Unsurprisingly, Barbie prompted Salmon’s provocative essay, but it is not a film review,
Its headline’s question:
Has Barbie killed the indie director?
Salmon notes that Greta Gerwig is far from the only “indie” film director to have “moved in this direction”.
He believes that they are indeed guilty of “selling out”:
Mattel and Disney are two enormous corporations that would seem to stand for everything these directors are – or should be – in opposition to….
He asks:
Why has the concept of selling out lost so much of its cultural capital today? Online, you can hardly move for defenders of these directors, belligerently vaunting the fact that – for instance – Gerwig was influenced by directors such as Max Ophüls and Jacques Tati, as if that confers greater legitimacy on a film using IP (intellectual property) to make money for a toy company that sells vacuous, hypersexualised dolls…A director’s decision to align themselves with these Goliaths of entertainment has consequences; makes money for the big guy, in opposition to fostering an industry where smaller films and creators have more opportunities.
Click here to read the full essay, published in The Guardian on 19. 07.2023.
Photographic footnote
The unsettling image atop this post was not in any way “set up”, at least by its photographer.
Eight years ago, after a pleasant walk beside part of Perth’s Swan River, my beloved and I walked onto the platform at Woodbridge Railway Station.
There, we were somewhat startled by a discarded, damaged doll.
(photo is copyright Doug Spencer, taken on 14 July 2015)
I do not know how and why Barbie reached “bin-land”; the “guilty party” could have been an “innocent” child, or a smart-arsed adult, perhaps even a self-styled “urban guerilla”/“political” artist/e.
At lunchtime today, I was ambushed by something even more startling, Barbie-wise, courtesy/discourtesy of an Australian-owned, self-billed “healthy” burger chain: click here
“Healthy” is literally Grill’d s middle name: their full moniker is Grill’d Healthy Burgers.
There are, of course, various Barbie packages available; by Grill’d’s own reckoning (here) one Barbie Dreamburger Bundle will provide circa 58% of your average daily energy needs, and a little more than 100% of your fat requirements.