink paint for the sets that the movie caused a worldwide shortage.
zhena gogolia
@Eyeroller: I haven’t seen the movie. I just looked up the cast for SC!
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Elizabelle: Lucky you. I’ve only seen it once on a big screen.
Where digya see it, at an Alamo Drafthouse party?
schrodingers_cat
@Eyeroller: He had deadly eyebrows!
Spanish Moss
@zhena gogolia: They weren’t that pink in my day either (I’m in my early sixties). I had both Barbie and Julia dolls, and I don’t recall pink at all. Julia was a nurse, of course, so she wore a white uniform.
Barbie didn’t sound like my kind of movie at all until I saw the first trailer, and I have become more excited about it with each trailer that comes out. It looks clever and hilarious and maybe even thought provoking. I am going with my husband and one of my adult sons this week (neither of whom owned Barbies, alas). Can’t wait!
MisterDancer
BARBIE is the 1st movie I’ve been to see since WAKANDA FOREVER. But that’s partially COVID, as well.
But I think it’s too facile by half to claim this situation is some kind of superhero fatigue backlash. Good movies — and BARBIE is a good, fun, thoughtful film — tend to find passionate viewers, and even in my corner of the world I’m seeing people dress up for this movie, take their kids to it, treat it like Black folx treated BLACK PANTHER.
Y’all can laugh and sniff your nose up in disdain about this film. And of course, there’s gaps and criticism to be made.
But my gut says that, a decade from now, we’re going to still be talking about BARBIE in at least Academia and Feminist circles in ways that works like BUFFY and, lately, JENNIFER’S BODY get revisited. I suspect it’s quietly influencing, right now, another generation, and not just of women, in ways we cannot predict today.
And that, on it’s heels (pun intended), a film with a Black Female director and a mostly Women/PoC cast is coming as well (THE MARVELS) is intriguing, as well.
Not saying things are great. But there’s a direction and energy in film towards goals we generally claim for Progressives that is worth respecting and considering, I certainly think.
phein64
@JPL: It’s when Barbie is first visiting Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie. It’s actually on screen enough times (and time) to kind of see what some people are objecting to, but it’s a kid’s map in crayon, and hardly intended to be a representation of the real world.
That said, I just got back from watching it with my wife. We went to see Oppenheimer at 2:45, but it was sold out until the 7 pm showing — on three different screens –, so we opted for Barbie. It was surprisingly affecting. Whatever you think it may be about, it’s probably not. Don’t want to give anything away, but it’s not surprising that the incels hate this movie.
For you, watergirl, they will show all the movies at the Savoy16 for $5 on Tuesday. I think we’ll go back for Oppenheimer then. If you do go, you may want to buy your tickets online. That way, you can pick seats and also get your tickets at the concession stand. Otherwise, it’s the self-serve kiosk only for tickets.
Sister Golden Bear
@Baud: The irony is that between WWI and WWII pink was considered the color for baby boys — since it was derived from red — and blue was the color for baby girls. Before that both genders wore white, because it was easily bleached, and a single item could be passed on to the next child. But after WWI, stores realized they could sell more baby clothes by gendering them.
MisterDancer
I shan’t! RESPECT.
Baud
@Sister Golden Bear:
I think Dems used to be red and the GOP blue.
Why did the colors switch for babies?
Steeplejack
I’m so out of it that I just got around to seeing Asteroid City today, in the very same theater where I saw my last movie in a theater—The French Dispatch, whenever it was new (October 2021?), during the pandemic. At that time my friend and I discussed whether a Wes Anderson movie could be too Wes Anderson, and we agreed that The French Dispatch was not but was close to the line. Asteroid City is over the line (but in a good way). I saw it with the same friend. We both enjoyed it a lot, but I will recommend it only to Wes Anderson fans.
I intend to see both Barbie and Oppenheimer but will wait a bit for the hubbub to die down. My friend has seen them both and recommends them. She did feel that the science in Oppenheimer was “glossed over” a bit, maybe because she has read a couple of Oppenheimer books.
We also saw some promising trailers today. Drive-Away Dolls and Shortcomings are the two I remember.
Tonight I am drinking cheap champagne with (non-sighthound) Chip and binge-watching the last few episodes of Andor. I have surprised myself by liking it more than I expected to.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
Wash something red and something white together.
Back in college, I tossed a red sweatshirt in with the rest of my wash. The result was several pairs of tighty-whities turning pink.
Sister Golden Bear
@MisterDancer:
Agreed. Although I think the fact neither Barbie nor Oppenheimer have numbers in the titles also plays a factor. I.e. audiences have gotten tired of sequels after two decades of Hollywood execs focusing on them.
bbleh
@Baud: IIRC the networks used to switch the map colors each cycle, but at some point they stopped and stuck with what we have now.
As to mid-century “gender colors,” no clue. Maybe because red was always considered the color of anger, blood, action — all very MANly things? Or maybe because that’s the first color babies, especially male babies, respond to?
UncleEbeneezer
@MisterDancer: Just got back and it was SO GOOD! It even managed to playfully mock/critique Feminism itself. Such a smart movie, amazing performances, great laughs and all the feels. My eyes were tearing up throughout and that was only partially due to the bout of pink eye I’m suffering (seems rather fitting). And I really loved the way the movie even had a very liberating message for boys/men. Well done, Greta Gerwig, well done, indeed. This is going to be a legendary film.
Ken
Didn’t we have one? I could swear The Suicide Squad has Margot Robbie in pigtails and a fluffy pink dress, plus Idris Elba, Joel Kinnaman, and John Cena as America-themed soldiers with vast amounts of weaponry.
EDIT: My mistake, it’s a fluffy red dress.
Sister Golden Bear
@Baud:
It’s true, and worldwide more liberal political parties are typically (Commie) red, and more conservative ones are blue.
In the States that colors one of the network inverted the colors (for reasons I don’t remember) in one of the presidential elections (1980?) and it stuck.
It’s been studied, but the scholarly conclusion is that no one really knows why, it just sort of happened.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@NotMax: Q: if you drop a white hat in the Red Sea what will it become?
A: wet.
NotMax
@Baud
When color TV came in, red and blue used to be alternated for each party every four years. It wasn’t until the 1990s when they became locked in as blue for D, Red for R.
bbleh
@NotMax: @lowtechcyclist: back in college I washed a load with a red sweatshirt that got into everything, and one of the items in the wash was my karate gi. It emerged very pink. I panicked and bleached the living sh!t out of it, and got almost all of it out, but the dojo was very well lit, and at one point when we were all in stance, the sensei asked me offhand, “is your gi pink?” He was amused, and I doubt half the other students even noticed, but I was absolutely mortified.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@schrodingers_cat:
Teller is played by Penn Jillette
UncleEbeneezer
SEE THIS MOVIE EVERYONE!!!
I promise, you will NOT regret it.
Suzanne
@Yutsano:
It’s not a bad point. Merely that, if one is telling the story of the atomic bomb, it would be holistic to hear from those who had to endure the death and devastation afterward. Their perspective is valuable.
Another criticism of the storytelling is that Los Alamos is depicted as empty, and doesn’t make mention of the Latino farmers who were given very short notice to vacate their land for the testing and who couldn’t return.
I also saw some criticism of casting Cillian Murphy, who is not Jewish, in the role of Oppenheimer.
Sometimes when we see these biopic movies that are more focused on the mindset of the subject at the time, other people’s perspectives are left out, and I can sometimes see that as a valid creative choice. (I haven’t seen the movie, so I don’t know.) But I do think it’s really important to acknowledge the harms suffered.
As for the casting of Murphy…. this is another thing I don’t have a coherent opinion about, and I’m going to take my lead from the Jewish community. There’s rightfully a lot of sensitivity about not having white actors play other races. I can understand the viewpoint.
Sister Golden Bear
@Ken: I, for one, welcome the Harley Quinn, Barbie, Spider Gwen cross-over movie.
Tehanu
@Brachiator:
Excellent point.
I hope to see both movies soon but not sure when. I actually should get out the DVD I got a couple of Xmases ago of the 1980s miniseries on Oppenheimer with Sam Waterston — I keep meaning to get around to watching it because I absolutely loved it when I first saw it. Don’t see how Cillian whatshisname could improve on Waterston, but willing to be convinced.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I wish Canadians would stop playing Americans.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
It’s very funny—a pitch-perfect homage to the Doris Day-Rock Hudson genre. Trailer here.
NotMax
@Suzanne
Sheesh. it’s called acting.
Like objecting to casting him in Breakfast on Pluto because he’s not gay in real life. (Hint: he’s superb in that film.)
Geminid
@Brachiator: Both movies are being shown in Turkiye, and journalist Ragip Soylu posted a search trends map showing the areas where each movie was most popular.
Then someone responded with a map from the recent presidential election. There was a rough correlation between the Erdagan+ areas with the Barbie+ ones, and between the Kilicdaroglu+ areas with the Oppenheimer+ ones.
I don’t know what this means but it was interesting to see that both movies drew large audiences there.
Baud
@Geminid:
You have Barbie twice.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: And the Brits too!
Baud
Tenar Arha
@Eyeroller: yep, iirc from Thursday, he limped
@MisterDancer: Did you see Gerwig’s re-imagining of Little Women? You probably did, so you might understand my current feeling that she’s done this kind of taking & reinvigorating of “old nostalgic IP” before.
I keep thinking with Little Women she rearranged the original storyline & slightly changed the emphasis when she took a book layered in nostalgia & present day assumed irrelevance, and basically managed to reinvigorate the story for a new generation. I’m really thinking she’s done something like that with Barbie.
Geminid
@Baud: Thanks, good catch. I think it may be time for me to catch some zzzs.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Suzanne:
That’s not a good idea. Marlon Brando and James Caan are both Jewish who played Italians in The Godfather. Paul Rudd is Jewish and played Ant Man. It would be a mistake to limit roles to heritage and species.
Suzanne
@NotMax:
Sure, but Scarlett Johansson being cast in Ghost in the Shell and Jake Gyllenhaal in Prince of Persia and quite a few other casting decisions were (rightly, IMO) seen as offensive and whitewashing.
No one’s saying that Murphy isn’t a good actor.
NotMax
@Baud
But then we’d be deprived of William Shat—
never mind.
:)
Baud
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
Yeah. I’m guessing Jewish actors are net beneficiaries of the more flexible casting rules.
Citizen Alan
@bbleh: I don’t think I can answer your question without major spoilers. Let’s just say, if you believe in gamer gate and complain about social justice warriors ruining the world every frame of this movie will be triggering to you.
Baud
@Citizen Alan:
Is it wrong for me to hope they’ll follow up on the success of this movie by releasing the Abortion Doctor Barbie?
Suzanne
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: I think that’s facile. I think this piece brings up some really good points, and, as I said, I don’t have a fully-formed opinion.
Why don’t Jews play Jews?’ – David Baddiel on the row over Helen Mirren as Golda Meir
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I got the greatest kick watching Tom Alter (Indian of American heritage) play the great Muslim freedom fighter Maulana Abul Kalaam Azaad in Samvidhaan (the miniseries about how India’s constitution came together) Azaad was the first education minister of independent India.
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
When I took my draft physical there was a guy in the line when we were down to socks and skivvies wearing white panties with red flowers. Yes I said panties. They treated him like everyone else and by the end I believe he felt really, really stupid. They only had 5 requirements. Were you a male, were you breathing, was your urine yellowish, was your blood redish, could you stand around in your underpants (or panties) and socks with 90 other males for 2 hrs. You were 1A.
Yutsano
@Suzanne: The Ghost in the Shell movie was a total whitewash even with Johansson as the Major. The original manga was written at a time when Japan was struggling with an increased militarism and how the Japanese culture would reflect such changes in the future. The producers didn’t even try to capture the soul of the original property. The original mangaka* disavowed the movie. I honestly still refuse to watch it.
*for those who don’t know, that’s the Japanese term for the original comic book artist. They often keep much more control over their property in adaptations than Western artists do.
MisterDancer
Yep. There are a ton of great actors whose culture background comes from Japanese and Iraq/Iran regions. That few have any visibility as “Hollywood Stars” is a product of a narrow minded system, the one currently under strike because they seem to have an issue paying even the people they hire now!
The answer is right there — we push to broaden the acting (and directing and writing, etc) pool because there’s a long assed history of people just putting white actors in yellow/brownface and calling it a day. Why the hell do we need to keep doing that?
We can’t decry the whitewash people like DeSantis and his cronies do in education, and then turn around and say it’s just fine in movies. That’s not how progress works!
Baud
@Ruckus:
“Nice try, Klinger.”
gene108
@bbleh:
I remember sometime in the Bush, Jr. presidency Republicans leaned into idea of “red states” and “blue states” based on the color scheme networks used for each party in either the 2000 or 2004 election.
I don’t know why.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Baud:
the Klingon community is still pissed Chang was played by a Canadian (Christopher Plummer)
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Before 2000, there were no consistent colors associated with the Democratic and Republican parties. I’ve heard it claimed that the networks switched it up on some regular pattern, but I remember different networks sometimes using different sets of colors on Election Night maps–red for Democrats and blue for Republicans, or the other way around, or even yellow and blue.
Left parties in other countries, even center-left parties, often use red as an identifying color, but I cannot imagine the US Democrats doing that because the association of red with Communism would have made it poison in the United States during the Cold War.
Where the modern color identifications really became cemented was in the contested aftermath of the 2000 presidential election. The major networks happened to use red for Republicans and blue for Democrats that year, but more importantly, there was a map in USA Today that got passed around a lot showing the distribution of party votes, that made Democratic cities look like blue islands in a sea of red. And that became the image that stuck in people’s heads as they debated the results.
bbleh
@Baud: TRANS abortion doctor Barbie. But no, just Doctor Barbie would probably be enough to send half of them into conniptions.
Ruckus
@Baud:
Worked just as well…
Baud
@bbleh:
“Two procedures for the price of one.”
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Suzanne: oh FFS. no. los alamos isn’t really portrayed as being “empty” and, as a matter of fact, at one point, oppenheimer asks for the lab to be closed and the land returned to the natives…(which he obviously couldn’t do if no one was there originally).
and i gotta say, in regards to murphy, who is just killing it as oppenheimer, as a red-sea pedestrian, a) there are a fuckton of jews acting in the movie, and b) it’s ACTING.
Brachiator
@Sister Golden Bear:
Goddamit. Don’t people know that comic book and imaginary characters should be portrayed as God intended?
I loved the first Spiderverse movie. I will wait for this one on a streaming service. I look forward to seeing this version of Spider Gwen.
The original X Men deliberately echoed aspects of the 60s civil rights movement, and the competing philosophies of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Later, the X Men were read as echoing gay rights battles. I never read that Stan Lee objected to any of these interpretations of the characters.
These new incarnations fit right in.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@NotMax: beat me to it.
ty.
@Yutsano: yeah. i dunno, the problem with the live-action ghost in the shell movie was that it was TERRIBLY written. the plot made no sense. everyone, all of her team-mates had to be in on it, INCLUDING batou and togusa…. i don’t think that works in the context of the original manga, the original animes, the stand alone complexes… and just kills the live-action version dead. makes no goddamn sense.
Suzanne
@MisterDancer:
I think this quote from the link I already posted gets to why it’s not just as easy as saying, “It’s acting! Actors act!”.
Steve in the ATL
@Brachiator:
You must be unaware of the massive and wildly popular genre of rom-coms.
schrodingers_cat
@strange visitor (from another planet): There was a long thread that went viral. It had lies and half truths mixed with some facts
Geminid
@Suzanne: Golda Meir’s earliest memory was of her father boarding up their home in Kiev, in anticipation of a pogrom. Meir emigrated from Ukraine to Milwaukee as a child, and then taught school before emigrating to British Palestine in the late 1920s. She lived through communal strife in the 1930s and then through three wars before she became Prime Minister in time for a fourth.
What modern actress, Jewish or not, could channel “the complexity of that experience” as if they had lived it?
raven
@schrodingers_cat: Interview some folks from Nanking and Manila while we’re at it.
Matt McIrvin
@Sister Golden Bear: Well, she’s got a PROTECT TRANS KIDS poster on her wall, and her character arc works as a trans metaphor, and there’s nothing in the movie to suggest that she isn’t trans. So it’s at least an open possibility with associated hints. I doubt they’ll be any more explicit about it but who knows.
schrodingers_cat
@raven: Indeed. Next time there is WW2 movie set in Europe tankies are going to want a Nazi perspective to balance things out.
Steve in the ATL
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: “Tom Cruise isn’t…but I heard his agent is!”
strange visitor (from another planet)
@schrodingers_cat: in regard to oppenheimer or GiTS?
zhena gogolia
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Marlon Brando was Jewish?
UncleEbeneezer
@bbleh: The doctor Barbie in the movie is played by Transgender Actress, Hari Nef. She’s great and looks gorgeous, which will piss off the TERFs and Misogynists, big time.
Suzanne
@Geminid: I don’t know. I don’t have a strong opinion on this issue. But I don’t think it’s as stupid and facile a question as others do. We rightly see it as offensive for white people to play black people, for abled people to play disabled people, etc. Why is it different for Jewish people? Is it because there’s already many successful Jews in Hollywood? Is it because we think of Jews as white?
Tenar Arha
@Baud: I find the debate about trying to cast Jewish actors as real Jewish historical figures a little silly, but “looking or not looking” Jewish is a real thing in Hollywood. So I guess *shrug* that’s where the complaints come from. And I believe both Oppenheimer (Murphy) & Strauss (RDJ) are both played by non-Jewish actors, though Safdie got to play Teller.
Anyway, Murphy & RDJ will be nominated for Best & Supporting actors bc they were both fantastic.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
I just cannot get upset about Scarlett Johansson playing an imaginary character, just as I cannot get caught up in dumb discussions about the “proper” ethnicity of Little Mermaid and Snow White.
Also, people always sidestep discussions about how Japanese anime characters often are depicted with a hint of Westernized Disney features. So, are they really “Japanese?”
Also, Johansson has an interesting history of playing characters who are not fully human, in Under the Skin, Her, and Lucy. Ghost in the Shell fits right in.
schrodingers_cat
@strange visitor (from another planet): Regarding Oppenheimer.
UncleEbeneezer
@Matt McIrvin: I must’ve missed it but my wife told me afterward that Ken’s big musical/dance number had the Trans Rights rainbow colors showing prominently. If so, that will cause some sweet Misogynist Tears.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Suzanne: there’s a lot to be said about representation and making sure underserved communities become visible.
…that being said, there have been jewish actors in hollywood since day one… the movie business really wouldn’t BE the movie business if not for jews.
…but again. as a red-sea pedestrian, it’s ACTING. anybody can play ANYBODY, it’s all pretend.
tilda swindon can play the archangel gabriel, no biggie. why not?
the tricky part is when you’re trying to do historical biopics… because those people existed, but again.. ideally it shouldn’t matter.
(also, i’m PRETTY sure spartacus wasn’t jewish, but nobody seemed to mind when the film came out)
@schrodingers_cat: link plz if you have one?
@Tenar Arha: david krumholtz was QUITE good as isidor isaac rabi
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: Shatner was also a Jewish guy playing a not-obviously-Jewish whitebread leading man part. Leonard Nimoy was Jewish as well, but, I think, brought aspects of that experience into the show’s construction of Spock’s culture (the “live long and prosper” hand gesture, for one).
Suzanne
@Brachiator: I don’t have a personal investment in the issue, either, but I’m white. Plenty of people from those marginalized groups do have strong opinions on this issue. I think it’s important to listen.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
Nolan has an unofficial repertory of actors who he often uses in his movies. Murphy has appeared in a number of Nolan films.
There is also an anecdote from Matt Damon. He told his wife that he was taking a break from acting, unless Nolan called.
gene108
@Suzanne:
It’s not the same as complaining about a non-Jew playing a Jewish historical figure.
There have been very successful Jewish actors, writers, and directors in Hollywood since its earliest days, and there’s no lack of Jewish actors getting leading roles.
The same has not been the case for East Asians and Middle Eastern people, who traditionally have been portrayed by white actors or have had a dearth of opportunities for leading roles.
Suzanne
@gene108: I don’t know if I believe that makes it okay.
Again, from the piece:
schrodingers_cat
@strange visitor (from another planet): There were a number of Jewish actors in Hindi movies too. Ruby Meyers (Sulochana) was big silent era star.
I await a thinkpiece about how casting Omar Sharif as Dr. Zhivago was insensitive to Russians and imperialist to boot.
Tenar Arha
@strange visitor (from another planet): he was! SWTG I heard my grandmothers telling me to eat with that orange.
eta typo
CaseyL
I’m not sure how much of the debate on casting actors who are the same ethnicity/nationality of the characters has to do with representation, and how much has to do with simple economics: non-white actors could use the work, since they are generally not the first actors in mind for non-ethic roles.
I have noticed, with some bemusement, how often British actors have been cast of late as USians: Murphy in Oppenheimer, Cumberbatch in a Dr. Strange, Keira Knightly as Jack Ryan’s American wife in Shadow Recruit.
In Murphy’s case, as many interviews with the cast and director have stated, the role was essentially written for him specifically. Chris Nolan has worked with Murphy for 20-something years, practically worships him as an actor, and wanted to write a role that would really call upon/show off his acting chops as the lead.
And, from what reviewers have said, Murphy is beyond brilliant. His ability (for example) to show what the character is thinking and feeling by subtle moves with his eyes and mouth; to change from one strong emotion to another in an instant; to convey even ambiguities and ambivalence, has them standing up and applauding.
Sometimes, you just want the best possible actor you can get your hands on.
Mike in NC
Saw a cartoon where Ivanka & Jared were hoping to be cast as Barbie & Ken. They live in Floriduh now, I believe.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
I think it is very cool that Nimoy was able to use elements of his Jewish background in creating Spock. But it would be wrong to “read” Spock or Vulcans as Jewish.
Some fans would “read” Klingons as Space Vikings or Space Bikers. A lot of this cooled when black actor Michael Dorn was cast as Worf in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Previously, in the TV show Klingons were white guys in dark greasepaint.
I would not be surprised to learn that Dorn or actors like Tony Todd, who later memorably played a Klingon, also brought some of their own experiences as black men to their characters.
MisterDancer
They are, all, imaginary characters. Every single one of them, including the ones meant to represent real people, even the ones played by the person the story says it is.
But this isn’t about that, alone and by itself. It never was.
It’s about a young Whoopi Goldberg seeing Nichelle Nichols and choosing a career that she couldn’t have imagined, otherwise.
It’s about the many Trans and gender-questioning people who slowly started seeing media that reflected their lives in the 90s, some played by cis straight actors, some played by people also working thru these issues, but everyone taking a risk to shine a light for a community beyond ill served.
It’s about putting actual people with real physical challenges on screen, too, in shows like the recent HAWKEYE. Making some of the story about how, for example, being deaf doesn’t mean you can’t kick ass.
These are ALL imaginary characters. But they give real people real hope, in ways that Johansson’s work did not, in GiTS. And although I’m not claiming that you have to be uplifting to be on these roles, that’s not the final point, it IS A POINT. It is a point that really matters.
Because it points to a larger issue. If you’re a person who knows no one in Hollywood will EVER hire “your kind,” because people like you don’t see an issue with the decision to ignore them, what messages about the core of Progressive movements is that sending? That we’ll fight for your right to some jobs, some equality– but don’t you dare stain my movies with your social justice needs?
citizen dave
Re: Jewish actors. Read this morning that Margot Robbie (as Barbie producer) offered the main Barbie role to Gal Godot. She declined, so Robbie took it on. Not sure what they had in mind if Gal Godot had done it.
Saw Barbie yesterday–loved it, a perfect movie. It will have staying power, I think. My wife says that 32 other movies are referenced in Barbie. I caught about 4-5. Lists are on the web.
As far as the story archetype goes, isn’t it “the hero’s journey”?
Have two $23 all in tickets for the 70 mm IMAX film of Oppenheimer, but not for a couple weeks. Hope nothing goes wrong with the local print…
Will leave this, for those who have seen it–if you think about it, the Barbie ending is a cliffhanger; second movie is called _______ (I have my own joke for this but don’t want to spoil anything)
Oh, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the director and two leads get Oscars for this. I’m serious.
Dan B
@Suzanne: The Seattle Times had two big articles on how the Hanford Reservation was completely left out of the movie. The plutonium for the first test in New Mexico and the Nagasaki bomb were produced there. Also the New Mexico test killed many people downwind from cancer. Same thing happened downwind of Hanford including my best friend.
Tenar Arha
I was one of the many who decided to participate in a modified Barbenheimer weekend of auteur movie productions ;)
I grabbed any empty seat on Thursday to Oppenheimer when I saw all the IMAX showings sold out over the weekend because I got curious if those showings were filling up like Barbie already had.
And, I long ago decided to see Barbie opening weekend after I saw the first trailer, because of the 2001 beat by beat recreation.
Anyway, today I went to brunch followed by Barbie & laughed a lot, & was surprised by some tears too. I had absurdly high expectations of Gerwig, & she fulfilled them. It’s a well crafted clever film. And it said something about growing up, and friendships & relationships too.
Go see both in whatever order & spacing you want. I highly recommend them both as two distinct visions of filmmakers that were BOTH clearly influenced by 2001. Barbie is more comedic, but Oppenheimer is also worthwhile even with the length, especially for the scenes with the security clearance hearing, & the Commerce Secretary nomination hearing.
ETA paragraphs
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
But oddly enough, not the reverse.
Wag
@bbleh: Wrong on all accounts. I saw Barbie with my 33 year old daughter, her husband, and my 17 year old boy/ girl twins. It is the most subversive piece of entertainment that I have seen in decades. A fantastic takedown of our patriarchal society all wrapped in bubble gum and well disguised vitriol. We all loved every minute of it, and I am thrilled that the RWNJ’s are losing their minds. Can’t wait to see it again.
Suzanne
@CaseyL: I think a lot of the debate centers around not falling into caricature. If one is portraying someone from another culture, it takes a great deal of sensitivity and skill to get that right. Especially if one is playing a real person, and if their culture had deep influence on them, I can see why it is an issue of concern. Sarah Silverman brought up on her podcast, “There’s this long tradition of non-Jews playing Jews, and not just playing people who happen to be Jewish but people whose Jewishness is their whole being”, and goes on to talk about how it’s easy to fall into stereotypes about voices and “yadda yadda yadda”. So if that can be avoided — and it sounds like Oppenheimer does avoid that — then I think there’s less of a concern.
But the writer of that piece that I keep quoting brings up the double standard as the crux of the issue. We rightly find it offensive for whites to play other races, because minority and marginalized groups need to have more creative control over their storytelling and their depiction, so that we can fully realize their humanity (collectively). That’s a key part of trying to right a historical wrong. Why is it different for Jewish people? Do we not see them as a people who need a historical wrong to be righted?
strange visitor (from another planet)
@MisterDancer: i hate to say it, bc i really respect your POV, but i think you’re off base and using ghost in the shell is a bad example.
like i said, i think the biggest problem with the movie is its terrible, terrible writing.
that being said. major kusanagi is a total body replacement cyborg. basically, a human brain inside an enhanced robot combat chassis. she doesn’t look particularly japanese or asian in the slightest in any of the early GitS movies, because she’s really not.
it might have been nice to have an asian actor portraying the character, but it would’ve been MUCH nicer for the long running title to have hollywood produce an american version with a decent goddamn script that made sense in the slightest.
tl:dr? if the movie had been better, no one would’ve cared. as it was, it was a flaming train wreck.
Wag
@Baud: In this movie, yes.
Suzanne
@Brachiator:
As it should be. Racism is directional. It always has been.
Geminid
@Suzanne: I wasn’t picking on you, just the guy you quoted. I was saying that while Mr. Baddiel’s analysis might have some validity in the abstract, it does not stand up when applied to the actual historical figure of Golda Meir and the modern actresses who might play her.
I did read a different criticism of Golda though, in the Israeli news site Haaretz. The reviewer complained that in order to make her look like Golda Meir of 1973, the makeup people loaded Helen Mirren down with so much silicone and makeup that her expressiveness was muted.
I wonder if that might have been a conscious or subconscious reaction to the controversy over her being cast for this role.
bbleh
@Wag: Srsly? Not upset to hear it, but … Subversive Barbie? That’s WAY worse than Doctor Barbie or even Trans Barbie!
But ok, when it streams, I’ll check it out. Who could resist “the most subversive piece of entertainment that I have seen in decades. A fantastic takedown of our patriarchal society all wrapped in bubble gum and well disguised vitriol”?
Dan B
@bbleh: Trans Amazonian Barbies ruling over harems of emasculated men -and- doing abortion fairs.
Are we getting somewhere with the plot synopsis?
Suzanne
@Geminid: The prosthetic noses to make actors look “more Jewish” is definitely part of the complaint about caricature.
Brachiator
@MisterDancer:
Sorry, I disagree with you here, and your distortion of my use of the word “imaginary.”
I will take it further. I do not give a shit that Cleopatra was depicted as black in a recent movie, even though she was a historical character. Every moron who wanted to pull out detailed genealogies to prove that she was pure Macedonian (which is unlikely), proved nothing of value. Cleopatra has always been more mythical than real, even to the ancient Romans who knew her and feared her.
The Cleopatra of Shakespeare’s play is entirely imaginary. No reasonable person would object to any actress of any ethnicity playing the role. We could even do an “authentic” production and cast a male.
TriassicSands
What? Are implying that Barbie is not a superhero(ine)?
Shocking. Just shocking. Or not.
Elizabelle
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: In Richmond, we have a fabulous 1928 movie palace, The Byrd Theater, with a 1928 pipe organ that rises from the floor. We get a musical interlude before the classic movie starts.
Some, few new films. Some film festivals. The Byrd is a treasure.
MisterDancer
As a Black Trek fan (see prior comment) it’s really…shit.
Look, that’s not “oh, Black people changing the game” around Klingons. Putting a Black man in the guise of the savage, warlike ex-enemy of the team was NOT A STEP FORWARD when TNG started.
Dorn spent a lot more time just working to get stuff to do that was actually compelling and thoughtful, then trying to “bring his experience being Black to the role”. If Kunta Kinte his fucking self couldn’t get a good storyline in TNG in seven seasons? Well, you put a lot more faith in the TNG writing staff that’ll I’ve seen was wise. A lot of the Klingon stuff that worked was uphill fights.
Worf works much better in DEEP SPACE NINE — which, notably, had a mostly different writing team (including an unleashed Ronald D. Moore for a time). Add in Brooks insisting on actually doing what you say, in ensuring his experience as a Black man impacts the stories told about Ben and Jake Sisco, and yeah Worf gets to shine.
But look, OG Klingons are exactly the kind of yellow face I was talking about! They were, in TOS, explicitly coding them as pulp style Asian villains, the kind that Marvel had to deeply rework like 3 times before they got to Shang-Chi. They weren’t Vikings, they were Cold War analogies for “Commies”, as episodes like “The Omega Glory” dropped an rhetorical anvil on, and many of the creative have been very open about.
The reworking for THE MOTION PICTURE dodged a major bullet for the franchise, but in hiring a ton of people of color for TNG Klingons on, they just shifted the kinds of issues we’re still dealing with, to this day.
Making Klingons more noble doesn’t solve everything about that fact.
Suzanne
@Dan B:
I’m so sorry to hear about your friend.
I thought the criticism of Oppenheimer not elevating any Japanese voices or characters is…. a really important point. Hundreds of thousands of people suffered and died. That’s a critical part of that story.
bbleh
@Dan B: please God, at least tell me they’re White…!
strange visitor (from another planet)
@MisterDancer: imo, especially in regards to the political situation in the mid sixties, since the klingons were quite feared (eg: errand of mercy) and until the enterprise incident, the romulans were running around in sub-light, one-trick, clunky warbirds and then got upgraded to imported D7’s, i always took the klingons to be soviet analogues and the romulans to be chinese stand-ins.
obviously, your views may vary.
eta- and yeah, the original klingon look with the facepaint, eyebrows and fu manchu mustaches is very shady and problematic.
phein64
@Suzanne: I grew up in Kansas City in the 1960’s, and I, along with my 5 siblings, donated our teeth to science instead of the tooth fairy (google the Saint Louis Tooth Project). The research has moved to Harvard, and they sent someone to collect a blood sample last week, and I’m sending them toe nails this week.
We were hardly the only children to do this, and I’m sure that tons of people who grew up in the fallout zone in the 1950’s and 1960’s have similar experiences.
billcinsd
@Baud: IIRC, they make a Virologist Barbie and an Astrophysicist Barbie. The 2nd they could combine to make their own Barbieheimer movie and the first would piss off the right wingers even more than this one.
Suzanne
@phein64: That is fascinating. I had no idea. Thx for the link.
Geminid
@Suzanne: Yeach, but they did not have to do that. They could have just given Mirren some wrinkles and had her smoke like a chimney.
I was kind of sorry that they centered the movie on Golda Meir’s role as Prime Minister during the 1973 October War. I can see why they did, since it was such a dramatic situation. But she had a very interesting life and the movie had to leave almost all of it out. Maybe someone will do a miniseries about her some time.
schrodingers_cat
@strange visitor (from another planet): Link to one of the problematic tweets. Its a screenshot.
This woman’s contention that the Allies and the US wanted to put a top-secret lab in another country defies logic
Link to the tweet
Brachiator
@MisterDancer:
The Federation was a futuristic version of the United Nations, with Americans in charge. The Klingons were analogs for the Soviet Union. The Romulans were a mashup of Communist China and North Korea.
Many fans definitely read Klingons as Vikings or bikers. The old Compuserve forums were full of dreary conversations about this.
It is interesting to note that Dorn was brought in to help DS9. He was also probably the best thing about Picard Season 3.
MisterDancer
@Brachiator: then step up and clarify your use of imaginary. If you want to be brave enough to call me ignorant, explain how I got you wrong. I’ve never rejected a correction steeped in my ignorance of facts on the ground.
That said — I don’t have a personal opinion on the CELOPATRA casting, because I can’t be aware of everything. What I can do, is research. And I find, here, the one Egyptian that production consulted, and his words on the matter:
I’m not here to ONLY be right. I’m here to not just express opinions, but also to learn.
I don’t think there’s an easy answer to everything. But the point that casting cannot be blind is core here. The point that your opinion that you don’t care is, honestly, at best distasteful. A lot of people care really deeply, for a host of reasons, and to dump on them because you think Entertainment is the place to be as color (and otherwise) blind as Chief Justice Roberts when he kills Voting Rights and Affirmative Action just blows me away.
Citizen Alan
@strange visitor (from another planet):
I kind of agree with this point and I’ll add three more.
Wag
@bbleh: Do yourself a favor. Don’t wait.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@schrodingers_cat: ty. that tweet sounds like a very strange way to go about that argument
@Citizen Alan: i wanna say the feature film probably isn’t the right format for an anime per se, but then the cowboy bebop live action show tanked, so a series might not be the answer either.
but from what i understand, live-action gundam, macross and akira films are in the works, so we’ll see.
Geoduck
I read a second-third hand report that even people in Moscow are wearing pink because of Barbie.
MisterDancer
Going in reverse — yeah, Roddenberry said he based Romulans on them. He…failed to tell the whole story, and his version got into fandom.
Paul Schneider invented the Romulans and 100% based then on, as you’d expect, Romans:
That Memory Alpha article has all the citations and so forth, including that bit from Roddenberry about China being a model. There’s a reason it’s a brief reference at the end of this section; it’s clearly not what made it to the story.
And yes, I’m aware of the Kilngon as Soviet bit. I did reference the Omega Glory. My point is that in presentation they are 1000% yellow peril. They are actors in yellow face. They are OFFENSIVE.
I’m not sure how telling me some/many in the fandom thought they are Vikings is a sop to Asians, given the above.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Geminid: Have you ever seen this? (Link)
MisterDancer
@strange visitor (from another planet):
Why can’t a work have multiple issues?
Look, let me be clear — good, even great, writing does not solve cultural issues. Yeah, you can “get away” with stuff but that’s not a solution to fucking over a culture along the way.
Look at Trek. I ADORE The Original Series. It’s literally my first memory. I used to have entire episodes memorized.
But it still has gaping issues, and not just ones that have occurred to our culture in the last half decade. It’s (mostly) good to great writing doesn’t erase them.
No moreso than it erases how many people got treated during its run.
So yeah, I reject that I can only grapple with a work’s toxic elements if it’s written well. Critical analysis of any work must be able to approach from multiple angles, multiple ways to thinking about a text. I’m just focused on one, today, and that’s ok.
Dan B
@bbleh: Many victims were indigenous. They’re still trying to get compensation. Our government can be horrible. 80 years!
strange visitor (from another planet)
@MisterDancer: i’m sorry, maybe you misunderstood me. i don’t think the live-action ghost in the shell is a good mirror in which to reflect society and race issues in regards to hollywood casting and the major because the character isn’t japanese. batou, togusa and aramaki are clearly depicted as asians, but she isn’t.
she isn’t because she’s not. she’s a brain inside a robot body, and that body isn’t particularly ethnic, without epicanthic folds. she doesn’t have any visible national markers though she does sport a version of a british chelsea haircut.
so really, imo, the issue with the film shouldn’t be that they cast an american actor to play a robot, it should be that the goddamn plot as structured makes no sense and it posits that all the people closest to her, all the people who help her solve the mystery are in on the conspiracy in the first place.
but yeah, of course, one can focus on more than a single flaw in a work or raise more than one issue, no doubt.
(also, me too. mom was a total 1st run trekkie and i was raised on the stuff.)
Geoduck
@MisterDancer: The exact Klingon look evidently wasn’t planned at all: according to actor John Calicos, when he got cast as the first Klingon commander to appear on the show, he and a staff makeup artist had to slap something together because no one higher up in the system specified anything. And then Klingons ended up being the main bad guys on the show because they were a lot cheaper to portray than the Romulans.
Brachiator
@MisterDancer:
I never saw the Klingons as savage. A question. How often was a black person cast as an alien in original Trek? I believe, simply, that actors of color, and of various physical abilities, should be regularly cast in every available role. That’s what working actors want. A job.
Also, as an aside I remember when some obnoxious boneheads claimed that you could not have black Vulcans. Again, Vulcans are imaginary characters. They don’t exist. They don’t look like anything until you cast an actor in the role. And that actor helps define what the character is like.
I was clear about it the first time. And I would never insult you or any other jackal here.
The Macedonian Ptolemy, companion and successor to Alexander, conquered Egypt and founded a foreign dynasty. Some historians want to claim that his successors practiced incestuous marriages and sought mates only among other Macedonians. There is no absolute evidence for this, and I don’t much care, but I do acknowledge that this dynasty was not mainly native Egyptian. That’s just the facts.
But as I noted, I would cast a black actress as Cleopatra and keep on going.
Anyone making this claim is either a fool or Ron DeSantis.
That is not remotely what I said. I would cast a non-white person as the Little Mermaid, Snow White, Belle, Barbie and countless others because I do not believe that these kind of imaginary characters have any kind of “original” ethnicity that needs to be recognized. How you read this as controversial is beyond me.
Same applies to comic book, cartoon, mythical, and fantasy characters. Captain Kirk could be played by a black woman, I don’t care.
For roles that are not based on historical characters, diversity should always be considered. And I am not hard core on most historical characters.
gwangung
That it would be a major violation of the premise of the show, where the whole point is BIPOC actors playing the roles of white people, using language translated into the 21st Century argot of BIPOC people?
Citizen Alan
@strange visitor (from another planet):
Akira has been “in the works” for over 20 years. Wiki tells me that Taiki Watiti is attached to direct, though the absolute disaster that Thor L&T was may change that. Wiki also lists a number of 30- or even 40-something white guys they’re looking at to play Kaneda, the teenaged protagonist. Chris Pine?!? Seriously?!?
gwangung
That presupposes that identity and ethnicity is solely in the body, and that it has no connection to the experiences of the brain, which I always understood to have been born to typical Japanese citizens.
Ken
Well it won’t be Pine, obviously. It will be a CGI model generated by an AI starting with a 3D scan, motion-capture file, and 5,000 photos of Chris Pine, with the additional instruction “he should look like a teenager”.
At least, if I understand the studios’ plans which led to the current strike.
Sister Golden Bear
@Matt McIrvin: To be honest, yes, it’s ambiguous whether Spider Gwen is trans. But in trans people’s collective head canon she’s definitively trans. It’s part of a long tradition of the LGBTQ+ folks finding our own in liminally queer/trans-coded characters.
CaseyL
My understanding of Cleopatra’s lineage is that she was Ptolemaic, which is to say, a descendant of Ptolemy, one of Alexander the Great’s generals (and possibly his half-brother), who was “given” Egypt after Alexander’s death.
Ptolemy was Macedonian. Macedonians were not African, nor Asian, nor Semitic.
Also as I understand it, the Ptolemys not only did not marry among the indigenous Egyptian population, but married royal siblings to one another precisely to avoid that (Cleopatra was co-ruler with, and married, one and possibly two of her brothers) (consecutively, in between her affair with Caesar and marriage to Antony).
Roberto el oso
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: I’m pretty sure Marlon Brando wasn’t Jewish. I remember reading that one of his parents raised him as a Christian Scientist, but neither of them seem to have been very religious … but the families’ roots were Christian. If I’m wrong I’ll be delighted to learn something new about Brando!
Anoniminous
Chinese Communist Barbie Forces are real.
Be afraid Senator Cruz, be very afraid.
Roberto el oso
Since I’m old and out of it (kinda) I have to ask: is the Oppenheimer / Barbie connection just that they are both expensive movies released at the same time or is there some other thing linking them? I don’t remember seeing anything similar between 2 other films which would seem to have nothing in common.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@gwangung: i’m suggesting that the ethnicity or national origin of the actor playing that body is irrelevant. i mean, sure. the brain is allegedly a japanese person’s brain. but more importantly, imo, her ghost is motoko kusanagi. her body is artificial and could be portrayed by a one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple-people-eater… or it could be played by scarlett johansson.
@Citizen Alan: it’s kind of a bummer, bc ragnarok was SO good… but it feels like thor: love and thunder was stuck between a rock and a hard place. many competing interests and agendas in that movie. one of the darkest comedies i’ve ever seen, like, “ha! ha! we’re gonna open with child death-by-exposure, segue into some comedy, write out lebowski thor (seriously, did the russo brothers even watch ragnarok?) tell the jane (cancer) thor story, kidnap little children and let christian bale run amok as a god-butcher! then we’re gonna end with more child endangerment, an army of kids with the powers of thor, a cute resolve and then more child-endangerment before the post credit stinger welcoming the fallen to valhalla.” strange, mixed goddamn bag of a movie.
…but chris pine as kaneda is just the worst of stunt casting. he’s just soooo aged out of the part. they’re supposed to be teenagers in a bike gang, not having a college reunion. will kevin costner play tetsuo? is it akira or the big chill?
Sister Golden Bear
@Suzanne: I won’t comment on Oppenheimer since I haven’t seen it yet. But as far as trans characters this nails it:
A friend of mine who’s a trans woman actor got stellar reviews for an indie film she was in a few years ago. The reviewers astutely noted that she didn’t need to expend energy playing an trans character, as a cisgender actor would, which allowed her to channel all of her performance into bringing greater depth of her character.
Another key part of this is frankly also about the ability to simply work as an actor/writer/director. Pre-transition, my friend Rach was an accomplish Off-Broadway actor, who’d played numerous leading role. After transitioning, Rach left acting for more than a decade (and thought her career was over) because the only roles anyone would consider her for were the dead tranny hooker and the live tranny hooker — and no one willing to consider her playing non-trans characters. Adding to insult was seeing cisgender actors playing trans characters, and seeing the cis actors lauded for taking on such “challenging roles.”
HumboldtBlue
@CaseyL:
This is why we read this blog.
Geoduck
@Roberto el oso: That’s the joke: while both well-made, the two films have absolutely nothing in common.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Nor should there be any voices other than White men. They are the ones who developed these weapons of mass death. The rest of us have had to deal with the fallout.
Roberto el oso
@Geoduck: Thanks! :)
VeniceRiley
@gene108: My barbie play as a kid was with GI JOE and Barbie as international diamond smugglers. Now that’s a crossover!
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Roberto el oso: Oppenheimer was accused of being a pinko, while Barbie was unabashedly pink.
Oppenheimer also quoted the Barbie-vad Gita, “I put on my multi formed stilettos and become the destroyer of world’s fashion”
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Oppenheimer tested an atomic bomb at Bikini atoll. Barbie wore a bikini.
columbusqueen
@Geoduck: Yeah, most makeup decisions in TOS were all about doing it as cheap as possible. Compared to the lavish budgets Trek shows get today, Roddenberry had peanuts to spend. Overthinking this sort of thing isn’t particularly enlightening IMV.
NotMax
@columbusqueen
“You go with the make-up you have, not the make-up you wish you had.”
– Gene Rumsfeldberry.
:)
LiminalOwl
@NotMax: YES! I have been citing them for years.
Manyakitty
@JPL: probably dead thread, but I saw Barbie yesterday and loved it. Greta Gerwig RULES. People were clapping and cheering at all the right spots and I found myself in tears more than once.
Gvg
@MisterDancer: Roddenberry was the director and clearly got a lot more control over the way things actually got shown on our TVs. That said, I don’t think all viewers saw what he did (or any director) and remember the TOS had by intent different writers every week, so the story arc went in multiple directions…sort of like real life where even nations have different leaders and multiple opinions on how to achieve goals. I watched and did not think of Rome at all. I never thought Vikings. I don’t even think communist rival works. Old fashioned militaristic might makes right society yes, rival society for power definitely.
Badly made up human as aliens because we could not afford to do really more likely different shaped something else in a weekly show also check….I knew that wasn’t right as a kid and kind of ignored it. Enjoyed the show. Cost of the productions was one of the reasons it only got 3 seasons.
A lot of the analyzing was done in the 20 years between the first and 2nd series and I think some of it was hot air. But history doesn’t repeat it does rhyme. The stories often made us think about what was going on her and now, and that was intentional so at different times the opponent characters may have seemed to suggest something familiar.
MisterDancer
I cannot imagine how you watch “Errand of Mercy” and come away with any other impression. Indeed, it’s an interesting question about that in, to jump to the near-end of that crew’s run, THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. How far (and successful) does that narrative go in interrogating and questioning Kirk’s racist attitude — which is explicit about Klingons as savages who killed his son — towards Klingons? Esp. in the face of the peace work AND sabotage thereof, in that movie?
And that’s in an era where Klingons on the big screen are being played by people like Christophers Plummer and Lloyd. Which brings me to the next point:
Look. I’m trying to say a thing, and maybe it’s me who’s not clear. So I slept on it, and will go with this: You can’t just always put a Black person in a role and call it a day. To acknowledge another comment here, you also can’t just say “oops, someone happened to put on yellowface!” and then Keep It for a whole 3 seasons, and think that’s OK.
Dorn’s Worf, in fact, generated a whole generation of “alien warriors” stereotypes on Televised SF — Judge’s Teal’c in the STARGATE Franchise leaps to mind. And the vast majority are played by People of Color, really Just Men. And their roles are…limited, in a lot of ways that Dorn references when he talks about playing Worf.
So: Black actors on TNG weren’t getting cast for “every available role”. After a certain point, they were getting cast, too often, for Klingon roles. Not even “alien” roles, all too often! As I noted, DS9 was better — but there was real work put into making it better, work you don’t see in other Trek shows of that time, or just after with ENTERPRISE (Ask me about Travis Mayweather. Go Ahead.)
My point is that there’s bias in the system, prejudices. You can’t just say cast whomever and let a system like Hollywood sort it out, because it’ll sort out in favor of the same prejudices we claim to fight outside Entertainment.
To swing back — this is why I dislike your approach to “imaginary”. My point is that imagination has limits, and the need to break the limits — the prejudices of some, and the boundaries others get told, thru media, they exist in. Even if I cede a point — imaginary characters don’t exist in vacuums free of real-world bias.
If your approach to who gets what role isn’t mindful of that, then I cannot accept it. Not in a world where too many actors still fight to get meaningful roles in a system we know is unbalanced.
Not in a country we know, all too well, has people willing to kill to bring back Systemic Racism from sea to shining sea.
Falling Diphthong
@Brachiator: It was already being attacked by some men as being feminist, and by some women as not being feminist enough.
One of my favorite summaries of this quite widespread phenomenon: No one asks if Oppenheimer is feminist enough.
The movie is a memorabilia ride evoking fond childhood memories. And a deconstruction of current ideas about femininity. I think the latter is going to land much better wrapped up in the first. The Expanse, for example, has a lot of big ideas I enjoy, and it wraps them up in rip-roaring adventure with twists and turns and beloved characters.
If there is a Barbie 2: I Am Like Other Girls, it can dive right in with deconstructing the “Oh yawn. A movie about feminine stuff, obviously must be garbage” so prevalent in online discussions of the movie.
MisterDancer
SIGH. OK, I know this is dead, but I went to bed, and…well.
A few things:
And that’s…what it is, as far as it goes. I don’t expect people to love everything I love, that would be silly and not Trek-like AT ALL. :)
What I don’t expect is this approach to discussion where I point out very real issues like TOS putting people in yellowface, and how that reflected then-current trends, and seem to get shrugged shoulders. Much less how having so many Black/Brown actors playing reworked Klingons hits me, as a Black Man.
I mean, I love Trek — and a lot of other media — but also am saying it had issues, and some of those issues still resonate, today.
NotMax
@gvg
Roddenberry wore many hats throughout Trek’s existence but one labeled Director was never among them.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: I never said that. This is Oppeheimer’s biopic, how he put together the Manhattan project and those physicists solved what was a hard technical and scientific challenge in record time.
This movie is not about the Pacific theater. Imperial Japan is hardly the good guy here.
As for radiation sickness and its detrimental effects, a lot was not known about it. Many of the scientists who worked on the project died young including Fermi (lived until he has 53). They had some idea of the risks but not to the extent we know now. I am sure that warning the inhabitants in the fall out radius could have been handled better.
Manhattan project was responsible to a larger extent for changing the trajectory of American scientific establishment and replacing England and Germany as the scientific powerhouse of the second half of the 20th century
It is a complicated history that deserves to be told. I haven’t yet seen the movie and so don’t know whether the hyperbolic takes on Twitter are valid, that Nolan’s movie is rah-rah America.
Painting Oppenheimer as the monster of WW2 misses the mark which is what I see the tankie left doing.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@MisterDancer: dead thread, but i’m of the mind that american systemic racism is quite alive and well (or WAS) and highly visible in every trek show up until the modern era-
worf is raised on fables and fantasies by the roshenkos and bieves his people are honorable space samurai, when they are depicted as conniving, duplicitous backstabbers often in league with the romulans. he also gets his ass kicked SO often, an entire trope, the worf effect, is built around it; geordi is a sap who is basically the victim of the week when he’s not making sexdoll holograms of leah brahms. you mentioned mayweather, so we’ll skip him; kim’s not back, but he’s a sad sack who NEVER gets promoted and drstroys the voyager through failure or fuckup on a regular basis.
the one that gets me the most though, is tuvok. super-strong, super-smart, familiar with any number of space martial arts and with literally HUNDREDS of years and yet he’s the WORST chief of security in trek. on his watch, everyone takes over voyager and he fails on the regular.
the only one who escapes this curse is avery brooks, who’s sisko is one of the best portrayals of black-men-as-GREAT-dads on tv EVER.
new trek is largely dodging that bullet, but the REACTION to, say discovery and michael burnham shows that many FANS are still systemic racists.
NotMax
@strange visitor (from another planet)
Tuvix threw into sharp relief just what pathetically written, bumbling characters were Tuvok and Neelix.
janesays
@bbleh: It’s actually considerably more intelligent and subversive than I think you give it credit for.
Gerwig is a real talent.
Roberto el oso
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Okay! This is the sort of associative madness I can cheerfully get on board with!
Matt McIrvin
@Sister Golden Bear: There’s the pink-and-blue color scheme of her costume and the watercolor-ish washes in her world, too, which could be taken as significant symbolism–though I imagine that started out as an unintentional choice in the comics.
Matt McIrvin
@strange visitor (from another planet): The Ferengi started out in the early seasons of Star Trek: TNG as an embarrassing collection of antisemitic stereotypes straight out of old Nazi cartoons, whether or not that was intended (probably not, but still, it’s hard not to notice).
Deep Space Nine gave the Ferengi some nuance and dignity, but at the same time, it was kind of leaning into the identification, casting mostly Jewish actors as Ferengi and making them the comic-relief species.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Matt McIrvin: i always thought that their obsession with gold-pressed latinum and their inscrutable text, the rules of acquisition made the ferengi a particularly blatant jewish caricature, but in space.
i mean, there’s no money in the future, right? but not for the ferengi. “jews out in space, zooming along protecting the hebrew race”, indeed.