I’m late, ‘cos I’ve been processing. Watching Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in Barbie and Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr in Oppenheimer virtually again to again was an expertise. It gave me, and I’m guessing a whole lot of us, rather a lot to course of.

And most of us aren’t consultants, not movie critics, not totally sorted about feminism and patriarchy, not historians, we have now little or no information about quantum physics or splitting the atom, nor are most of us psychologists or sociologists.

And but, we should always have our say. After all, Greta Gerwig and Chris Nolan made these superior films for us. Also, it could be totally comprehensible if every of us walked away from these movies with a take of our personal. Here’s mine.

Barbie vs Oppenheimer: More Alike Than You Might Think

For me, even because the movies are vastly completely different in each approach, they’re factors at which they converge. Both have targeted on a few of greatest themes of the twentieth century. Oppenheimer focuses on the atom bomb, and thru it, on the human capability to unleash horrific destruction by itself, and mankind’s absurd motion in direction of growing the capability of destroying itself. Barbie talks about consumerism, and patriarchy, and the place of an iconic doll and the colour pink within the understanding of feminism. But curiously, these are some essential overlaps of their themes, which we might have missed if the 2 movies had not launched on the identical day.

Since we discover ourselves grappling and obsessing with them properly into the twenty first century, its apparent that even at a societal degree, these themes from the earlier century are lot to course of, and stay related immediately.   

Barbie, with the subversive alternative of Margot Robbie within the title position, units up the Barbie doll phenomenon as one thing that inadvertently challenged patriarchy. It recognized and blew up the large buying energy of the feminine shopper. And with all the opposite avatars of Barbie, from ‘President’ Barbie to ‘Nobel Prize Winner’ Barbie, it additionally created a way of girls succeeding as a gender in twentieth century.

Till Queen-dom Come: How Barbie Subverts Toxic Masculinity

Greta Gerwig then very cleverly busts this fable, by revealing {that a} Barbie-dom that is completely Barbie-driven and Barbie-centric, wherein Ken and all Kens are secondary, is definitely a gender-inverted mirror picture of the ‘actual world’, which is completely male-centric and male-driven. The level is pushed house additional when Ken, performed brilliantly by Ryan Gosling, phases a coup, dethrones Barbie and units up a Ken-ruled, Ken-centric, Ken-dom.

(A movie nonetheless from Barbie)

In The ‘Ken-dom’ Of Oppenheimer

How does this tie in with ‘Oppenheimer’? Well, to my thoughts, Los Alamos was virtually a Ken-dom. Almost each one of many atomic scientists and quantum physicists and mathematicians gathered there by Robert Oppenheimer was male. While there was the motivation of preventing fascism, preventing Nazi anti-semitism, it was additionally a boys’ membership. The race to separate the atom, and the race to construct the A-bomb, as proven by Nolan, additionally struck me as an all-male, narcissistic contest, wherein the world-altering penalties of their actions have been virtually consciously ignored, in order that they might merely not are available in the best way, till the ‘race’ was received. At which level, because the movie powerfully drives house, it’s far too late.

Christopher Nolan additionally chooses to present us a glimpse of Oppenheimer’s private life, the place once more there’s a trace of narcissism. His marriage to Kitty Puening, performed within the movie by Emily Blunt, had its controversy. He had an affair together with her whereas she was married, which led to her divorce, after which she married Oppenheimer. We are additionally proven that Oppenheimer continued his on-off affair with Communist activist Jean Tatlock, even after his marriage to Kitty. Jean Tatlock suffered from despair and died by suicide in 1944.

We additionally see Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer being given the choice of selecting pacifism greater than as soon as earlier than and in the course of the begin of the Manhattan Project that he headed in Los Alamos. But for the better good, and maybe for private glory, he pressed on. And he ensured that his hand-picked all-star scientists’ group stayed in line too, regardless of a lot of them questioning the motives of the undertaking, and having a number of episodes of self-doubt. We see an Oppenheimer pleased with successful the ‘atomic race’, applauding his group even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been worn out, and seemingly savouring his standing as ‘father of the atomic bomb’, and seeing his face on the duvet of TIME journal.

The Destroyer Of Worlds

Was the world then run and ruined by a boys’ membership? Is conflict a by-product of patriarchy? Was the nuclear weapons arms race and the chilly conflict among the many crudest examples of poisonous masculinity taken to its extremes? There are many who would argue, sure. Of course, there have at all times been different forces at play. Also, within the a long time which have adopted, we have now had just a few girls leaders, and a few of them have proven virtually the identical urge for food for violence and destruction. So, nobody is pedaling the previous argument about how girls ‘nurture’, whereas males ‘destroy’. That’s too simplistic.   

(A movie nonetheless from Oppenheimer)

But what can maybe be mentioned, is that each movies, Barbie as a key message, and Oppenheimer as further meals for thought, remind us that gender equality is central to our lives, for us as people, and as a society. A ‘Barbie-dom’ type of world just isn’t emancipating. It’s a Xerox of patriarchy, however in reverse. And an ‘Oppenheimer-dom’ lays naked the self-destructive endgame of a male-led world – on this case a mindless contest of constructing atomic bombs and nuclear warheads that might destroy the world many instances over.

What this world must be, is neither Barbie’s nor Oppenheimer’s. It must be genuinely respectful of, and pushed by, each gender.  

(Rohit Khanna is a journalist, commentator and video storyteller. He has been Managing Editor at The Quint, Executive Producer of Investigations & Special Projects at CNN-IBN, and is a 2-time Ramnath Goenka award winner)

Disclaimer: These are the private opinions of the creator.