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“europe, let’s divide ourselves!

it’s now or never,

The EBU says the Israel situation is “fundamentally different” from Russia in 2022. They suggest they didn’t kick Russia out of Eurovision because they invaded Ukraine, they kicked Russia out of the EBU for unrelated reasons.

Except… that’s not what happened! In 2022, the EBU had announced Russia would be kicked out of Eurovision “in light of the unprecedented crisis in Ukraine”.  

The Russian broadcasters responded to being booted from Eurovision by announcing their intention to withdraw from the EBU, which the EBU reported via their website.

So why are they now saying something else happened? It’s a lie. The EBU kicked Russia out of Eurovision before the Russian broadcasters left the EBU. This is clearly an attempt to distance themselves from their (quite right) decision to remove a country from Eurovision.

my favourite detail in the movie is when barbie escapes the mattel building and jumps over the exit barrier with no hesitation- but the men get stuck because they don’t know how to get around a door that won’t open for them.

it’s such a small moment but it makes such a strong point. barbie has faced more obstacles in her few hours as a real woman than the men have faced in their lifetimes.

THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE AN ADOLESCENT GIRL.

Living in Barbieland (childhood girlhood) but then suddenly you're all grown up in the real world subject to scrutiny and sexualisation (the guy slapping Barbie's ass) and feeling like existing is a crime?

Being forced by adult men into a box (which leads to the not like other girls syndrome) and exploring the 'real world' (being forced to grow up too quickly) while fighting the realisation that maybe the world sucks and being a woman is so difficult while hoping with all your heart that it's not always going to be this way.

Losing touch with the very things that made you happy because they're considered immature and girly? (The group of teens that said they hadn't played with Barbies since they were five.)

Older women telling you that you have to learn the truth about the world and that you can never have your old life back (Kate Mckinnon's Barbie) despite it being the only thing you yearn for, but also older women being a bright spot and support (the old woman on the bench) in the endless slough of life.

It’s about heteronormativity and amatonormativity and the unrealistic expectations society sets boys and girls up for from infancy. Barbie and Ken are every pair of toddlers sharing a sandbox while the adults around them call them each other’s little “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” even though neither party understands or is capable of understanding the implied meaning of that. Or wants to.

It’s a literal funhouse mirror of that weird pressure put on kids to perform heterosexuality from an early age. It examines how that leaves us unprepared for the complicated reality of actual relationships even if it turns out that you are heterosexual and do want sex and romance. Boys and girls aren’t really allowed to be just kids on the same team, so they grow up into men and women who generally want very different things from each other and are trained to look for it in everybody because anybody is better than nobody, and try to force it to work.

Barbie and Ken letting each other go in the end was perfect. Barbie the Every Woman realizing that she doesn’t have to be special, she just has to be, and Ken the Every Man realizing he has to seek validation elsewhere and lean on his fellow Kens for emotional support, WHICH THEY GIVE.

Christian bale was the *only* actor that tried out for the role who also understood the character was an irredeemable monster and he had no interest in understanding bateman as anything other than an alien who got dropped into 1980s nyc as a businessman. everyone else lionsgate tried to have make the movie (actors directors and writers) wanted some psychological profile, explicit inclusion of context in the film for why bateman was like that (which would only serve to have the audience sympathize with him), or a jekyll and Hyde portrayal (to make him redeemable).

harron , turner, and bale knew that they were all missing the potential point completely, along with the fact that doing any of that would only make the film less interesting, and that all of those attempts to make bateman understood stemmed from everyone being extremely uncomfortable with the content of the film/book and the actors being uncomfortable/unable to play a character they couldn’t sympathize with. Ur literally not supposed to sympathize with him. It’s a horror in which the main character is the villain, but it’s also a social commentary/satire and surreal, which means the main character must also be a preposterous villain characterizing only the absolute extreme of what is being satirized, not a real human. he is one-dimensional on purpose and if he were not, it would undermine the entire message of the film.

I saw someone somewhere say that bateman was a portrayal of how if men had to have the mentality that women have, they would become homicidal maniacs. I think that is such an interesting and valid interpretation and we wouldn’t be able to view this movie thru that lens if this movie had been written and directed by anyone other than harron and turner. that specific layer of meaning would not exist, at least not effectively.

and also the writer of the book brett ellis whateverson (sorry I cant remember his name for the life of me even tho i know it?? Idk why) couldn’t have made it a good movie bc the book he wrote was an ode to graphically violent misogyny that he pretended was satire. Also his screenplay sucked because he kept the garbage parts, made it MORE graphically sexually violent, and apparently turned it into a musical and didn’t want to write one anyway or so he says (I think he did but when everyone agreed it sucked he pretended he made it suck on purpose). when harron and turner made it an ACTUAL satire and made the viewer incapable of taking Bateman seriously, the novelist hated it and insisted and continues to insist that it never needed to be made a movie. Probably because he’s pissed 2 women made it objectively a better story (and made Bateman laughable instead of like... cool)