{"id":3101,"date":"2023-08-18T06:55:22","date_gmt":"2023-08-18T06:55:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/?p=3101"},"modified":"2023-08-18T06:45:41","modified_gmt":"2023-08-18T06:45:41","slug":"in-the-pink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/2023\/08\/18\/in-the-pink\/","title":{"rendered":"In the pink"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Image: a Barbie billboard poster that is just is so impressive. Source: Reproduction via RockContent<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

I am reasonably sure that I have never even seen a Barbie doll in real life, yet I came out of the cinema last weekend wishing I’d written the Barbie movie. Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach wrote a film that is so clever, so joyous and so sad that they made me feel for a plastic doll I’ve never seen or thought about before.<\/p>\n

There are things I’m not keen on, such as one gag about Mattel cancelling a particular type of Barbie doll. It’s good, but then it’s practically repeated later. I’ve read that in scripts before, where a gag was being tried out in two scenes but you have to pick one or you diminish both.<\/p>\n

Then there’s a narrator at the start and unless a narrator is lying to me, unless they are what’s known as an unreliable narrator, I have a problem with them because they are problematic. Barbie’s narrator does what they all do: talks a lot at the start, comes back for a quickie sequence in the first half hour, and is then forgotten about completely.<\/p>\n

Except then she comes back to throw in a line that is very self-aware about this being a film. Without giving it away, the line is funny but it comes so late that you’ve forgotten there is a narrator — and it comes precisely at the right time to undercut Margot Robbie’s performance as Barbie.<\/p>\n

She is extraordinary. Barbie manages to remain plastic and unmistakably doll-like, yet also convey happiness and fear and betrayal. It’s deeply impressive and also very funny, except when it is heartbreaking.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, this script is replete with jokes that I both get and wish I’d written, and I am certain it is also replete with at the very least the same number of jokes again that I simply didn’t get. Poor comedy just uses references it knows its audience will recognise, but great ones do exactly that with such a light touch that if you don’t know the reference, you don’t even realise it’s been referred to.<\/p>\n

The only reasons that I know there is so much I missed is how the film is a ceaseless barrage of spoken and visual gags, and you come to realise the background has as many as the foreground. Plus YouTube has half a pound of videos detailing all the bits everyone missed.<\/p>\n

So there is all this going on, but Barbie doesn’t exclude you just because you happen, like me, to not know the history of the doll.<\/p>\n

Absolutely brilliantly, it also presents every criticism Barbie has had over the years and it does so without flinching or apologising. It is brutal about Mattel, too.<\/p>\n

I can’t stop thinking about that streak of – I was going to say viciousness, but no, I think it’s a vein of strength. The film sets up this fantastical pink world but doesn’t do it by being cloying or saccharine, it somehow does it while also being pragmatic. I do not have the remotest idea how it did that.<\/p>\n

Then amongst so much going on in this film, a central point is about patriarchy keeping women down and I don’t think you can argue that Barbie handles this subtly.<\/p>\n

But then I also don’t think you can argue that this central point is wrong.<\/p>\n

Whereas I do think you can argue that my own central point is. I said that I came out of that cinema wishing I’d written the film. After a few days, though, I realised that actually what I wish is that I could write any film the way Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach wrote this.<\/p>\n

But I did not come to this realisation by myself. I had help. Specifically, it was writer Andrea Mann<\/a> who commented on Facebook about my enthusiasm for the film.<\/p>\n

“It’s great, isn’t it?” wrote Andrea. “And I took from it that I want to write like they wrote Barbie: i.e. to swing for the fences, to lean into your own tastes and ideas, to write as you unapologetically want to write. Because that’s the overall vibe I got from it: that Greta Gerwig (and Noah Baumbach) just, well, went for it. And I find that really inspiring.”<\/p>\n

Now I wish I’d written Andrea’s comment, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Image: a Barbie billboard poster that is just is so impressive. Source: Reproduction via RockContent.) I am reasonably sure that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3104,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","has-featured-image"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/08\/Barbie-poster.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4chyI-O1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3101"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3103,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3101\/revisions\/3103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}