So here we are! The Last Good Movies, the final hegemonic cultural event as we stand here at the Beginning of the End of the End of History, the summer blockbuster epitaphs signifying the Point of No Return as automation threatens to obliterate human creativity and climate change threatens... well, endless summer and an end to human survival, I guess. I'm taking this opportunity to be pretentious and write, because I feel that I won't get another chance for a while, so I'm taking it and absolutely spoiling myself. Oh, that reminds me, Spoilers for both movies ahead.

I. Barbie: Feminism without class struggle is just playing with dolls

If you wanted a product review: yeah go see this movie. It's got everything that makes a good movie nowadays: a plot, characters, a banger soundtrack, pathos and bathos, humour, a 3-act structure, a hero's journey, meta-irony, a little magical realism and a little postmodernism. Especial mention must be made of the props: there is a return to an attention to physical detail that has otherwise vanished in the age of cgi, the texture of which sells you on the hyper-surreal Barbieland most of the story takes place in. Margot Robbie is going to get a well deserved Oscar for this performance, along with Gosling and America Ferrera (although Kate McKinnon deserves it more). If you wanted 2 hours of feel-good escapism, the kind of transcendental silver screen journey Hollywood used to promise with Spielberg and Lucas... I'd say go watch Across the Spider-verse instead (even if you're sick of superheroes), but you wouldn't go wrong here. If you only had to pick one between Barbie and Oppenheimer, this one's the more fun: It's going to obliterate Oppenheimer at the box office, because Barbie is funny and when the jokes land they really land. 10 outta 10.

But you didn't come here for a product review.

There's no deep allegory to unpack here, despite the movie being nothing but allegory: this is as straightforward a plea for the necessity of feminism even now, in 2023. The film's exploration of neoliberal "Sexism-is-solved!" false consciousness, oblique critiques of capitalism's role in patriarchy, it's demonstration of how patriarchy as an ideology reproduces itself followed by how it sows the seeds of it's own destruction that culminates in an absolutely show-stopping Ryan Gosling musical number about the importance of self-affirmation and the rejection of toxic masculinity... That it's not enough to be secure in your little neoliberal bubble or to wallow in self-pity and despair, but that securing feminist gains means taking mass political action (the entire "deprogramming" operation); that's the truly lasting and subversive take from the movie. No wonder all those MRA types are mad!

But.

But, we need to address the big plastic pink elephant in the room: Any criticism of patriarchy that does not comment on the role of capitalism in its system of oppression is incomplete. Yes, as stated above, there are oblique critiques, and yes, I get it, Mattel is bankrolling the movie and there will only be so far our corporate overlords will allow us to go, no matter how talented the director (and don't get me wrong, Gerwig is clearly very talented). I passed by a Toy-R-Us on the way to the cinema: I've never seen more grown women in there (wearing hot pink) than on that day. When the movie pays lip-service to the role of capital in patriarchy, it's writing thematic cheques it can't cash; Mattel is cashing those cheques in, probably to the delight of their shareholders. Maybe this undermines the message of the movie too fatally.

(That said, I hope Mattel finally sells Ben Shapiro the Ken Mojo Dojo Casa House he clearly wanted needed as a kid.)

Personally, I think this movie was the best version it was going to be under Capitalist Realism. There are important feminist messages here that need saying, especially in 2023, that people will hear for the first time from this movie. Even if it doesn't go far enough, even if the movie's message is too fatally undermined by capitalism absorbing it's critique... maybe we shouldn't have expected something like that from Hollywood in the first place; maybe it's on us to build a big pink slide from where the messages in the movie leave off to somewhere truly radical.

The movie ends with Barbie finally self-actualizing- her journey from stereotypical arch-conservative to awakened human being complete, the punchline being a visit to the gynecologist. Funnily enough, the piece of media that draws the most comparison for me is the original Evangelion; if Gerwig shot a scene where all the other Barbie's gathered around in a circle and clapped, while taking turns to say "Congratulations!" to Margot Robbie's character, I think that would have fit right into the movie perfectly. Gerwig even invokes Death of the Author, a bit too literally. Maybe that's the final take-away? That we just have to learn to self-actualize while living with the Capitalist alienation, at least until we can finally be rid of it? To move beyond a world of plastic ideals into the (historically) material?

I don't know. I'm just Ken.

Speaking of.

II. Oppenheimer: Or, How I Learned Not to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Oppenheimer is a pretty good movie. It's got pacing problems in the third act, which is a big problem in a 3 hour long movie- all the energy leaves after they drop the bomb (Spoilers!). Like all Nolan movies it's shot immaculately- I get the feeling that Nolan wants this to be his Magnum Opus, so he's reigning himself in and not indulging his worst instincts. No booming bass line to be heard; in fact, the best thing about the movie is the sound design. Cillian Murphy has a standout performance that grounds and carries the film, along with RDJ. Overall it's a Very Serious film about Very Serious Things- the kind of film that tends to win Oscars.

Oppenheimer is the more challenging movie compared to Barbie, at least in the viewing moment- there are multiple timeframes being presented at the same time (Nolan's signature at this point), so a lot of the enjoyment in the movie is picking up and piecing together the disparate narratives and arranging them into something cohesive in your head. Admittedly, there is a simple pleasure in doing just that.

The overall narrative however... well, the movie is about a guy who does something he regrets (to the film's credit, it treats the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with all the weight it deserves, and takes the position that the bombings were not necessary), and then the rest of the movie is about how he's punished for trying to act on those regrets and live his life according to his moral code, by those who have no such thing.

Sometimes the curtains really are blue.

What surprised me the most about the movie was it's politics- it's not particularly anti-communist, despite the setting and time period. (And despite the director.) No, the political calculus here is Liberal vs. Conservative, Democrat vs. Republican. Anti-communism is the antagonizing force yes, but it's a vague animus that empowers those who want to torment Cillian's Oppenheimer for his crime... of being a Great Man.

(I mean, it's kinda implied in the title. It's also the chief criticism I'll level against the film- that it's too preoccupied with Great Man Theory. Also, hilariously there aren't that many women in this story who are not defined by their relation to the titular character. Maybe that's why we needed the Barbie movie.)

And that's the thrust of the movie: that we're not able to solve the Big Problems of Our Times because petty, back-biting, self-serving (Republican) bureaucrats keep getting in the way of Great (Progressive) Scientific Men doing Great Things.

(In some ways, the Barbie movie isn't all that different from Oppenheimer. But we'll talk about that later. I suppose it shouldn't have come as such a shock that Nolan would be Liberal, rather than Conservative. In countries with an actual Left-wing the distinction isn't so deep.)

In the end, what Oppenheimer is is a pretty straight-forward biopic. Maybe the down-playing of Communism in Oppenheimer's history, to be replaced with Social Democracy can be seen as insidious (the character calls himself "A New Deal Democrat", when asked to defend himself from charges of communism): I'm not American, but as I understand it the general American audience is going to equate the two together anyway, and I don't think it matters because the movie isn't about Communism at all- offering neither critique nor defense. It's a much more simple story than that.

What I'm more interested in is what the film captures about the current zeitgeist- as a pretty universal story about the opening Pandora's Box, and the regret that follows, it's an allegory that's vague enough to apply to almost anything, like Artificial Intelligence.

But given how climate records have been breaking for... what, 16? straight days now? And how the final shot of the movie is the Earth with it's atmosphere on fire... that's how I choose to interpret this movie.

That it's about how we won't be able to solve the big problem of our time because small, petty men will not listen to scientists.

III. The End

I used the word epitaph deliberately, at the beginning. I can't think of a better pair of movies to define this moment in time- in these narratives we find the map of the limitations of the current prevailing ideology. The Barbie movie comes the closest to offering radical solutions, but that's undercut almost immediately by Capitalist Realism. Oppenheimer's Progressive Fatalism precludes solutions- there will always be Conservatives to stymie progress. That the discourse surrounding these movies is merely an extension of culture war bullshit and have almost nothing to do with the actual stories within the films themselves is just the cherry on top.

Taken together we're presented two options: Self-Actualization, or Great Man Pessimism.

Neither offer the hope of systemic change.

But why were we hoping for systemic change from these narratives in the first place?