Barbie's dream newsletter
This is about the movie of the summer
And we’re back!
Housekeeping notes: This is a day late but it’s a day late for a good reason, which is that I had to see Barbie before I could send it. But I thank you for your patience all the same.
On Monday, this week’s paid subscribers got July’s ET Read Home, which was short story-themed. Because paid issues go out every first and third Monday of the month, it will be a bit until the next one, which is August’s ET Ask Home. But it will be worth the wait!
As always, if there is something you would like to see more or less of in this newsletter, please let me know. Only paid subscribers can comment on posts (talk around here is cheap, but not free), but all of you are welcome to email me with your thoughts. I just ask that you keep it polite and constructive.
And now onto news, views, and Jews.
THE NEWS
For Haaretz, I wrote about Vienna’s Jewish museum, its new (not Jewish) director’s controversial first year on the job, and the question of the purpose of a Jewish museum in a city like Vienna. (Quick disclaimer: I did not write this headline and to me the piece is more about for whom and what and why Jewish museums exist.)
For the Washington Post, I reviewed Goodbye, Eastern Europe, a new book on the region formerly known as…well, you get it.
I was on a panel discussing Barbie and the doll’s enduring appeal.
For MSNBC, I tried to explain why RFK Jr’s conspiracy theory about “ethnically targeted” viruses and the brouhaha that followed is wholly predictable antisemitism.
I spoke to the Forward about why, for me, Threads probably won’t replace Twitter.
A Human Rights Watch expert on China says she was disinvited from testifying before a Congressional committee after refusing to remove criticism of China from her remarks.
Russia pulled out of the Black Sea deal, which was intended to keep food prices around the world stable.
“Former President Donald Trump says he has received word that he's a target of the grand jury probe into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.”
Canada is going to try to “woo” H1-B visa holders who are tired of trying to navigate the US immigration system.
MY VIEWS ON…
…Barbie!
I saw the Barbie movie last night. “Greta killed it,” I texted some friends immediately after.
And what I meant by that was this: There is a certain critique of this movie that criticizes director Greta Gerwig for selling out by making this big, non-indie film and/or suggests that she should work with her own material, not with a popular toy. The first is, respectfully, projection on the part of the critic, who is concerned with their idea of who the kind of director they think Gerwig is. But the second, I think, is also misguided.
Barbie is the best-selling doll of all time. The whole point of the doll, according to Ruth Handler, its inventor, is that it represents possibility. Whatever the doll has been in actuality, in theory, it was supposed to represent that women and girls had choices and could imagine themselves as whatever they wanted to be. And so what I thought going into this movie is that it makes perfect sense that this would be a vehicle for a filmmaker like Gerwig, whose work explores themes like what it means to be a feminist, and what it means to grow up, and what it means to become who you are.
What I realized watching it—and I’m being vague because I don’t want to spoil anything—is that this was also a perfect vehicle because, to explore all of those themes, Gerwig was comfortable using all of Barbie lore against itself—the criticism of the doll, but also the defense that I typed in the paragraph above. What does it mean to believe you can be anything? What happens when it turns out that you’re told that, but you can’t?
I think some people will say that it’s a movie about feminism. I don’t think that’s quite right, either. I think it’s a movie about imagining, and how to imagine something better, or at least different, even when it’s painful. Gerwig took all of the attacks on Barbie and all of the defenses of Barbie and imagined them into being, and then imagined something else, too.
I grew up playing with Barbie, and I wrote about her (isn’t it funny that people refer to Barbie as her when it is an inanimate thing?) in an early chapter of my book and for Smithsonian magazine, so maybe I was primed to like it. But I really do think that, whatever I thought it was going to be, it was better. And in a way, too, that’s fitting for a movie on Barbie and imagination and ideas.
Also it’s just very funny and well acted. And how ‘bout that Ryan Gosling!
AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
I really liked this piece about the Yiddish in Melbourne.
I also really enjoyed this piece about “food nepo baby” Eli Zabar.
There’s a new book about Poland’s fascination with all things Jewish.
The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is now offering remote research sessions.
From Haaretz: “Nine Democrats on Tuesday voted against a highly politicized, Republican-sponsored resolution declaring Israel is not a racist state and opposing antisemitism and xenophobia in all its forms.” From me, not Haaretz: Leaving aside that this one again conflates defending Israel and fighting antisemitism, a state is not inherently “not racist.” States are reflections of policies they pursue and how they treat those who live in and try to participate in the state.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog addressed Congress.
I recommend this piece by Basel Adra for +972 on being detained while covering an attack by settlers.
That’s it for now! Hope to see you back here soon.
-ET