IN A WORLD WHERE BEAUTY AND ATTRACTIVENESS HAVE BECOME SO COMMONPLACE AND MUNDANE THE EXCEPTIONAL UGLINESS HAS BECOME DIVINE
I SAW AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR A CAR THAT LOOKS LIKE EVERY OTHER CAR AND THEY COMPARED IT TO A UNUSUAL UGLY LITTLE VEHICLE AND ITS STRANGENESS WAS FAR MORE CAPTIVATING THAN THE SLEEK BORING CAR THE AD WAS ACTUALLY FOR
The thing about whiny misogynist pissbabies calling the Barbie movie “anti-men” is that the emotional resolution of the narrative is the male character being told that he is enough as the person he is, regardless of status qualifiers like a girlfriend or a career. It’s the most pro-men message imaginable. You don’t have to be successful in societal-mandated ways to matter. You don’t have to be in a relationship with a woman to matter. Not meeting unrealistic standards of masculine success does not make you a loser.
Ken dives in a performative exhibition of hegemonic masculinity (he literally says he lost interest in the patriarchy when he realized it wasn’t about horses: his adoption of hegemonic masculinity behavior is a performance. Hegemonic gender roles ARE a performance.) because he’s scared. The original state of Barbieland is indeed toxic (the point is that Stereotypical Barbie fixes everything by leaving Barbieland and becoming a real woman, not a sterotype of a woman), and that makes Ken insecure and frustrated. He heals by being told that he matters regardless of the achievements that he is supposed to have in order to be a Man™.
The movie is a love letter to both women and men, it’s just anti-misogynists who feel threatened by women existing as people.
nimona is abt living in a surveillance police state where the only path to acceptance is conformity as a tool of oppressing those like you. it’s about how a privileged white woman afraid of imagined dangers can often be the greatest threat of all. it’s about how our nature is acceptance, but even a single moment of misinformed paranoia can give rise to lasting cycles of bias and abuse. it’s about how systems of belief will always find a way to validate the harm they inflict upon others, even if it means turning one child into a myth and the other to a monster. nimona is also. a film about a dancing pink shark in sunglasses
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SO. NIMONA. finally watched it earlier today and oughhh boy did it hit hard for so many reasons. i think i understand what you mean with it also being heavily relatable for systems, even if it may have been unintentional. like the whole scene with Nimona explaining how she needs to shift, and while she maybe could hide it if she really forced herself, she wouldn't be truly living. systems FELT THAT
YEAH and like. ok problematic stereotype that makes stupid ass singlets actually believe we can irl shapeshift (seriously, why is that a thing? lmao?) shapeshifter narratives are always going to resonate with systems due to the nature of our existence.
Nimona is constantly told just to be a girl, one singular girl, and not to deviate from that. When she’s Not that girl, when she’s a shark now or anything else really, then she’s lost their respect and lost her humanity. She can Only Be One Thing and if it’s not the thing that people want, then she’s a monster and can only look forward to rejection and violence.
The narrative is, of course, going to resonate with everyone who’s stigmatized just for existing but the fact that she is larger than (singlet, human) life and that’s what she’s being punished for really hits different when the majority of society is calling you a scary shapeshifting, manipulative, monster because you define yourself and your life differently than them.
Nimona is the strawman plural that singlets believe in, except she’s empowered and beautiful and relatable, and I just wish singlets could see that side of us too.
When Nimona breathes fire and she is expecting Ballister to reject her again, to become afraid, to lash out, she’s trying to play it cool but you can tell that she’s been in this situation a million other times with a million other people and she knows how she looks she knows what everyone wants to believe. So when he just goes “metal” and keeps going and you see the relief flooding over her that is an emotion that I feel around singlets so fucking often and it really stood out to me, how much even the most basic kindness like that becomes overwhelming when I am very much fighting for respect and debating my place in this world, when most people ask “why do you have to exist”.
I just really hope that there will be more solidarity between systems and the trans community in the future, there’s already a lot more than there was a few years ago I feel like but like…yeah.
queer people for years, centuries, have been oppressed for being their most authentic selves, by the people who call themselves heroes and us the monsters, even nowadays with the most recent law for allowing discrimination against queer people in America. They call themselves the good guys, the saviours, the ones completely in the right and justified for hating against people just trying to live their lives. And apparently we’re supposed to be the bad guys in this story.
i’m so glad that this movie came out when it did, the world really needs it.
ALT
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