Latest / The Wes Carroll Morning Show / Barbie Is Not the Lego Movie

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Barbie Is Not the Lego Movie · The Wes Carroll Morning Show

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The news, opinions, commentary, and interviews. You need to start your
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day, and you're listening to the West Carrol Morning Show. Friday morning,
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eleventh day of August. I'm Wes, thanks for joining me. I think
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they're all back in school by this point, right, I mean other kids
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going back today. I don't know. I think glenn Wood is one of
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our area schools that went back. When I say they're all back, I
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know we have people that listen outside of the Chattahoochee Valley, but primarily when
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I talk about kids being back in school, I'm talking about those kids,
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and I think most of the area schools are back. I mean the home
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school kids, they were kind of already there. Maybe they're not doing their
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work yet. I don't know. That's up to the homeschool parents, isn't
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it. They have control over that situation. They can handle that however they
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see fit. But I know there were some kids that started back yesterday.
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I think glenn Wood was one of those schools. And there may be a
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school or two private school getting started back today to do that. Fay start
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just so they can jump back in there with full both feet next week and
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full force. But either way they're winding down their first week if they started
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it at all this week, even if they start today, they'll be winding
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down the first week today. So that's where we are. And I hope
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that your kids or the kids in your life had a good start to this
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school year. So so far, so good with mine. That's where we're
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at in this house. Two kids starting new schools as they moved up to
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middle school and high school. So that's where things are. I want to
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quickly talk about the Barbie movie. I know this is something that I think
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at least folks on the left would say that men talking about it, especially
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white men, is exhausting and they don't really care what we have to say
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about it. Chances are they're probably not listening right now anyway. If you're
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one of those people that doesn't care what white men have to say about anything,
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and you think that our opinions are stupid and you're listening to the show
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regularly, thank you. I appreciate that. I don't know what your reason
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is. Maybe it's just just see if the show was safe. I don't
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know, I don't know, I don't know what the you know, we
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got a bunch of shows taken down because safety was one of the reasons.
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I was given a number of reasons, but one of them was so that
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everybody could feel safe. So if you're, you know, listening, and
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you don't care what my opinions are on things, and but you still feel
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safe, I appreciate that's that's always one of the goals is to make sure
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everybody feels safe. But I do want to talk a little bit about the
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Barbie movie. I did see the movie. It's just past the one billion
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dollar mark. It's they're calling it historic. I guess because it's a woman
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director. There's been fifty two movies that have crossed the billion dollar mark.
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I don't know. I mean, I understand that there's a whole thing about
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you kind of become the first in a marketing role. You become the first
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in your category to do something, then you'll be remembered. Right, you're
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the first to do the transatlantic flight. We know who that was. That
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was Charles Lindberg. When you're the first woman to do it, you weren't
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the first, you weren't the second person to do it. You were the
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first woman to do it. We know who Amelia Earhart is. We know
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those people, you don't necessarily know who anybody was in between. Bert Hinkler
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I think was the second guy. But anyway, I just know that because
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of this analogy. I don't I don't really know that because I'm not a
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student of aviation by any means. I don't memorize a lot of stats and
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names and figures. And my kids are great with that, especially my now
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middle school or my sixth grader, who's great when it comes to knowing baseball
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stats and sports stats and things. But anyway, so that's I guess that's
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a significant thing in the world of movies. That this is a movie directed
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by a woman. It was a movie made for women by women. I
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think is kind of the I mean, they did. They're not saying that,
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but I think that's pretty clear if you've seen it. I was able
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to get my hands on a screener of it, so I didn't have to
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pay to see it, So just a heads up on that. I mean,
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I'm all about supporting movies in the arts as necessary. This isn't necessarily
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one. I'm just pointing out I didn't contribute to I'm contributing to it by
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telling you about it. And I've talked about it many times, and that's
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sort of the role when you get one of those screeners. I'm not contributing
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to the billion dollars, is the only point that I'm just lobbing out there.
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So and I appreciate whoever put me on the screener list. Thank you.
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All right, So here's here's the deal for the Barbie movie. And
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I just want to make this as an observation because I appreciate movies as an
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art form. I know there's a lot going on right now. There's a
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strike that's in progress, and there are actors and writers that are trying to
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get their fair share. Some people are critical of that, some people saying,
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hey, you're an actor and a writer, you probably have lots of
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money. Not all of them do, especially not a lot of the writers.
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A lot of the actors. They are just getting by. I know
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some actors who are struggling right now and just trying to get by. But
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even in the best days, best times when they're working, they're just getting
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by. There's been a few stories of actors that are selling their houses or
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having to sell their cars or whatever to make ends meet. Some of them
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taking other jobs to make ends. Meet. It's the reality behind that profession
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sometimes and it's just part of how it all works. But it's a struggle
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right now for them on strike. And I do enjoy watching a good movie.
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I do think that, you know, the awards thing has taken a
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weird turn because now there's all these stipulations on even being nominated for an award.
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You have to have all these social justice credits apparently, you know,
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they're looking at how many basically non white men worked on the project, and
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if you meet a certain amount a certain quote of that, you can be
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nominated for winning an award. I mean, that's it's a weird thing for
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the Oscars. I know there's some other awards that are probably actually awarding based
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on art, and I know artists objective, and there's been people over the
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years who've had issues with giving out awards for art to begin with. But
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if the prize is for best movie made, it shouldn't really matter who was
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involved in making it. Okay, I understand there's this we're trying to get,
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you know, everybody included and at the table, but it's just a
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weird time for art and those types of things. So there's there's that So
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with that said, let's talk about the Barbie movie. When they announced that
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they were gonna make a movie about Barbie, there were a few options on
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directions that it could go. I know that there have been movies based on
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stories that kind of didn't exist, right. We had the Lego Movie,
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which Lego the toys have been around for a really long time, and I
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know that they've done different versions of animated stories based on the Lego characters,
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but typically those are based on a lore that already exists. Lego buys the
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rights to you know, Batman, and then they make Lego Batman, and
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then they buy the rights to Star Wars, they make Lego Star Wars,
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they make video games, they make you know, different versions of stories that
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kind of already exists, or tapping into something that already exists. So and
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then that's one version of it. The Lego movie, however, it did
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create a new set of characters, borrowed some existing characters, did some of
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the same things that this Barbie movie would eventually do as well. The Lego
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Movie, however, gave you a story that I think people of all ages
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could appreciate and enjoy, and there was a moral to the story and ultimately
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a message that was conveyed between the toy world and the real world. Okay,
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those two things eventually did overlap, and the people who made the movie
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assumed that the audience would be even children, which was the main audience for
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the movie. The Lego Movie was not made to be a PG thirteen movie,
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wasn't made to have jokes about I don't remember any jokes about genitalia.
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Okay, I don't remember that. Not that the genitalia jokes in the Barbie
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movie were offensive, but you know, I'm just pointing out the difference between
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a movie geared at an audience of children versus a movie that maybe should have
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been geared at an audience for children but wasn't. But I'm not gonna knock
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it because the thing has made a billion dollars. So it's not like you
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can say that they did something wrong. They did everything right if the goal
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is simply to make as much money as possible, okay, which, by
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the way, they knock capitalism in the movie. They knock it as a
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bad thing. They make fun of capitalism in the movie, okay, and
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they do so by making fun of capitalism. They don't do it in a
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symbolic way. But we'll get to that in a second. So the Lego
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movie knew its audience would be children, young children at times, and then
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also adults who had the young children that maybe wanted to revisit their childhood and
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experience Lego all over again. Right, And they tell this story that is
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ultimately about you know, children and parents in this particular case, fathers and
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sons, siblings, and this idea that basically toys were made to be played
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with, and they were made to be shared, and they're away for parents
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and children to connect, Okay, And they laid all that out, not
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by telling you that, but by letting a story play out and assuming that
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the audience was intelligent enough to figure it out. Some of the greatest pieces
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of literature, I would say, almost all of the great pieces of literature
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ever written, stories that have ever been written. Ultimately, there is a
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lot of symbolic meaning within the context of the story. Right, you have
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a story, and I'll reference my oldest son just started high school. Lord
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of the Flies was on his list, and we you know, he just
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did his summer reading and his work on that, and you know, the
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symbolism of you know, Piggy's glasses, and the symbolism of the shell that
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they had to have so that they could conduct the meetings, and the importance
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of the shell, and the significance of each character, and as they applied
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to Ego and the ID and super Ego and all those things. See,
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those things aren't told in the story. At no point did they say Piggy's
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glasses, which you're symbolic of dot dot dot. They don't say that.
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They just sort of let you read the story, take it in and either
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get the context of it or subcontext of it. They let you understand it
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and appreciate it, or you just miss it and you read the story and
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you go story about a bunch of kids on an island, a bunch of
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boys, and they don't dumb it down for the reader. That's not what
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they do. That's not what most great pieces of literature imagine. If you
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will, if you're familiar with Ed Growland Poe's Tell Tale Heart so short story
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and incredibly well written, and if you're not familiar with it, it basically
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in a nutshell tells the story of a guy who you know, killed somebody,
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buried him in the floorboards of the house and is very paranoid that he's
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going to get caught. Now, imagine if that was the story. Imagine
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if you start reading it and it's a guy who says, Hey, I'm
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a guy. I killed somebody, I buried him in the floor of my
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house, and I'm going to get caught. And that's it. That's what
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he says, over and over and over again. Maybe I don't know,
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forty fifty times, and then the story ends. Maybe he gets caught,
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maybe he doesn't. I don't know, But maybe that's refuted to determine the
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outcome of But the bottom line is he tells you exactly what he's thinking,
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rather than the way Edgar Allan Poe wrote it, which was to take you
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through the mind of someone who is paranoid, engulfed in guilt, fears getting
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caught, fears the consequences of getting caught, and it just takes you through
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the absolute wild roller coaster ride that he's experiencing as someone who is in that
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position. The Barbie movie just tells you over and over again, patriarchy bad,
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women good, patriarchy bad. The word patriarchy has said at fifty sixty
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times. It's insane. The amount of times that it said, and the
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moral of the story ultimately sort of comes back around. There's a very interesting
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line that gets said towards the end of it where one of the characters,
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and I don't want to give anything away in casser you want to watch it,
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but one of the characters ultimately says that the terms like patriarchy or things
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that we made up to make things easier. And I don't know that they
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see terms, but they say patriarchy is something that we make up, which
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I thought was interesting. I don't know that it was intentional, but it
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was an interesting thing that sort of stuck out in it because it almost they
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goes back and says, this whole concept of patriarchy is, you know,
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we just made it up. But it's certainly not the moral of the movie.
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That's not the message of the movie. I'm really not sure what the
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message of the movie was, to be honest, because the only takeaway from
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it was this constant reference to patriarchy and how it ruins everything, and it
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was to the point of to me, I would be insulted if I was
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in the target demographic of this movie. If I was a woman who was
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watching the movie wanting to see a story about Barbie, and the movie just
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talked to me like I was a complete idiot, that I wouldn't be able
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to pick up on nuances, that I wouldn't be able to pick up on
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subtleties, that they didn't give me the credit that the Lego Movies creators gave
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its audience because it didn't. It didn't do that at all. There was
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no opportunity for the audience to pick up on things because they were just told,
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Hey, I killed a guy, he's in the floor of the house.
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I'm worried, I'm gonna get caught. That's what they did over and
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over and over again, to the point that whatever the hodgepodge mess of an
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ending that was there, I'm not And all I'll say is that both movies
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had Will Ferrell in it. I'll just point that out. I don't know
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what that has to do with my with my review, but you know,
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I've seen reviews that say dumber things. I've seen reviews that say much much
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dumber things. So I'll just point out that Will Ferrell's in both movies.
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But there are those similarities in that it's two movies real world, fake world.
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The world's collide, that kind of stuff. I just wish that they'd
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given the audience the credit that it deserved, that it didn't dumb it down
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so that women could understand it, because that's what I felt like they were
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doing. I mean, I don't know they were specifically saying women, you're
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not going to understand it. I think it was really more a case of
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we're gonna make a movie, we want to deliver a message. We're not
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really sure how to do this. We don't really know how to tell this
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story with nuance. We're not really sure how to tell this story and not
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just lay it all out there for you, like we don't understand a parable,
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we don't understand a fairy tale, we don't understand anything that would involve
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creatively telling a story without completely dumbing it down for you, because this is
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all we know how to do. So it was one of the two.
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It was either poor storytelling or it was assuming that the audience isn't capable of
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figuring it out, and either way that makes it to me not very good.
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I mean, it just wasn't. And I know people are raving about
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Ryan Gossling in there, raving about some of the elements of it, and
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you know, if you enjoyed it, that's fine. You're allowed to enjoy
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it. You don't have to share my opinion of it. I'm just giving
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you my thoughts on I didn't find a whole lot redeeming about it at all.
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I really didn't. There was no moment where I went and I didn't
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go into it thinking I want to hate this. I didn't go into it
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thinking this is uh, you know, it's gonna be terrible. I didn't
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think that at all. I didn't know when I watched it. I just
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watched it, and this is just my honest assessment of it. This is
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how I felt about it, and I felt like either bad storytelling or they
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think that you're really dumb if you're part of the target audience for it,
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and I don't know which it was. I'll just leave it there and let
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people continue to go spend their money to watch it and let it make another
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billion or whatever it's going to do. I don't know. I don't know
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what the endgame is for it. I just know if you, if you
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watched it, enjoyed it, and you had a good time, that's ultimately
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the goal of the movie. I mean, that should be the goal of
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every movie, if you watched it and had a good time. If you
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go to a sporting event and you have a good time, even if the
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athletes are using their platforms to tell you how you're supposed to think and vote
19:14
and act in all those sorts of things. Ultimately, the goal is to
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have a good time. And that's really all that should matter, is if
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you had a good time. And I'll just tell you I had a good
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time when I watched the Lego movie. Today's show brought to you by Columba
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Have you checked out the Made of Stars podcast yet, Well you probably should.
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The Georgia Association of Broadcasters as named Made of Stars the best podcast series
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Axiom Space, and Boeing. Plus we fill you in on what's happening
28:18
beyond our atmosphere, throughout our Solar System, and into the deepest known regions
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of space. Check out Best Podcast Series Gabby Award winning Made of Stars.
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New episodes every Thursday on Spotify, Apple, Google, or wherever you listen
28:33
to your podcast