How Barbie And Bottoms Fought The Patriarchy, Literally
Growing up, my father used to lament that he had two daughters, not because he wanted to play catch with a miniature version of himself or some other Beaver Cleaver nonsense, but because in his words, "Women are unpredictable." As much as I'd like to reprimand my old man's archaic line of thinking, I know what he's getting at, and I'm tickled to know that this Midwestern Italian patriarch is rightfully intimidated by women. As he should be.
Generally speaking (and when approaching gender identity through a binary lens), there's a stereotype that men solve conflict through physicality ("Fight Club," "The Karate Kid," "They Live"). At the same time, women are often portrayed as committing acts of mental warfare that destroy a person from the inside out ("Mean Girls," "Jawbreaker," "Do Revenge"). Granted, I grew up in a high school environment where watching girls throw hands was weekly lunchtime entertainment, but I recognize that by and large, most people's lived experiences paint a picture of men as brutish grapplers and women as psychological supervillains.
This is why it's so interesting that two of 2023's best films — Emma Seligman's "Bottoms" and Greta Gewig's "Barbie" — showcase two very different approaches to women literally fighting injustice rooted in the patriarchy.
The former is obvious as it's a film about a female fight club started in the hopes that the intimate connection of physical violence will allow two "ugly, untalented gays" (the principal's words, not mine) the chance to hook up with hot cheerleaders, but they discover their newly developed fighting skills are better suited to beat the brakes off of a rival football team attempting to kill their school's quarterback. "Barbie," meanwhile, takes the traditional route of playing mind games, weaponizing men's weaknesses and insecurities against one another and pushing them to do the Barbies' dirty work for them ... and fight each other.
It's about to be a girl fight
Fight scenes are a dime a dozen in the cinematic coming-of-age landscape, but these sorts of stories are almost exclusively tied to young men, and the closest thing women get tends to fall under the exploitation umbrella of revenge thrillers. Fortunately, "Bottoms" subverts all of those baked-in themes we associate with teen films, and gives women the chance to hit back. They terrorize the home of a football player and a girl bombs his car, they have multiple montages of punching each other in the face, and in the absolutely raucous climax, they not only fight football players twice their size, but a few of the girls actually kill some of these guys. It's all played for comedic effect, but it's a giant wad of phlegm spitting on the idea that "fighting is never the answer."
Nah. Sometimes fighting is absolutely the answer, because to win, you've gotta enter the same playing field.
After Barbieland has been turned into a Kendom and the Barbies are stripped of their autonomy by the brainwashing influence of patriarchy, things feel helpless. It isn't until they concoct a master plan to deprogram all of the Barbies, using emotional manipulation as a distraction method to keep the Kens busy, that they find hope. Women feign ignorance and helplessness and continue to stroke the egos of the Kens, knowing the guys will be too stupid to realize they're being played. The Barbies eventually pit them against each other by picking at their insecurities, and instead of the Kens directly addressing their issues, they lash out at one another. The Barbies wash their perfectly manicured hands clean of the patriarchy and get busy reinstating the Barbieland constitution while the men are busy fighting. You don't fight fire with fire, you fight with the tools you have that guarantee success.
My dad was right. Women are unpredictable. And that's why the patriarchy is so scared of us.
On today's episode of the /Film Daily podcast, I spoke about these two films and the rest of my Top 10 movies of 2023, and you can listen to it below:
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