By Eric Wolf Schoen
With all that is going on in the world, it’s no surprise that the hit movies at your multiplex right now are Barbie, based on the Barbie Fashion Dolls by Mattel and Oppenheimer, the film that chronicles the career of American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.
You couldn’t pick two more different movies. But by this point in the summer people want something different. Enough with things flying in space. We crave a laugh or something serious.
The Barbie movie plays for the little girls in their pink dresses (yes, clothing worn to the theater) as well as their mothers who have original Barbie dolls hidden somewhere in the house. Barbie and fellow dolls reside in Barbieland; a matriarchal society with different variations of Barbies, Kens, and a group of discontinued models, who are treated like outcasts due to their unconventional traits. The Kens spend their days frolicking at the beach, considering it as their profession. The Barbies hold prestigious jobs such as doctors, lawyers, and politicians. (You have come a long way girl!) Beach Ken is only happy when he is with Barbie and seeks a closer relationship, but Barbie rebuffs him in favor of other activities and female friendships.
At a dance party, Barbie is suddenly stricken with worries about mortality. Overnight, she develops bad breath, cellulite, and flat feet (we should all have it so bad!) Weird Barbie, an outcast due to her disfigurement, tells her she must find the child playing with her in the real world to cure her afflictions. Ken joins Barbie in her search.
Arriving at Venice Beach, Barbie punches a man for groping her (aggressive Barbie) leading to her and Ken’s brief arrest. Alarmed by this, Mattel’s CEO orders their recapture. Barbie tracks down her owner, a tween girl named Sasha, who criticizes her for encouraging unrealistic standards of beauty. Distraught, Barbie discovers that Gloria, a Mattel employee and Sasha’s mother, inadvertently caused a crisis after Gloria began playing with Sasha’s old Barbie toys in a similar dysfunctional state. Mattel attempts to put Barbie in the designated toy box for remanufacturing, but she escapes with Gloria and Sasha’s help and the three travel to Barbieland with Mattel executives in pursuit.
Meanwhile, Ken learns about the patriarchal system and feels respected for the first time. Returning to Barbieland, he persuades the other Kens to take over, and the Barbies are indoctrinated into submissive roles, such as girlfriends, housewives, and maids. Barbie arrives and unsuccessfully tries to convince Ken and the Barbies to return to the way things were. She becomes depressed (so what did u expect) but Gloria gives an inspirational speech about society’s conflicting expectations of women, restoring Barbie’s self-confidence.
With the assistance of Sasha, Weird Barbie and the discontinued dolls, Gloria convinces the Barbies to free themselves from subordination. The Barbies manipulate the Kens into fighting amongst themselves, distracting them from enshrining male superiority into Barbieland’s constitution. The Barbies regain power. Having experienced systemic oppression for themselves, the Barbies resolve to rectify the faults of their previous society, emphasizing better treatment of the Kens and all outcasts (the happy ending…sunglasses and smiles on please!)
Barbie and Ken apologize to each other, acknowledging their mistakes. Barbie, who remains unsure of her own identity, meets with the spirit of Ruth Handler, Mattel co-founder and creator of the Barbie doll, who explains that Barbie’s story has no set ending (expect Barbie the Sequel) and her ever-evolving history surpasses her roots. After the Barbies, Kens, and Mattel executives bid Barbie goodbye, she decides to become human and return to the real world. Sometime later, Gloria, her husband, and Sasha take Barbie, now going by the name “Barbara Handler”, to her first gynecological appointment. Barbie is all grown up! Riveting!
The other hot movie for a slightly more mature crowd (though folks are seeing it as a double feature with Barbie) is Oppenheimer. My advice. See it another day. And for a kid under 16, this 3 hour movie though well done will be torture.
In 1926, 22-year-old doctoral student J. Robert Oppenheimer studies under experimental physicist Patrick Blackett at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. He is homesick and suffers from anxiety while struggling with the required lab work (sounds like kids back to college this week).
Oppenheimer, upset with the demanding Blackett, leaves him a poison-laced apple but retrieves it before consumption. Visiting scientist Niels Bohr is impressed enough by Oppenheimer’s intellect to recommend that he should instead study theoretical physics in Germany, where Oppenheimer completes his PhD. He later meets theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg at a conference in Switzerland.
Oppenheimer returns to the United States, wanting to expand quantum physics research there. He begins a teaching career at the University of California, Berkeley and the California Institute of Technology, starting with a mere one student. He meets his future wife, Katherine “Kitty” Puening, a biologist and ex-communist, and also has an intermittent affair with Jean Tatlock, a member of the Communist Party USA.
In 1938, Nazi Germany’s progress in nuclear fission research spurs Oppenheimer and his colleagues to replicate their results. In 1942, amid World War II, U.S. Army General Leslie Groves recruits Oppenheimer to lead the Manhattan Project, the goal which is to develop an atomic bomb after he gives assurances that he has no communist sympathies.
Oppenheimer, who is Jewish, is particularly driven by the Nazis’ potentially completing their nuclear weapons program, headed by Heisenberg. He assembles a stellar scientific team including Edward Teller and Isidor Isaac Rabi in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and also collaborates with scientists Enrico Fermi and David L. Hill.
After Germany surrenders, some project scientists question the bomb’s relevance, while Oppenheimer believes using it will quickly end the ongoing war in the Pacific, saving Allied lives. However, he and Albert Einstein had discussed the small possibility that an atomic detonation could trigger an atmospheric chain reaction and destroy the world.
President Harry S. Truman orders Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be bombed, forcing Japan’s surrender. Oppenheimer is thrust into the public eye as the “father of the atomic bomb”, but the immense destruction and mass fatalities caused by it haunt him. He urges Truman to restrict further nuclear weapon development, which Truman dismisses.
As an advisor to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Oppenheimer advocates against further nuclear research, especially the hydrogen bomb proposed by Edward Teller. His stance becomes a point of contention amid the tense Cold War with the Soviet Union. Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss resents Oppenheimer after he dismissed his concerns about exporting radioisotopes, publicly humiliating him, and for recommending arms talks with the Soviet Union.
At a hearing intended to eliminate Oppenheimer’s political influence, Strauss exploits Oppenheimer’s past associations with Communist Party members. Despite allies testifying in his defense, Oppenheimer’s security clearance is revoked, damaging his public image and neutralizing his policy influence.
At Strauss’s later Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of Commerce, Hill testifies about Strauss’s personal motives in engineering Oppenheimer’s downfall. The U.S. Senate votes against his nomination. Get the popcorn. Two end of summer movies you will enjoy!
Listen to Eric Schoen on the Westchester Rising Radio Show Thursday’s from 10-11 a.m. On WVOX 1460 AM, go to WVOX.com and click the arrow to listen to the live stream or download the WVOX app from the App Store free of charge. Reach him at thistooisyonkers@aol.com.
