For some women in China, “Barbie” is more than just a movie — it’s also a litmus test for their partner’s views on feminism and patriarchy.
The movie has prompted intense social media discussion online, media outlets Sixth Tone and the China Project reported this week, prompting women to discuss their own dating experiences.
One user on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu — a photo-sharing site similar to Instagram that’s mostly used by Gen Z women — even shared a guide on Monday for how women can test their boyfriends based on their reaction to the film.
According to the guide, if a man shows hatred for “Barbie” and slams female directors after they leave the theatre, then this man is “stingy” and a “toxic chauvinist,” according to Insider’s translation of the post. Conversely, if a man understands even half of the movie’s themes, “then he is likely a normal guy with normal values and stable emotions,” the user wrote.
I mean those statements seem like they’re in contradiction of each other; if attention spans are lower (which I don’t disagree with) then people are more likely to debate/discuss a wider range of topics though perhaps in less detail.
This doesn’t necessarily mean collectively people will be able to hold onto these points to bring about effective change, though it doesn’t preclude it either.
Attention span being shorter means you’ll be able to follow topic/problem for shorter amount of time.
Because of that regular media “reminders” like articles/reviews/editorials/opinions/reaction videos are needed to keep a topic “floating”. Optimal situation here was what you saw with “me too” campaign, different people sharing their story and media jumping on each of them individually until… yeah… until public outrage dies out.
Basically to force any change you need people feeling emotional about some issue for a longer period of time + somebody organizing (legislation proposition etc). There is so many issues (and more coming every day) that it’s really hard to make people actually feel anything about a cause for longer than a day in constant stream of “world is burning/world is unfair”. People become just disengaged and nihilistic.
This means to me that if you fight everything you fight nothing - e.g. you’ll never build large enough group of actually enraged and motivated people to actually pass anything if they try to fix everything at once.
What is interesting to me, however, is that these “reminders” of what you should be angry about/what the current issue is (I’m speaking of general Western Europe) are overwhelmingly non-business related. Eg. There is no “patriarchy corporation of men” to fight against, patriarchy doesn’t make much sense economically to present to board of directors so of course every company, movie studio and their dog is against. Same with sex/gender related issues - it’s rather some vague religious groups or politicians wanting to appeal to conservative voters that are against these kind of laws. Corporate likes what sells, if it has a rainbow flag on it and sells - cool then the corporate supports pride, simple as that.
I’m lacking issues being highlighted that go against this trope - there are some movies, from time to time, sure, if only the message was pushed with same energy and constant reminders like eg. “patriarchy bad, girls can do anything” which you see in every second movie/superhero movie/tv series.