Malcolm and Simone have an in-depth discussion about the underlying messaging in the new Barbie movie. They analyze how the movie portrays feminism, gender dynamics, and societal roles.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] obviously big spoilers in this, in this talk through I think structurally every part of the movie was literally as based as could be first part of the movie women, they do not treat men with any respect. This is seen as a world created from the aspirations of women in our society. Second part of the world, they go to the real world. It turns out the patriarchy doesn't exist, except in high school bookstores. Keep in mind, they could have gone to any bookstore. Could have been a public library.

Malcolm: It could have been a college. It's a high school bookstore. Then They come back to this world, Ken convinces everyone voluntarily to join this new reality

Malcolm: when they run into people who have beliefs that are different from them, or a way of structuring their lives that is different from them, they immediately say, these people must have been brainwashed.

Malcolm: She goes over, she brainwashes them all by making them sad because they were happy in [00:01:00] patriarchy land.

Malcolm: They are now sad outside of patriarchy land, right? Like, that's the process of the brainwashing. And then they take power again by taking advantage of men's good nature and genuine care for them while they have genuinely no care for men. Then... It ends with them taking complete control again, making all the men homeless again, , the man decides, MGTOW, very clearly said, MGTOW is the only real pathway for men.

Malcolm: Then the main character gets this whole, what was I made for song? And it's having kids, playing with kids, being a part of kid's life. I couldn't see anything more men's rights than this movie, scene per scene. It's

Simone: pretty weird. But then why is it then that progressive audiences apparently think that it's a very feminist film?

Would you like to know more?

Simone: . So Malcolm, what the hell was going on with the Barbie [00:02:00] movie? Like,

Malcolm: yes, we just watched it yesterday. And unironically, it may be one of the most based movies I've ever seen. But from a very weird perspective, like, I think, I actually question this. I... I know from interviews that the person who wrote it did not intend for it to be, have an incredibly anti feminist message.

Simone: Yeah, I don't think it's intentionally anti feminist, for

Malcolm: sure. My read is that either somebody in the editing process or somebody that had... Ability to influence the scenes that were shown and like dialogue lines occasionally.

Simone: This is my take and I think I have the correct take which is that feminism as it is today is so inherently anti feminist that any true depiction of feminist stances and views and world views is going to show how toxic it is.

Simone: I think that's what it

Malcolm: is. Well, we can talk through the movie and obviously big [00:03:00] spoilers in this, in this talk through and, and the audience can decide and add in the comments. Whether they think there was any, like, saboteur on the team trying to make the movie have, and

Simone: I think Feminism is its own saboteur, Malcolm.

Simone: No, no. So

Malcolm: what's really interesting about it, it had a really cohesive anti feminist message. It wasn't like bits and pieces. It was like really sort of clever in the way it was done. So first we'll start with, so we'll just go through the various stages of the movie with everyone sort of telling its own anti feminist message.

Malcolm: Hmm. Okay. So it starts in Barbie world, right? And it's sort of made clear throughout the movie that this original iteration of Barbie world is the female utopia that both women dream of the women who live in our world dream of. And that the you know, woke corporations are fighting to create.

Simone: Yeah, like, Every [00:04:00] Night's Girls Night. And it's Barbie's Dream House, not Ken's Dream House.

Malcolm: Well, so, there was a few things. So, one, Every Night's Girls Night was funny because it's, it's true. Like, you hear it and you're like, Yeah, but there's many bars where every night is actually girls night and there's never, almost never guys nights at any of these places.

Malcolm: Like it just sort of

Simone: subtly shows, I don't know, isn't every night guys night at a gay bar?

Malcolm: No, no, no. So girls nights, a specific thing where girls drink free at a bar. You've never been to a bar, so you don't know what I'm talking about. You've literally never been to a bar, so you literally have no idea what the humor in that joke is in Barbie world.

Malcolm: They say that as if it's some like. Comical great thing for women yet. It's reflected in the real world where every night is also girls night. And by real

Simone: world, we mean real world. And like, actually not in the movie. Cause there's

Malcolm: actually in our world and what it shows is our world is already so [00:05:00] comically feminist that it parallels.

Malcolm: Many things in this, in this fever dream world that she started in, but a really telling part of this fever dream is that the men in it are one homeless. It was true. They're, they're one homeless. Yes. Two, none of them have a job. And, and three, they live solely to try to please women.

Simone: Well, they are only relevant on a day where Barbie recognizes them.

Simone: They're only relevant when they have, they are an accessory to Barbie. Yeah. Right.

Malcolm: But they live to please these women, which is interesting because I think if you look at the you know, I think many, obviously there's the most extreme red pill fever dreams and stuff like that. But in many conservative fever dreams I think that women would still have a role.

Malcolm: They'd still have homes. They'd still, you know, when they were born, it wasn't that they were born purposeless. But I think what we're seeing here Is the fantasy of the actual ideal world that, that, that some women in our [00:06:00] current society and like the woke companies strive for is this dystopia. But it gets really interesting when she goes, well, actually, do you have any more thoughts on this part of the movie?

Simone: Well this shows up in several stages of the movie, but it's also super clear from the very beginning that Barbie is extremely asexual. Like there's one scene where Barbie has a big blowout party at her house. And at the end, this is also in the promotional materials, Ken says, Hey, like, I'd like to stay over tonight.

Simone: She's like, Oh, why? He's like, because we're boyfriend and girlfriend. And she's like, to do what? And he's like, I really don't know. And I just feel like the asexuality of both of them also kind of points to the plummeting right now. I mean, we are looking at a more. The sexless society right now where people are living alone, they, they, they, they may pretend to have boyfriends and girlfriends or have performative boyfriends and girlfriends, but not really be intimate with other people, which is something that was also pretty.

Simone: Pretty big in this world even the way that they acted, like in, in the opening scene, you know, Barbie wakes up and she's in her dream house and she's just, hi Barbie. And she just says hi to all [00:07:00] these people. And it also feels very similar to me, just the way people interact very shallowly online, just liking each other's posts and kind of seeing each other everywhere and feeling kind of surrounded by people, but never having any form of deep conversation or engagement.

Simone: But yeah,

Malcolm: but the point of this initial world, right. It is the ideal that many women strive for or wish existed, right? Like that is why they're playing out this world. Right. Yeah. And I think something that you captured in what you were seeing there are two things. One is this ideal relationship she has with a guy is one in which she is not committed to him in any meaningful context.

Malcolm: A one in which they do not sleep together. She has to do nothing for this guy, but he just adores her. And, and basically. She keeps her primary guy as a permanent side piece or what in the real world would be a permanent side piece. Friendzoned,

Simone: but without being explicitly friendzoned, but yeah. Well,

Malcolm: that's what a side piece is.

Malcolm: I know that you could never. I know.

Simone: I think I thought [00:08:00] side pieces were people you still kind of sleep with, friendzoned

Malcolm: people. No, no, no, no, no. So the ideal perfect side piece is somebody who's just always there for you as a backup, but you don't even have to sleep with. But anyway, we can, we can talk about the, semantics of this later, the point here being that's their relationship, that he is just this permanent attachment to her, that she needs to invest nothing in, and that she genuinely cares nothing about.

Malcolm: Yeah,

Simone: it's pretty clear that Kens in this world are kind of existentially depressed and... Well, no,

Malcolm: but this is also true throughout the movie. It's not that they're existentially depressed, it's that they existentially do not matter. And this is not true when the Kans take over, but we'll talk about this in a second.

Malcolm: . So then, Barbie, for plot contrivances, goes to the real world.

Malcolm: Now, this is sort of stage two of the movie, where they're contrasting her in original world to her in real world. And, the most interesting thing that you're sort of supposed to be tracking [00:09:00] is, What's going on with both her and Ken in the real world. Who stows away.

Simone: Who what? Who stows away. Who comes along.

Simone: Oh

Malcolm: yeah. Who stows away and comes along. Yeah. She didn't think to bring Ken, of course, because Ken doesn't matter to her throughout the entire world. He is a non human to her. She treats him genuinely horrendously throughout the entire movie. So he, he stows along and in the real world, a joke that is consistently seen is Ken and her.

Malcolm: See a patriarchy, right? And yet the joke is the patriarchy does not exist in. So far as like Ken goes to a hospital and he asked the first person he sees, can I talk to a doctor? And it's a woman, right? And he goes, no, no, no. Could I talk to a doctor? And then. He runs off after a random man thinking that he must be the doctor.

Malcolm: The point being is that the patriarchy doesn't exist in this world in the real world. Okay. Women have [00:10:00] equality in the real world. The only place that women don't have equality in the real world as, as seeing through the eyes of Barbie and Ken is within this fictionalized corporation, Mattel, but within Mattel Sort of supposed to be a different supernatural location in, in, in sort of the eyes of the movie.

Malcolm: Like, people in Mattel are doing weird things. I'd say it's almost sort of Zoolander ized. It's not totally Barbie world, but it's definitely on its way to being Barbie world. So, it can sort of be discounted as, like, a meaningful thing outside of, like, A progressive fever dream. But anyway, the gist is, is Ken's in the real world, Barbie's in the real world, there is no patriarchy.

Malcolm: Women have equality. But Ken learns about the real world through books he finds, I believe it's on a college campus, or it's on a high school campus.

Simone: It's, it's on a high school campus. Basically he like sees first off that like men have jobs and it kind of blows his mind. And then he sees within some corporate offices, men like actually being [00:11:00] important and actually kind of shutting women down.

Simone: Occasionally he sees men getting out of cars, men wearing suits, people indicate that they respect him and will ask him questions. And then he goes to the library after seeing like billboards and the dollar bill and like pictures of presidents and pictures of men playing golf. He, he like gets a bunch of books on like horses and the patriarchy and he develops this caricature understanding of what patriarchy is and just assumes that the real world is patriarchy.

Simone: So

Malcolm: I would disagree with your assessment of stewardship. Really? Okay. What it is showing is two things. One, he is coming from this fever dream that women would create if they could like, like the scene is like this one end state of the feminist movement. Right? I think like the most delusional version of the feminist movement and he is shocked that men are allowed to do things like drive cars.

Malcolm: He is like his big win is somebody thought to ask him what the time was that he was treated at the most base level like a human being. This is what's shocking to him, and then he wants [00:12:00] to learn about this, so he goes at the center of indoctrination in our society, right, to a high school, and he reads about the concept of the patriarchy, because this is what he's trying to learn, he's like, okay, what's, what's going on in this world, what's going on in society, so he goes, and he reads about the patriarchy.

Malcolm: Now what's really important is this knowledge he's getting about the patriarchy is one, it's clearly seen, this is what's being taught to young kids in our society, okay? But it is not from the actual experiences he has in the world, and this is fascinating to me. So then he goes back to Barbie World, and he tries to set up the patriarchy as he has read about it from the perspective Of progressives, right?

Malcolm: And what's fascinating about this is one, they are telling you, this is what we fear or the way that we perceive the world as [00:13:00] actually being Ken world within this Barbie world is the world that little girls are taught exists when they become adults, it's the world that they are taught exists in boardrooms.

Malcolm: It's the world. They are taught exists in companies when they are in high school, but it is just as much of a fever dream. As this, what would happen if feminists won fever dream? So

Simone: I see what you described differently and I don't, yeah, I mean, that's one way of interpreting it. I think he more got a caricature of patriarchy and just saw what he wanted to see and saw an aesthetic.

Simone: And what I actually see is more like he feels to me very representative of the like bronze age pervert facet of the internet. Where like their vision of masculinity and the patriarchy doesn't actually. Represent very accurately

Malcolm: historical. He learned nothing about the patriarchy from conservatives.

Simone: No, I know. I know he did. I know. But what I'm saying is I think that present like masculinity conservatives who also haven't learned anything about the patriarchy from [00:14:00] conservatives have a caricature of masculinity. That they hold to be the patriarchy. And it's for them, it's like pirates and warlords and, you know, the bronze age.

Simone: But for Ken in this movie, it was cowboys. It was, it was like, Oh, men horses are just men extenders. And it's all about men and horses ruling the world together. And it was caricature, but still it felt to me much more like the caricature was

Malcolm: not developed by men. It was not developed by conservatives, it was developed entirely by progressive, like, gender study academics.

Malcolm: That is the books he was reading, and that is the books he used to create

Simone: this world. He wrote, no, he read, yes, he read a book of, I would say maybe you're a little bit right, and I'm a little bit right. He got a book on horses, and he got a book on the patriarchy.

Malcolm: , I will say that this is a really interesting and telling part of the plot point, so if we're seeing Kin's vision, the one that he tries to create in Barbie World, as being a Feminine understanding of what the patriarchy is, right?

Malcolm: Like, like this, this fever dream that was created by gender studies [00:15:00] academics in the actual world of men's rights and everything like that. Simone, you correctly point out that a lot of them live for this aesthetic, right? You know, you've talked about like raw egg nationalists or whatever, like eating raw eggs, like Gaston or something, but none of them, none of them that I'm aware of.

Malcolm: Are actually into horses like this is not something that any actual men's rights group has picked up. But what's really interesting is when feminist organizations end up trying to appeal to men's rights groups. They always go for horses. So remember when Bud Light had that massive? F**k up. And, and everybody, nobody wanted to buy their products anymore.

Malcolm: And then that ad they wrote to try to make it better was like horses running in a field and like talking about how they're still

Simone: connected. I thought they were trying to hearken back to their old Clydesdale. Wasn't that Bud Light too? The Clydesdale Super

Malcolm: Bowl ads? I don't know. But the point being is that when feminists try to idiotically communicate with masculine men, They very frequently use horses, which is really interesting [00:16:00] because almost no men's group actually uses horses to intercommunicate masculinity.

Simone: Which I just said in beer in the Barbie movie, actually

Malcolm: yes, it's horses and beer, but horses are a key part of it, as you pointed out. So anyway he goes back to the Barbie world. And he creates this kin utopia and he, what's really notable about the kin utopia is a few things. One, the women in it are happy.

Malcolm: They like what they're doing and they have roles within this world. They may not be these high status roles, you know, like, jokes are made of like, well, now the Supreme Court, like, what are they doing? Hanging out with the guys and like serving them beer and stuff. But they are roles. They matter. The Kims want to live in the same houses with the Barbies.

Malcolm: What is being said here, which is what is fascinating, is that even from the perspective [00:17:00] of the, the feminist fever dream of what the patriarchy is, the patriarchy is both better than what they would create if they won, or if you're talking about like an equity perspective. And it's better than what people have in the real world.

Malcolm: It's even better than what women have in the real world. And this gets to a really interesting scene in the movie where Barbie comes back. Right. And she sees that the world has been changed. And she asks the other Barbies, why are you doing these things? And the other Barbies tell her logically why they're doing these things.

Malcolm: They're like, look, I want a mental break. My brain needed a massage for a while. Like this is actually, I'm having fun and her interpretation. Now, keep in mind, she basically, this is what we see. They do seem to just be having fun. [00:18:00] Her interpretation is that they have been brainwashed. And this is so, it's such a great interpretation because it's so the way progressives are.

Malcolm: When they run into people who have beliefs that are different from them, or a way of structuring their lives that is different from them, they immediately say, these people must have been brainwashed. And, and what's then really a great, I thought, like, subversion moment is she gets in this car where they all dress like they're in a cult.

Malcolm: Like, to me, this just seems like the obvious thing. Like, so they all dress the same, they all dress like they're in a cult, and they send other women out there to distract the guys and then kidnap the women. And un brainwash them. And, very clearly they're brainwashing them. Like, it looks like a brainwash van, right?

Malcolm: And what's fascinating about this is it is the way that progressives so often do things [00:19:00] like Antifa calling themselves an anti fascist organization, when what they fight for is like literally exactly fascism. You know, so often. The left will just like take a concept and then name, name something the exact opposite of what it actually means or what it actually does.

Malcolm: But there's another really interesting thing that happens in these scenes where the way that the Barbies engage the Kins to distract them is by asking the Kins for genuine help. Like they'll say, I'm having problems like understanding how to use Photoshop or I'm having some problems with my investing.

Malcolm: And it's not like stupidly obvious problems either. It's not obvious that the kins are condescending them or anything like that. It's just the kins are excited to genuinely help them. And, and genuinely try to, to share information with them about topics that they are interested

Simone: in. But of course, again, like, I think someone hearing this and having not watched the movie would be like, Okay, [00:20:00] so this is clearly an anti feminist movie.

Simone: No, really. Like what I think the filmmakers were trying to do is demonstrate that men simply cannot resist an opportunity to mansplain. And that the trap was to mansplain. Another thing I'd note about the quote unquote brainwashing of the, of the Barbies is that actually they come across as just as Stepford wifey and brainwashed at the beginning, like when they're all just in happy Barbie world.

Simone: And second, there is no evidence that there was any malpractice or, or manipulation. When Ken returned to Barbie world and everyone changed their behavior, it sounds like, I mean, realistically, what Ken probably did was just return so excited about a world in which men have rights and like men rule the world and it's so cool and look at this and then just told everyone about it.

Simone: And everyone was like, that sounds really fun. Let's play with this. So while it's implied that, or well, while the main characters, well, the main characters think that there's been brainwashing, there's no actual like hard evidence that there has been [00:21:00] any, only they do the brainwashing, only the female

Malcolm: characters get to the actual brainwashing scenes in a second, but I want to say why I don't think, so you're saying like, no, as a woman, you may not like.

Malcolm: You'd have to be so brainwashed to not see what's happening in this scene within our society, right? So if they had wanted it to look like just generic mansplaining, I think Kin would have been, like the Kins would have been helping the Barbies do stupidly easy things, you know, not like manage different layers within Photoshop or like manage a complex investment portfolio.

Simone: No, no, no. Sorry. That's, that is the way people are accused of mansplaining. I'm, I'm completely serious when I say this. Okay.

Malcolm: Yes, I agree. I agree. It's the way people are accused of mansplaining when they transparently shouldn't be accused of mansplaining. And that's why I think the movie is anti feminist in those moments is because in every one of these moments that is very clear they're thinking, or somebody on the set is probably thinking mansplaining, what is actually happening [00:22:00] is the men are just trying to help after being asked to help.

Malcolm: Which is different. And also keep in mind, and we'll mention this now because this is a scene that happens near the end of the movie, is it's pointed out by sort of the god of this world, this character Ruth, that, the creator of Barbie, that both Barbie and the patriarchy are imaginary concepts that do not exist in the real

Simone: world.

Simone: That people make up because life is

Malcolm: hard. That people make up because life is hard, but it is pointed out point blank spelled out in the dialogue of the movement. The patriarchy is made up, but I mean, that's

Simone: a little damning, but I, I still, I still

Malcolm: hold to my point. Hold on, but we're going to come back to, because this is also really interesting.

Malcolm: When the women come from the real world to kin world, the way that they brainwash the women into thinking that the men are horrible is basically just like going over a bunch of feminist talking points about how unhappy they are [00:23:00] and how hard it is to be a woman. But what's really interesting in this transformation is these women who this happens to were not unhappy.

Malcolm: In patriarchy world, they were not unhappy before they were told that they should be unhappy until they were brainwashed, be unsatisfied with the world as it is structured under this patriarchy. That was fascinating to me. Yeah, that was quite interesting. .

Simone: So it's interesting to see. What Ken world ends up being this caricature that as you put it, Malcolm is feminists picture of what men fully living out the patriarchy.

Simone: It looks like. So the themes and basically the Ken's take over the Barbie dream houses and trick them out Ken style, which apparently mostly means putting TVs everywhere. On TVs are just images of horses. They, they add a lot of like complicated remotes and there's beer [00:24:00] everywhere, so they get foot massages and they have beer and.

Simone: There are horses everywhere and big cars and that's that's kind of it. Aside from like big Like pimp jackets, Ken starts to wear this giant furry pimp jacket Which he seems to love. So it's interesting, but

Malcolm: they, they, they, they still They do more parties. They drink more beer. No,

Simone: I mean, there's drinking.

Simone: There's beer for the first time because beer is this symbol of masculinity. But there is no less partying than pre Ken world. It just happens to be that they're, like, more masculine style parties.

Malcolm: Okay, okay. I'll buy that. Alright, so we get to the, the after the scene scene is it makes really clear... That the women in the Barbie world, under the patriarchy, are happier than even women in the real world.

Malcolm: And I thought that was really fascinating. It was only by breaking them [00:25:00] out... of this system, that they became systemically unhappy and, and that that was part of the brainwashing procedure. But anyway, so they break them out and they have this plan to disrupt the kins, to distract the kins. Can you talk about this, Simone?

Malcolm: Because this was really fascinating. Yeah,

Simone: and it was brutal seeming and it just made the protagonists look really terrible because basically they decided they needed to distract the Kens from changing the constitution of Barbie world to let Kens rule forever or something like that. So in order to do that, they decided that they would all express romantic interest in all of the Kens and watch wrapped as they played the same song on.

Simone: Guitars. And then pretend to be distracted by or into a different Ken and then switch places and go to that other Ken to make all the Kens jealous of each other and prompt all the Kens to fight each other which is

Malcolm: just like, so Before we go further, there's a few scenes here that are really worse.

Malcolm: It is made explicitly clear throughout this [00:26:00] that Ken, within the patriarchy, genuinely cares about Barbie. Wants her to be happy and wants to be together with her. Well,

Simone: he also expresses frustration. I mean, he does kick her out of her house and throw all of her clothes out. So, it's not like he's been...

Simone: When she treats him really poorly. Yes, well, she does. She had that coming, but I'm just saying, like, One, I do want to give two caveats. One, this is not the ideal world for women. This, like, Ken No, no, no, no, no. Because they took all women out of all positions of power. But that doesn't mean that the women hadn't done the same thing.

Simone: It's just like, okay, well, that's not an ideal world. And also, you know, Ken did.

Malcolm: But hold on. So yes, there's the scenery kicks right over the house. But after that scene, This is when this beach scene happens. She's like, I want to get back together with you. And he's like, that's all I've ever wanted. Like all I've ever wanted.

Malcolm: And this is after kicking her out of the house is to make you happy, is to live a life with you is for this house. To be the Barbie and Ken house and not just the Barbie dream house. It is, it [00:27:00] is clear that he has only ever had the best intentions for her and had different ways of doing that. Whereas throughout the movie, it is made explicitly clear in the dialogue that she never ever cared what happened to Ken.

Malcolm: At best, she just wanted him out of her life. That she never cared and she was willing to use his care and appreciation for her to hurt him and his ambitions whenever possible. And in this scene that you're describing, that's what happens. She is trying to, in Barbie language, convince Ken that another one of his friends was making a move on her.

Malcolm: When they were not. This was a lie. She was one, not interested in Kin, and two other Kins were not interested in making a move on her. I mean, do you want to talk a bit more to this, or?

Simone: It's just extremely manipulative. Like, I don't know how, I do suppose that that's a point against this being a complete, like, [00:28:00] feminist movie that ended up just seeming anti feminist because It's really hard to make that kind of manipulation look good like that in the

Malcolm: entire movie.

Malcolm: She never does anything kind or generous or, or to help other people, which is not true of Kim. And it's not true of the kins more generally. In fact, I would say that the way that the kins go out of their way to help the Barbies when they're distracting them is literally nicer than any single thing that the protagonist does throughout the entire course of the movie.

Malcolm: And that is wild. The way that they hurt the kins is by manipulating and this is almost like this is almost more of a red pilly message than I would work into a movie. The way that, in this movie, women manipulate men is by utilizing men's genuine care for women because women are incapable of caring for men in the same way that men care for women.

Malcolm: Like that seems to be the message of this part of the movie. Yeah,

Simone: not gonna disagree with you there. [00:29:00]

Malcolm: Let's talk about the resolution of the movie because it is equally like, I don't know, to me, it really spells. So, so one in this scene where the Barbies distract the kids, it's only temporarily like the kids never really, they just sort of play fight with each other and then realize that they all really like each other and are happy together and that they don't really have any conflict with each other.

Malcolm: And they do this on their own. It's not like some outside force or the Barbies come in and help The kins make up with the other kins the kins do this on their own, which again, it's very different than what I would expect if this had a genuine feminist message where the Barbies would help the kins resolve things.

Malcolm: So the kins resolve things on their own, just not fast enough to prevent the Barbies from changing the laws. So no kin can ever have power again and the extent to which they want no kin. So you would think like, to me, if this was actually a feminist movie, at the end, the Barbies would realize that they were wrong in the way that they treated the kins and they would introduce some level of equity [00:30:00] into the world.

Simone: Yeah. Like maybe let's share, cause in the beginning, for example. It's only Barbies on the Supreme Court. And at the end, you know, the, the formerly dethroned, dethroned President Barbie, then, you know, of course repacks the Supreme Court with all female Barbies. And then one male Barbie comes up to him and is like, Hey, you know, we'd love to have one seat on the Supreme Court.

Simone: And she's like, no, maybe something really low, like a lower circuit court. And it's just insane. Like there's no concession at all. What it

Malcolm: shows is that there is no concession in our society. There is no conception from the feminist perspective. What this movie is, this is the feminist, so the feminist perspective, what many women actually want the world to be like, reestablishes dominance within this world, and what they actually want the world to be like is a world in which men have no power.

Malcolm: That is the message of the movie. To the extent where the men are then kicked out of the houses again, the men then become homeless again. At the end of the movie, the kids are not given homes. They are not allowed to live with the [00:31:00] Barbies. They are not allowed to have jobs. They are again, treated worse than they treated the women when they had power.

Malcolm: And no, it's really clear

Simone: in the movie. It is. Yeah. It's like, imagine that there was like a feminist movement. And then at the end, it was like no, you failed. Yeah. There's some of this thing where like, Ken puts on this t shirt that says, I'm Kenuff. I'm Ken, you know. Well, the message

Malcolm: they give to men, the message they give to Ken is he needs to learn to be happy without women.

Malcolm: Yeah, basically just

Simone: go MGTOW. Not

Malcolm: wrong. It's unironically MGTOW is the right answer for men. That is unironically. The resolution, the story resolution for Ken whereas the story resolution for Barbie is that she becomes human and at the movie, it's like let up so you think she's getting a job, but no, she's been thinking of gynecologist.

Malcolm: So it's that she gets a woman and she gets, she, she gets to be a human woman and she gets to have a [00:32:00] vagina and indulge in sexuality. Like that's what's.

Simone: Yeah, they play off. Yeah. When she decides to go to the real world and be a human, and there's a scene at the very end where like other human friends are basically driving her in a car and they're like, I'm so proud of you.

Simone: And she gets out. And as a viewer, you're expecting that she's going to some big job interview. And no, she goes to a gynecologist. And that's the end. And

Malcolm: with, with my framing of this, do you believe that somebody sabotaged Lee was on the set trying to make this a men's rights message? Because it has almost no part of it that genuinely gets across a feminist message, whereas almost every interaction seems to get across a men's rights message.

Simone: Maybe, you know, maybe I'll switch to say that it is a very feminist movie. But by depressed feminists having an existential crisis. How about that? Like, this like theme song at the end, like in the [00:33:00] closing credits, is this like sad voice singing, What was I made for? Kind of like, What purpose do I have?

Simone: And it's kind of like, Well, you know, evolutionarily, you have a purpose. And it kind

Malcolm: of involves things, but It's specifically referencing Barbie, And, and, and so, It's showing what she was made for, but what is really fascinating about it is through that they're saying, what were women made for? What do women truly aspire for?

Malcolm: And what's interesting is what's playing in the background during the song, which is kids playing. It's mothers. Like, with their kids.

Simone: Well, and it was interesting also, we forgot

Malcolm: to You were made for your kids.

Simone: And we forgot to even mention the beginning of the movie, where they talk about like how basically up until Barbie Girls played with dolls and girls played at being mothers and they show a bunch of little girls [00:34:00] in like a Space Odyssey kind of context playing with dolls and apparently looking very bored and sort of the message was like, oh It sucks to only be a mother.

Simone: That was terrible And then like and then and then you got a new doll Yeah, I'm like, you know now this doll that was model off of a sex toy is now available and you can be anything Like a sex toy and it's kind of interesting because it does sort of show the Like curve of a female desirable attainment or status seeking over time where like it used to be like the big status thing you do is be like a successful mother and, and now it's gone to like being a successful.

Simone: Sex symbol, as long as you can possibly do that, which also leads to a lot of very unfortunate filtering and plastic surgery and trying to make things work when you're never going to compete with a 20 year old, et cetera. So, yeah, that was also like a really, like already in the beginning of the movie, it was like, oh, whoa, like this is also talking about like demographic collapse, prenatalism, like why [00:35:00] our culture isn't producing families and children anymore.

Simone: It's amazing.

Malcolm: Yeah, no, I mean, it almost cohesively to me. Is, is the most anthem movie of the men's rights movement

Simone: I could conceivably reproduce. Sorry, just how ironic is

Malcolm: that? But like, But it starts with the girls playing with like wholesome toys and it is very clearly shown the contrast between the Barbie and the dolls. is the sexualized nature of the Barbie. And it's this moment where they're like, this is when we realized we could sexualize little kids.

Malcolm: This is when we realized we could sell little children, little girls, a sexualized image.

Simone: And make it aspirational.

Malcolm: Yeah. And make it aspirational. And that was really weird. Like I, I, I kind of, I kind of love what the movie was, was, was saying at the end of the day, I am surprised. I know some conservatives have been like, actually, this movie is, is, has many based aspects of it, but I [00:36:00] think structurally every part of the movie was literally as based as could be first part of the movie women, they do not treat men with any respect. This is seen as a world created from the aspirations of women in our society. Second part of the world, they go to the real world. It turns out the patriarchy doesn't exist, except in high school bookstores. Keep in mind, they could have gone to any bookstore. Could have been a public library.

Malcolm: It could have been a college. It's a high school bookstore. Then They come back to this world, Ken convinces everyone voluntarily to join this new reality from what we can tell, and from what the other Barbies tell the main, she They must have been brainwashed. She goes over, she brainwashes them all by making them sad because they were happy in patriarchy land.

Malcolm: They are now sad outside of patriarchy land, right? Like, that's the process of the brainwashing. And then they take [00:37:00] power again by taking advantage of men's good nature and genuine care for them while they have genuinely no care for men. Then... It ends with them taking complete control again, making all the men homeless again, taking all the power from the men again, and then the main character leaves for the real, the man decides, MGTOW, very clearly said, MGTOW is the only real pathway for men.

Malcolm: Then the main character gets this whole, what was I made for song? And it's having kids, playing with kids, being a part of kid's life. I couldn't see anything more men's rights than this movie, scene per scene. It's

Simone: pretty weird. But then why is it then that progressive audiences apparently think that it's a very feminist film?

Malcolm: Because they're dumb. They're, they're literally so brainwashed. It's like they have it on their eyes. Actually, so this is a great point. If you're saying, how did the [00:38:00] person who wrote this or the director of this not see the way that I think somebody on set was changing it into a men's rights movement film?

Malcolm: It's because they were so blinded by progressivism, they couldn't see what they were actually saying.

Simone: I disagree. I disagree. I think that the the people who are most instilled in progressivism. Also subtly no, though they may not ever directly communicate it. So it will show up as somewhat indirect like this that it's not working out for them.

Simone: Like, you know, we were just this morning offline, obviously not recorded talking about my mom and like the fact that when she was in, in college, she studied gender studies. She worked at an abortion clinic. She worked at a feminist bookstore. Like she was totally like the, you know, feminist young woman.

Simone: And she really tried to balance being a mother and having a career and it didn't work. And, and there are just so many aspects of feminism that just don't work for people because they, they don't allow [00:39:00] you to, to have certain things that, you know, they, they, they try to force an impossible balance that you actually could balance well if you did things differently, but that's not the way you're allowed to do them.

Simone: And I think that's maybe what's going on here is that. There, there are many, many feminist people who also see that society seems to be quite broken right now that their lives are not as satisfying as they want them to be, that there's all these problems that they don't really know how to address, that they have mental health issues, so that things aren't quite right.

Simone: And so that will show up in their work and that will show up in stuff that they say is feminist because they are feminist, right? But,

Malcolm: you know. I think that's a great point to end on and it's something we'll talk about in an upcoming video that we'll film soon, which is how can we actually make women work durably in a society?

Malcolm: Pretty clear. That the world that progressives have created is not a world in which women are actually happy. And, and, and keep in mind that this world is the one that the, the women's are coming into the Barbie world and talking about all this existential unhappiness they have. But I think it's also clear that the world that used to exist before that was also a world in which many [00:40:00] women were unhappy.

Malcolm: So let's talk about a new sustainable vision for femininity. And I've had such a great time talking with you today. And I love that we get these little date nights and stuff like that

Simone: together. Me too. Thanks, Malcolm. I love you. Thanks.

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