Two days ago I did the Barbenheimer thing. To have been in the presence of two expected unexpected films. Expected for their hype, unexpected for their lessons.

In Barbie (2023), I felt simultaneously the ressentiment of Ken towards Barbie, and the horror of Barbie towards Ken’s misogyny. Ken says he was built for Barbie (a la the reversed logic of Creationism). Ozzy Osbourne in a verse and the refrain of “Warning” (1970) sings:

Sorrow grips my voice as I stand here all alone
And watch you slowly take away, a love I’ve never known

I was born without you, baby
But my feelings were a little bit too strong

In all honesty, the two have little to no relation. But Osbourne here can be telling us that origin and teleological design does not matter. Not one bit. No one belongs to anyone; no one is born to be or made to be with anyone in particular. Yet hurt is a real thing. It can open a vacuum where ressentiment can corrupt one’s understanding of the very person they are in love with that stands in front of them. Ken learns about Patriarchy and realizes how it is a technology of abuse and control that can fuel his ressentiment against Barbie, and uses it to enact violence on her.

Barbie genuinely sees Ken as a friend. She just wants to party. Her concerns have more to do with how she was made to represent a womanhood stripped of its historical violence. Her concerns are dealing with how incommensurable and how real reality is. Life is plastic and even that has issues in Barbieland. Reality is plastic to difficult extents. Barbie is caught between a representational Utopia and a reality that uses representations to cope with violence. Non-straight trans girlies understand this. I think many of us still struggle with misogyny that has been beaten (literally) into us. When we enter womanhood, womanhood becomes a party as quickly as it becomes violent.

In Oppenheimer (2023), politics is shown to be both systemic and interpersonal. Communism does not stand alone as ideological. We sometimes forget that it has brought real people together in actual circumstances. Whether to party, to struggle, to fuck, to love, to hate one another. How science cannot be divorced from politics is a realization that has been made by people like Bruno Latour, explored in Laboratory Life (1979). For Latour, the scientific method is largely caught up in the human relationships that effect the method. In Oppie it does not help if you were a physicist in that point of history exploring the forces of what held atoms together. Or that the Soviets were a thing and almost every Leftist pandered to the Soviet model and practice of Marxist theory in the interwar period (and up to the present day). Unless U.S. scientists back then managed to waged a covert war against the U.S. itself, the State(s) would have used their authority and resources to have scientists develop a weapon anyhow.

The exceedingly harmful systemic conditions brought about by Fascism and War throws morality out of the window. It poisons and strains relationships. I told Bb that the people that relate to Oppie are those who are currently fighting actual wars – strategizing against multiple actors, analyzing information from various sources, conducting covert operations. That, and the Silent Generation who survived WWII. Non-straight trans girlies understand this. Those that acknowledge, those who are in a present struggle against actually existing contemporary Fascism. Of groups have been threatening bodily autonomy, conducting operations to overrun governments, and to criminalize transness, non-binaryness, and queerness.

Both films inform us that reality is the toughest fucker there is. Escape is not enough when you can become reabsorbed and neutralized, and neither is facing reality at its messiest and most traumatic the way to go. Barbie at some points show us that there can be grace in the face of violence. Oppie at some points teaches us that relationships cannot be taken for granted and can shift rapidly. When one is transgender and still learning how to be a woman in the face of Fascists that wish only for repression, both takeaways from either film form a framework that might just be able to keep one grounded.