Boy Movies #38

A Barbenheimer double issue, feat. Sarah Turbin

You’re reading Boy Movies. In honor of Barbenheimer, we here at HQ are proud to deliver a special double issue this week. In the first half, you’ll be hearing from me on Barbie and Oppenheimer, and in the second half, you’ll hear from Boy Movies art director Sarah Turbin on Oppenheimer — it turns out we both had a lot to say. Sarah not only does all the graphics for Boy Movies, but she’s also famously contributed words to past issues. I was thrilled to get a lengthier piece from her. It’s a really excellent read, and I hope you enjoy.

I am become doll

Barbie and Oppenheimer recently came out on the same day — maybe you’ve heard? These two movies are interesting because one is for girls and the other one is for boys. Based on what I have just told you, you can now understand why this is so funny. The dual release of these films, of course, prompted the explosive Barbenheimer phenomenon, which resulted in millions of people across the globe dressing in themed outfits and piling into movie theaters for six hours, allowing themselves, just for one day, a 360 degree look at the gender binary in action. If you’re reading this, there’s a high chance you were one of the many to participate.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, I didn’t participate in Barbenheimer weekend, instead opting to see Barbie the Thursday it came out and Oppenheimer a few days later, on Tuesday. Feeling pressured by the weight of mass consumerism and the realization that everyone around me had, at some point, gotten their hands on head to toe pink ensembles (indicating Barbie) and/or, like, suspenders and bowler hats (indicating Oppenheimer), I scrambled for something to wear on Thursday, desperately wanting to fit in. I don’t own any pink clothes, nor do I own anything that immediately evokes nuclear physicist. Lost and lacking any other course of action, I gave myself a pink manicure that looked fine if viewed from a great distance, dug a white t-shirt emblazoned with Barbie director Greta Gerwig’s name, which I bought years ago, out of a drawer, and went on my way. Ultimately, no one cared. In a sea of women in pink cowboy hats and men in pink polos, my t-shirt and denim shorts “look” didn’t make a splash. When the time came for me to see Oppenheimer, I made no effort to be on theme, but dressed entirely in black, inadvertently ensuring that I fit with the aesthetic of the film, at least when considered in opposition to Barbie. The girl movie allows for color, while the boy movie allows only for darkness.

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Barbenheimer is easily the most important event to ever happen to this newsletter, largely because Boy Movies did not exist when Mamma Mia and The Dark Knight (it’s always Christopher Nolan at the scene of the crime…) hit theaters on the same day in 2008. Over the weekend, I saw a mind-blowing number of posts across social media that contained the terms “boy movie” and “girl movie.” My feeds were overrun with photos of Barbies contoured to the gods and Oppenheimers puffing on cigarettes. Frankly, I deserve a fat commission from everyone who participated in the pageantry, but I digress. This is the closest thing to monoculture we’ve had in so long, and I like that the monoculture happens to be movie-based, especially after a stretch of years of being told repeatedly that cinema is dead. It’s nice to have something to talk about with everyone I run into lately: “Have you Barbenheimer-ed yet? Which did you see first? Isn’t it great to see Ryan Gosling having fun? And how about Cillian Murphy, huh?”

By all accounts, Barbenheimer only sort of makes sense. Movies come out in tandem all the time; imagine if we’d acted as rabidly when two Timothée Chalamet vehicles, Dune and The French Dispatch, were released together in 2021. No, Barbenheimer came to be, in part, thanks to Barbie’s aggressive marketing campaign, the minds behind which smartly took note of the jokes about the dichotomy of these two films and struck while the iron was hot. You probably remember where you were the day all those designed-to-go-viral character posters dropped. You also might remember the photo of Gerwig and Barbie star Margot Robbie posing with big smiles in front of an Oppenheimer poster. Universal, the studio behind Oppenheimer, barely had to do anything; each time a new still of one of the many guys in the cast dropped, it elicited appreciative laughs for its simplicity compared to Barbie’s commitment to maximalism. Robbie traveled the world decked out in Barbie cosplay, Murphy just kind of put his hand on his hip that one time. (Which, to be clear, was hot of him.) Barbie did Oppenheimer’s marketing for it, seeming to affirm a tale as old as time: Men always have to do less than women in order to be lauded.

Look, Barbie made me laugh a lot, but I have to admit I was underwhelmed by its 2015 feminist message. The fact is that Barbie is an hour and a half long commercial for a toy, and although my feelings on it have softened in the ensuing days (because truly who cares), it’s fascinating that the thing everyone has walked away from the girl movie discussing is Ryan Gosling’s performance as Ken. Ken is the film’s showiest character, and Gosling, in turn, gets the funniest jokes, the strongest character arc, and, most crucially for a film that begins and ends with its hyper online legion of fans, all the viral potential (“My job is beach;” “I am Kenough”). The decision to turn Ken, second fiddle in Barbieland but a king in the real world, into a men’s rights activist¹ is a stroke of genius, though it does result in Barbie, already the resident straight man, taking a backseat in her own movie. On the other hand, I will once again be transparent and say that Oppenheimer really worked for me in all of its self-serious non-subtlety. It’s big and magnificent and riveting, and it makes dense history very, very watchable. Nearly every performance, even Emily Blunt as Miserable Drunk Wife, manages to be a stand-out. It’s a historical film about the invention of the atomic bomb, told mostly through long scenes of people talking in rooms, and yet it’s somehow paced like an action movie. As Steven Phillips-Horst wrote, “It is a smart movie for dumb people, and that is a compliment.” Here we have Barbenheimer, the movie that tries to do everything vs. the movie that is very much about everything.

It’s important to stress that I consider Barbie and Oppenheimer to be separate entities from the Barbenheimer spectacle. When I think of Barbie and Oppenheimer, I think of two individual movies — both about America, and American myths — that were both relatively successful in what they were trying to do and who they were doing for it, ones that I’ll certainly enjoy rewatching. When I think of Barbenheimer, I feel like J. Robert Oppenheimer, gazing upon my creation — boy movies, girl movies, the division between both — and wondering what I’ve done. Imagine me sitting in a room with Gary Oldman-as-Harry-Truman and saying, “There is blood on my hands.” I didn’t invent the concept of boy movies (if I had I would be suing so many people for copyright infringement right now), but I have centered much of my free time over the past few months around thinking and talking and writing about the concept. My goal has always been to break the thing open and probe around inside in a way that is both joyful and rewarding. I’ve strived to avoid taking any of it seriously. That, to me, was part of the fun of Barbenheimer. The issue is that it’s starting to feel like, to borrow the internet’s favorite phrase, we’ve all lost the plot. Dare I say that these movies have made folks go insane.

There are the tradwives seeing what they want to see (women in “traditional roles” — I guess to them that means wearing dresses and heels?). There are the “Barbiepilled” masses bragging about how they “haven’t seen the bomb movie,” as if it makes them above those who have, and the ones insisting that there aren’t enough women in Oppenheimer (k!). There are the braindead takes about Oppenheimer being “military propaganda” (I’m begging everyone to learn what this means) that ignores what the atomic bomb did to Japan. There are those who seem to think that Greta Gerwig’s mere existence signifies the death of cinema, and those who feel Oppenheimer canonizes its subject. And then there are the “Barbie gf, Oppenheimer bf” freaks, every one of whom owes me money. What it all amounts to is a maddening trend that feels increasingly regressive.

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I understand that a lot of my issues are the issues of the, unfortunately, very online, such as myself. But on a societal level, it’s hard to ignore the ways in which feminism has evaded us. Gender essentialism is here to stay, and we now find ourselves living in a time where many of the conversations surrounding gender boil down to, “But that’s for boys, and I’m a girl!” A lot of the more backwards thinking is often cloaked under layers of “progressive” language, which makes it even scarier. It’s why people like JK Rowling get to hop online spewing harmful, anti-trans rhetoric. At this point, I almost prefer Barbie’s Hillary Clinton-esque approach to feminism — at least empty empowerment still gives women some form of individuality.

It’s not the fault of Barbie or Oppenheimer, but Barbenheimer has come to represent a larger, much more sinister problem. A collective stupidity, a complete resistance to critical thought. Smart things are for boys, pretty things are for girls, and if you’re a girl who likes the boy thing that makes you anti-woman. Girlfriends must wear pink, and boyfriends must wear black. There is absolutely no in between. The call is coming from inside the house. What, exactly, have I done?

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To bomb or not to bomb

Oppenheimer is a movie about the genius of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and how Sometimes America Is The Real Enemy (but not in the way you think, ya pinko.) As in, the U.S. government punishes Oppenheimer even after all that he’s done for them, but the narrative focuses only lightly on whether it was okay to murder people so brutally, because most of our time is taken up by building the damn thing. It’s about the general idea of nukes, and what it would mean in the abstract. Important questions, to be sure! I believe this was the basis of a little thing called the Cold War, but don’t quote me.

So Oppenheimer is a genius. He writes math on big black chalkboards when he’s not verbally sparring with a veteran of the big black chalkboard game: Matt Damon. He rushes across the quad at Cambridge in one of those silly British capes. He commands a legion of guys in sweater vests. He is saddled with the biggest, baddest question of the modern era: To bomb or not to bomb?

As Boy Movies’s resident Japanese American I must disclaim that I don’t need Christopher Nolan to portray the people who suffered under the atomic bombs, and would actually rather watch a nine part Hulu nature documentary series of everything embarrassing I did in middle school, like that Black Mirror episode with Jon Hamm and the VR goggles, but with Tucker Carlson narrating in David Attenborough drag like I’m a soft-shelled crab migrating north from my ancestral tar pit or whatever. I did wonder, however, how much I would buy this statement from Nolan:

“When I talk to the leading researchers in the field of AI they literally refer to this right now as their Oppenheimer moment,” Nolan said. “They’re looking to his story to say what are the responsibilities for scientists developing new technologies that may have unintended consequences…I’m not saying Oppenheimer’s story offers any easy answers to these questions. But at least it serves a cautionary tale.” —Christopher Nolan wants Oppenheimer to be a warning for Silicon Valley

Did Oppenheimer show scenes from Hiroshima or Nagasaki? Thankfully, Nolan isn’t so inelegant. A 1-star version of this movie would have attached a GoPro to the Enola Gay and had, like, rice fields ripple in the blast. We are spared of this imagery, the equivalent of Cocomelon consumption that tranquilizes toddlers, but for adults who are drawn to Oscar bait. Instead, we got a snappy script and a slutty protagonist. I sat, enthralled, for three hours at the front of a sold-out IMAX theater and forgot that my neck was sore from being so close to the screen. The movies are back, baby!!

What does the average American (or, in Nolan’s case, Brit) think Oppenheimer’s invention was? If you went in cold, you’d learn that this particular type of bomb was very large, special, bad, and evil. But also necessary? Wait, or was it? In the final hour, Hitler is dead, the Nazis are done, and things are looking up. There is a scene where the Americans muse on which Japanese cities to demolish. (Barbie has this too: A fancy meeting with guys in suits.) Sparing Kyoto — something that really did get discussed due to its cultural artifacts — got a laugh from my theater. Winking, glib dialogue that serves as a stark contrast to the stunning camerawork of the detonation. I’m not sure what to make of the slo-mo flames that erupt out of nothing, the sparks flying upwards as bewitchingly as the balletic, reedy portrayal of Oppie by Cillian Murphy (except to say: I need to watch Peaky Blinders, STAT!!!!).

For a movie that is told out of chronological order, I wondered if this choice to make Oppenheimer reflect on the bomb like this made him stupider or smarter. (Here, I am talking about Nolan’s character, not the real guy, whose genius I cannot possibly litigate in an email that you are reading between Pomodoro sessions.) Would the father of the atomic bomb really only think about the horrific physical impact of the bomb after the project was over? Wouldn’t the real genius know this before constructing a horny nerd commune with taxpayer dollars? You know what would have saved him from crying in front of Truman? Not doing it in the first place. Kind of like that opening scene with the poison apple, which he ultimately does NOT use to murder his professor. It is a real win for Oppie.

The scene I didn’t expect, which made me wish for more, was when Oppenheimer imagines the bomb and looks upon the crowd of his American admirers. He takes in a white woman’s ebullient face² and imagines her skin melting off, tattered strips flapping away. I am of two minds when it comes to depicting graphic gore.³ Sometimes, less is more. But I don’t buy the character’s regret as it’s depicted here. The movie ends with the whole earth burning up, a little mental exercise to get us to imagine the end of the world. But I bet some people, long dead now, thought it really was all over in 1945, if they were unlucky enough to still be conscious in the moments after the blasts. I didn’t learn the details of the atomic bombs in school — I’m just an American who happens to know more than most because of my own research as it relates to my cultural background and a serendipitous trip I took, a few years ago, to Hiroshima and the museum there. I recommend going at least once in your lifetime, sooner rather than later. Who knows how long we have here, if the whims and morals of the people in power are as murky and mercurial as they are in Oppenheimer.

Further reading and viewing (TW graphic imagery):

• Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa

• “A-bomb Drawings by Survivors”

• Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse

• Grave of the Fireflies (1988) (also a book)

• In This Corner of the World (2016)

• The gorgeous custom banner you see at the top of the email is also a Sarah Turbin original <3

• A great piece on Barbie from friend of the newsletter Nicholas Russell.

1. During the scene in which Ken goes to a library to learn about what it means to be a human male, my friend leaned over to me and whispered, “He’s reading Boy Movies.”

2. Allison has let me know that APPARENTLY THIS IS CHRISTOPHER NOLAN’S DAUGHTER, CREDITED AS “BURN VICTIM”? I don’t have time to unpack that.

3. (TW) You can learn about the now-retired mannequins in the Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Museum that used to depict these burns.