Help, I Can’t Stop Thinkin g About the ‘Barbie’ Movie

with Kevin Fallon

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.

This week:

Barbie Is Life

In times like the one we’re living in, I can’t stop my mind from racing. Three questions play on a loop in a heinous round, like the world’s most cursed version of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”: How did we let things get this way? Why is nobody with power doing anything about it? And what in the living hell is this Barbie movie anyway?

When confronted with a crisis, there are things that people turn to for distraction: hobbies, friends, family, booze. I turn to leaked photos of Ryan Gosling in a technicolor tie-dye vest on rollerblades from the set of Barbie. (Also booze.)

Since it was announced, people have been wondering, but really, what the hell is this Barbie movie? My esteemed colleague Jordan Julian wrote beautifully about this, in a piece titled: “But Really: What the Hell Is This Barbie Movie?”

That was just three months ago, which translates to roughly seven years in our news cycle. At the time, there was a scattershot of details, all on the spectrum of “intriguing” to “OK but honestly someone needs to tell us what’s going on.”

Originally, Amy Schumer had signed on to star in a Barbie movie about being exiled from Barbieland for not being perfect.

After she left, Margot Robbie replaced her in a film directed by Greta Gerwig from a script she co-wrote with her husband, Noah Baumbach. Gerwig is known for her movies Little Women and Lady Bird. A stab at the Barbie Cinematic Universe is unexpected, but we could see it. Baumbach most recently wrote and directed Marriage Story, a devastatingly honest film about the irreparable scars caused by divorce and, really, ever being brave enough to love someone in the first place. And what does that bleak assessment of the hopelessness of our existence conjure if not: Barbie.

While the approach or “take” on Barbie was still under wraps—welcome to 2022, where the default assumption is that there will be a “take” on Barbie—the casting of Robbie, and then Ryan Gosling as Ken, made sense. After all, as the story goes: God did get tired one day and couldn’t summon the effort to design more human beings, so he took a cab to Target, bought Barbie and Ken dolls, sent them down to earth, and now we have the movies I, Tonya and La La Land.

But then news of that “take” was released. According to a tweet from New York Times reporter Kyle Buchanan, the film would be featuring multiple Barbies—including Issa Rae and Hari Nef alongside Robbie—as well as three Kens, with Simu Liu and Ncuti Gatwa joining Gosling. An incredible, provocative, inclusive idea! Also: huh?

All of that confusion was but an appetizer for the buffet of befuddlement that took over the last few weeks as countless images from the set of the film have started to appear online.

It is constant. I close my eyes. I open them. There is another photo of Ryan Gosling in costume as Ken that simultaneously sexually arouses and disturbs me.

The clock strikes another hour, and Will Ferrell is on rollerblades chasing Barbie and Ken down the sidewalk.

The only thing more frequent than a Barbie set leak is a Supreme Court decision that terrorizes the future of humanity.

The onslaught of content related to Barbie, a film that is still a year or more away from hitting the big screen, fuels me. It also destroys me. It is my sole reason for living right now. It is what will be the end of me. I can no longer complete basic tasks of survival because I am too busy thinking about Barbie. Yet I thrive. I thrive because of Barbie.

I lost days of my life to staring at the first photo of Gosling as Ken, yet also rediscovered my will to live. The bleached blond hair parted to create a flawless half-bang, the ideal and yet unattainable swoop, the perfect hairstyle from which to eyefuck people under. The acid-wash denim vest, sleeves torn, left unbuttoned to reveal exactly eight exquisitely toned abs (I have counted) and a glistening chest tanned to a hue that would be embarrassing unless you are Ryan Gosling, in which case it is suddenly the hottest thing that humanity has ever witnessed. The matching jeans with the waistband pulled down to reveal the label on his white underwear: “Ken,” cheekily in the font that is Calvin Klein’s signature.

The photo is magnificent. As tough as things are for our country right now, I am grateful that future generations will never know a time in which this image did not exist. Orgasming to this photo is a basic human right, one that even SCOTUS can never take away.

And yet, it provides no insight into what this project is. When, a short time later, Robbie was photographed in a bright pink cowgirl outfit, as if stepping out of a Kacey Musgraves fever dream, there were fewer answers. Ditto when Gosling was photographed in a fringed Western outfit that a five-year-old boy might be forced to wear by his mother to compete in a child beauty pageant in 1993. By the time they were photographed in exercise spandex that appeared to be stained by an explosion at a fluorescent highlighter factory while rollerblading and apparently chased by Will Ferrell, also on rollerblades, all hope was lost.

What is Barbie? What is meaning? What is intention? What is life? We don’t even crave clarity anymore. We surrender to the void. Give us nothing, but also, please God/Gerwig, give us more Barbie content.

A film that no one that has seen any actual footage from or even knows what it’s about has staged a cultural takeover. That’s powerful.

In a wonderful piece for the Beast, reporter Helen Holmes wrote about how “the Barbie-inspired aesthetic fever already seems to be trickling out into the real world—and even has a name, ‘Barbiecore.’”

Catch me this summer rollerblading in a hot pink visor.

And in the truest testament on its hold on the zeitgeist: It has divided Gay Twitter. You know you’ve made it when…

Is Barbie a commentary on the doll’s obsolescence in a modern, enlightened society? Is it a satire of influencer culture? Is it a shell production that exists solely to generate memes?

I need the answer, but I also never want to know the answer. I just want to cherish my time in this, our new era of directionless civilization: the Barbissic period.

Living For the Cameron Diaz Moment

The moment I wake up, before I put on my makeup, I say a little prayer.

I go to the edge of the bed in the charming British cottage I did a house swap for and kneel. I grab my rosary and say four Hail Something About Marys. I look up to the Lord in the great Vanilla Sky. He is The Counselor. My cat walks in, and I say, “Good morning, Charlie.” That’s his name.

Then I gather all the orphans I’m raising and go to church, where we take the bread and drink the wine. (Avaline, of course.) Back at home, I look in the mirror and repeat my daily affirmation: “Your penis is a Cadillac.” Then I transform back from an ogre into the princess that I am and start my day.

This is my morning ritual. I have done it habitually for 2,762 days. That is how many days it has been since Cameron Diaz appeared in a movie.

The fact that this exquisite star’s last film was the remake of Annie is something that has haunted me since 2014, when the movie came out. So I rejoiced as though I’d been to heaven and seen God himself when the news broke from the most reputable source in the industry—Jamie Foxx’s Twitter account—that Diaz is “un-retiring” and apparently will start production with him on a Netflix movie later this year.

Listen, the Jamie Foxx of it all is something to deal with—God giveth and He taketh away—if it means that Cameron Diaz, the most underappreciated actress of our time, is returning to acting. You don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone.

As an icebreaker once when I was on a conference call with a group of entertainment journalists, we were asked to give our “hottest take” about pop culture. Mine was that Cameron Diaz should have at least four Oscar nominations and, probably, one win. They all gasped. The take was scorching! Then I had to defend myself. The facts were indisputable. By the end, they all agreed. I’m an evangelist.

She should have indisputably been nominated for My Best Friend’s Wedding, There’s Something About Mary, Being John Malkovich, and In Her Shoes. And there’s the two times that I think she came closest to an Oscar nod and didn’t get them: Vanilla Sky and Gangs of New York. I’d support nods for those, too. (And that win? My Best Friend’s Wedding. My apologies to Kim Basinger, but this was a perfect performance.)

There’s some strange reason why we are selective about which movie stars who do big, sometimes silly (though sometimes great!) films we also respect and give credit to for their acting. Oh, duh, it’s sexism.

Diaz has the kind of silver-screen magnetism that warranted the career and fame she had. It’s an incredible skill to be able to carry action blockbusters, raunchy comedies, tear-jerkers, and my most cherished genre of film: Ones that are perfect for watching on airplanes. (Shout out to my The Other Woman hive!) But the way that she can be both brittle and strong, a quirky weirdo and the coolest girl in the room, grotesque and sexy, buttoned-up and crude, and flit so easily between those dichotomies is almost unrivaled.

Time has been good to her reputation; especially in her absence, there’s been a fonder appreciation for her greatest performances. I have no idea if her Netflix movie with Jamie Foxx will be shitty/how shitty it inevitably will be. But I will be pressing play on opening night with the spiritual ecstasy of a Catholic getting to see the Pope perform mass. Welcome to my church. The Church of Diaz.

The Hottest (Literally) Movie You’ll See This Summer

This summer, you can see a dazzling Marvel movie, Thor: Love and Thunder. You can see Nope, the horror-thriller from Jordan Peele with the trailer that I watch twice a day because it’s just that good. You can, like me, have a standing Friday night date at your local cinema to see Top Gun: Maverick again.

But none of those films hold a candle to the most visually stunning, coolest, and frankly badass movie coming out this summer: The National Geographic documentary Fire of Love.

Fire of Love is about a couple who fell in love, and then died, on a volcano. In 1991, Katia and Maurice Krafft were killed in an explosion on Japan’s Mount Unzen. But before that, they had a trailblazing, amazingly romantic career as volcanologists, capturing some of the most unbelievable—and, obviously, dangerous—footage of spewing volcanoes and flowing lava that I have ever seen. Their own video documentation provides the crux of Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love, an astonishing achievement considering how many technological advances there have been in the 30 years since their death.

I think it’s a little masturbatory to call out and reference your past work, but I just spent hundreds of words in this newsletter talking about photos of Ryan Gosling, so masturbation is on theme. And so I implore you to read my review of Fire of Love from its premiere at Sundance. It’s a film that deserves everyone’s attention.

The Reality-TV Fix We All Need

We are entering a harrowing, unmooring time as a country. For one week, there will be no Below Deckepisode to watch.

I’m stocking up the bomb shelter, buying Costco out of toilet paper, and filling my bathtub with water—all the things my parents taught me to do to weather an emergency. What is one to do at a time (again, one week) when Bravo has left us so abandoned, so alone, so vulnerable? The answer is watch Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: Ex-Wives Club.

The Peacock series, which has aired four episodes, is giving me everything I need: a panic attack every time Dorinda Medley or Brandi Glanville starts to speak, a laughing fit whenever Phaedra Parks is on screen, a stan crush on queen Eva Marcille, and an appreciation that Jill Zarin is just around.

It’s the perfect kind of reality TV: People who are pros at the genre, endless one-liners, absolutely drunken chaos exactly once a night, and then—and this is important—resolution. It’s exactly the distraction we need to tide us over until we can set sail again. (Below Deck: Med premieres July 11!)

I Need Some Time to Digest This

This news story was sent to me by *seven* different people, which is a truth about myself I expect my four therapy sessions will be devoted to working through.

Fire of Love: It really is as good as I said. (Wed. in theaters)

Minions: The Rise of Gru: I’m rebranding myself as a Minions stan. (Fri. in theaters)

The Terminal List: Worst Chris! Bad series! (Fri. on Amazon)

The Princess: Sorry but this movie is absolutely bananas. (Fri. on Hulu)

Stranger Things: Why just two episodes? And why are they so long? (Fri. on Netflix)

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