With the two movies Barbie and Oppenheimer currently in cinemas at the same time, the opportunity to watch both of them as a kind of textual contrast seems really delicious to a lot of people. The interblobs are full of the phenomenon of "Barbenheimer" and I have even heard of some people's desire to see the two films cut together and then redubbed in the same way that "Kung Pow! Enter the Fist" which was released in 2002 was a recut of the 1976 film "Tiger & Crane Fists" with new unrelated footage.
Personally, I have no interest in seeing Barbie but I might have some in seeing Oppenheimer, however my social media feeds are a mix of angry people from left and right parts of the economic spectrum along with authoritarians and libertarians all having a five bell alarm dumpster fire. Both films are said to have some king of luxury-gay-space-communism-apologist-cryptofacist-death-imperialst agenda; depending on which member of the commentariat is speaking. With every opinion turned up to 11, the wall of sound is such that as a neutral, I have no ability nor desire to bother to understand any nuance at all.
As I don't really care about any of this insane yell-fest, the things that I have found to be the funnest have been pink and black meme worthy contrasts, people trying to shoehorn quotes into both films, and the following graphic which in my mind looks like the kind of thing that you'd see for the Electoral College in a United States Presidential Election:
Presumably the degree to which something is trending in America, correlates to the level of anger at the thing because that's the way the interblobs work. The interblobs are the ultimate perpetual outrage machine for the simple reason that human nature is such that while pleasure and yumminess and happiness is good, it it fleeting and dissipates. On the other hand, rolling resentment and anger feeds itself. This is a phenomenon which newspapers have known about since the beginning of newspapers which is why the adage "it it bleeds it leads" works so well. Indeed being angry and having designated enemies is the entire basis and business model of a lot of print and TV media.
We can probably conclude that Oppenheimer is trending in New Mexico because that's where the nuclear bomb tests were conducted and where Oppenheimer was based. The rest of the map is a mystery to me, other than to say that something major has happened in Mississippi as the index figure has reached maximum. Also what's kind of odd is that this map would not be out of place for the Electoral College in a United States Presidential Election.
If we take pink as red and blue as blue, then plug those trending index numbers into the expected votes for the Electoral College in a United States Presidential Election then we get this:
Where the index is 0, I have taken this to mean that the state is undecided and that this would remain a toss-up. Something really interesting emerges. That is that six states which are currently sitting on 0, are sufficiently powerful enough to render the imaginary Barbie-Oppenheimer election for 20XX, too close to call. As the Barbiecrats still need 26 and the Oppenblicans still need 31, then this imaginary election swings on the hinges of Michigan and Pennsylvania. I would suggest that Barbie needs to mount a campaign based on building pink Cadillacs and rock-and-roll and Oppenheimer needs to campaign for steel production and higher automotive tarrifs.
Perhaps the freakiest thing about this whole Barbie-Oppenheimer thing is that are not quite contemporaries. Oppenheimer worked on the Manhattan Project and the the Atomic Energy Commission before being driven out during the second red scare as a supposed communist. Barbie on the other hand, is a doll which was first introduced in 1959 and well and truly into the Cold War.
Assuming that the peak performance of an organisation happens when the average age of everyone within it is 38, then that puts the birth dates for the two enterprises as 1907 and 1921. It is reasonably safe to assume that probably everyone involved in either is either very very old or very very dead. Either way, both stories either because nobody is left alive or because the work is only making use of the branding and intellectual property, are both works of some degree or completely textual fantasy. I can make that remark without having seen either because that's how films work.
Ultimately the Barbie-Oppenheimer outrage election is about the audience of 2023 yelling in all directions and running from side to side like a bunch of brainless sheep. Also, before you accuse me on commenting on films that I haven't seen, remember that Barbenheimer started out as a meme flame war and that has been very much on display and burning brightly from the outset. I would still like to see both films put through the meat grinder and made into one new glorious abomination sausage.
Aside:
I know very little about Barbie lore. I do not know if she was/is intended to be a teenager or young woman but if we take her age to be 20, then she would have been born in 1939. Barbie is therefore a member of the Silent Generation, who would likely have little memories of the Second World War which would be sensible, but who would have grown up with rising awareness that what Oppenheimer started was leading to nuclear brinkmanship of two superpowers. That is unless of course Barbie is truly a vapid and empty vessel, with no knowledge whatsoever of the world of 1959 which she found herself in. The actual real-life Barbie would be 84 years old now.
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