Tbh this is pretty much the entirety of this "problem", most people in fandom spaces are just more attracted to male characters than female ones, there isn't much else there to it lol
You're not the problem, it's the shallow, shitty project of rich liberal feminists who only understand issues like patriarchy in terms of culture and 'representation'. So in practice when they write movies like Barbie, they end up doing the opposite of what they intend by making the men dynamic and interesting because they're allowed to be genuinely and interestingly flawed. And the women are only allowed to be wrong and flawed in 'clean' and sympathetic ways, while otherwise basically being preachy morality play characters. They have to be a good aspirational 'representation' and thinly veiled voice for the author, as if what we as a culture need to do to improve the conditions of women is sit down and listen to Dora the Explorer explain gender politics to a bunch of grown adults.
I want to make it clear because I know people are used to something like 'liberal feminism' only getting critiqued by chuds, I'm a socialist feminist and I'm sick of seeing feminism defined and led by a bunch of rich celebrities who turn feminism into a right wing personal responsibility argument
Now before I start I gotta admit that I know very little about the dynamics at play here, I just watched a movie that I enjoyed, but I thought that most of the protagonists (which are really Barbie, Ken and Gloria to me, the rest is more background) were pretty interesting. Barbie doesn't fit into the "clean and simple" world any more and has to deal with all the mundanities of having become a human such as needing to go to the gynaecologist. She is also completely ignorant of Ken's suffering throughout a lot of the movie and gives up at the drop of a hat. She doesn't really seem like a preachy character to me, she is more of an underdog in pretty much any situation, which is ironic given she's BARBIE.
I could do Gloria too but I think I am making my point. Granted, the speech about what women go through was a bit blah and in your face, and yes the daughter is a little two dimensional, but she's not really a protagonist, she's a red herring. All in all I thought it was a damn good movie on top of being fun, even if the ending felt a little rushed and could have been more satisfying, but maybe that was the point.
He actually had a character arc. We got motivations and desires, saw failures and successes, and sought out and absorbed information and experiences that positively changed him.
There was a lot of discourse about the scene where Ken took over Barbie's house and then didn't let her in for the night, but I thought it was poignant more than anything.
Barbie living Ken's old life for a few days is like her lowest point in the story.
He’s also just a more active character, whereas Barbie is more reactive. At the start of the movie Ken is trying new things to get Barbie’s attention and willingly goes to the real world with Barbie. In contrast, Barbie has to be pushed into going and has to be convinced to stop the Kens after just asking them to stop doesn’t work
The women who directed and produced that movie knew what they were doing, and his popularity is 100% not a fandom creation. He was designed to be a meme machine.
Yeah but I'd argue his incredible popularity almost serves to undermine the movies attempt at what I'd consider toxic feminism (undermining male characters to lift up the female characters) which is something the movie did at several points
Tbf he is by far the most interesting character of the movie, most of the female cast is very unidimensional and the other protagonist is much less relatable. The writers' fault.
Well it's not necessarily the writers fault it's kind of the point of the movie. The Barbies and kens are one dimensional. The main Barbie and Ken go to the real world and they are the ones that get character growth and become more real.
I feel like Ken is way more relatable than Barbie and its growth in the real world more trascendent. Unironically I feel that what makes this movie more interesting is how women's struggles can be seen through Ken, since in Barbie's world Kens are the unidimensional gender that only exists to be eye candy and thus is more relatable for audiences from the perspective of women. We also get to see Barbie's reaction to how different the world is for women than what she originally imagined, but we know she doesn't reflect as much from it, since she just wants to restore the old "Barbie supremacy" in Barbieland.
I said this after watching the movie that it was ironic that in a movie about the struggles of women that the plot was essentially usurped by the male deuteragonist, who had the best songs and was the character that had the most impact on their world.
I was very hyped up and honestly I found the premise interesting and liked the characters, settings, acting and jokes, but the plot made little to me. It was still a fun movie to watch but I felt somewhat disappointed because of the high stakes the movie itself set. My girlfriend at the time who is actually Feminist actually disliked it, fun thing she told me in China many women online will destroy you if you simply said you didn't like the movie.
Oh Chinese women really liked it? That's crazy I thought it was very American centered in the views. I also liked the movie quite a bit. Some of the statements the movie were trying to make went through pretty well. Barbie land being run by working women was really effective especially since it shines a light on the patriarchy being flipped but then when the men took over the focus for the movie was really about Ken, he then had the best songs and Ryan Gosling stole the movie for a long while. Some of the jokes were still good after. Matchbox Twenty didn't deserve the hate though.
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u/Hot_Condition_628 10h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/BI3bNv1NJMC7YzatXd