Oscars 2024: Barbie Publicity Machine Roars to Life

Barbie has now saturated the market entirely. So far, so good, box office-wise. According to Deadline, they’re saying it might land with an $80-100 million opening weekend. There is much chatter about Tom Cruise this, Oppenheimer, that, but the bottom line is that we know for sure Tom Cruise has nothing to worry about and will likely have the highest-grossing film of the year with Mission Impossible, not that it will matter, Oscars-wise.

The Barbie publicity machine reminds me a little of that scene in Network when all of the former activists have now sold out for a higher share and a big pay-out? That’s not to slight, Greta Gerwig, but the marriage between identity politics, a doll empire, and Greta Gerwig is a lot. Like this video from Nicki Minaj IS a Barbie ad, so is the movie, and so are all of the characters, the mansion, the toys, etc. What’s astonishing is that the membrane that used to exist between art, film criticism, and journalism used to be intact.

I guess we could say that cherry has been popped. We might rename this Euphoric Capitalism. But hey, whatever works, right? Sell those dolls!

This video already has 23M views. In 13 days. That’s something. But tell me it doesn’t remind you of that scene in Network…I do love Nicki Minaj, so no shade.

The Barbie vibe fits nicely into our age of narcissism/Instagram/Kardashian, doesn’t it?

The Dreamhouse doesn’t quite have the same views as Minaj. It’s at around 8 million:

It remains difficult to push back my cynicism with this or take it seriously. The best I can say about it is that if any movie represents 2023, it’s this one. The same way Hamilton represented America pre-2016, this one is what living in this era is like. Funny, quirky, colorful, and that kind of high frequency super happy happy happy HAPPY!!!! If you know, you know.

I don’t know what, if anything, can hurt this movie — they have every kind of person represented, even plus-size.  It will get hit big time with accusations of being “woke, ” which will drive away some audiences, as we just saw with Dial of Destiny, but it hardly matters. It’s made for young women and hip tweeners — and will become, I predict if it hasn’t already, a Tik Tok phenomenon.

Does that mean it becomes an Oscar frontrunner? Look, anything is possible now. The Oscars have become more or less cosplay where every dream of Film Twitter comes true. So enough people may vote this movie at number one to push it into the race, which will make it Gerwig’s third Best Picture nominee, should that pass.

I don’t think it will be or can be a disaster because even if it is really bad – like House of Gucci bad, which it won’t be – it will be willed into success by the fandom on Twitter. So if I were them, I’d feel pretty good about Barbie right now, at least in terms of its reasons for existing: as a delivery device to sell dolls. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

As a Best Picture contender, I expect it should do well at the Globes. I imagine the Critics Choice will want the Barbie gang at their show, so it’s good there. Producers Guild, probably. Does it crack the Oscars? I guess we’ll see.

This post only exists for the commenters who are probably looking for something fun to discuss for a change.