Name: Barbie by Why Theory
Duration: 1 h 30 min
Description: Ryan and Todd interpret the film Barbie while responding to both leftist and rightist critiques of the film. They discuss the film's exploration of fantasy, its highlighting of contradiction, and its emphasis on the role of desire in politics.

Haha, the Matchbox 20 song starts out "She said..."

Great, as always!   Make sure you watch it at AMC (& buy 🍿.) Did you recall that Robbie and Gosling were together in "The Big Short?"

I disagree with this. Why can't it be both? Dialectics and Deleuze offer us plenty of reasons to reveal how something can be itself and the opposite. But here there's not even something that deep going on. A film can be preachy and a clever marketing ploy. It's most visible in the Super Bowl or Pride Month. Yeah, it shows us preaching, but it *is* direct. I think that is made clear at the end.

The idea that Barbieland exists as in fantasy support of the real world seems similar to Baudrillard’s idea of  Disneyland existing as a simulacrum to make the world outside it appear as not a simulacrum (which I’m just realizing is pretty close to

I think we can attribute this type of critical, non-reflective response to the film to things like Cinema Sins- shows/podcasts expressly designed to point out the flaws in movies. This leads to the viewer thinking they are smarter than the movie so

It's an evocative reading of the song's relationship to Ken, but wouldn't the fact that the songwriter is talking about being in an abusive relationship (hence, "And I don't know if I've ever been really loved By a hand that's touched me") undercut that reading. Rather than the subtext being "I'm insecure so I'm going to over-exert my masculinity to make you feel small and raise myself up", the subtext becomes "I'm tired of being pushed around by you and being made to feel insignificant, so I'm going to push you around and show you how it feels."

Ryan and Todd begin a series of discussions about the classical Hollywood genres with the screwball comedy, a genre that centers on the sexual antagonism. They look at the film that kicks off the genre, It Happened One Night, as well as the high point of the genre, Bringing Up Baby, in addition to others. 


Ryan was recently a guest discussing graduate student conferences, which one can listen to here: https://soundcloud.com/lclcoralhistory

Screwball Comedy

Ryan and Todd discuss the diagnostic categories of psychoanalysis, beginning with neurosis. They analyze the three forms of neurosis--hysteria, obsession, and phobia--while also focusing on the different manifestations of these three forms in the contemporary political arena.

Neurosis

Ryan and Todd discuss Todd's recent book The Racist Fantasy, which explores the psychic structure that underlies racism and that allows it to deliver enjoyment to those invested in it. They cover the role that fantasy plays in social life and the prospects for fighting racism.

https://forgeorganizing.org/article/building-resilient-organizations

https://www.baylorpress.com/9781602587359/trauma-and-race/

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lacan-noir-david-s-marriott/1139152118

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8-VIi7tb44

https://fielddaylab.wisc.edu/

The Racist Fantasy

Ryan and Todd explore the important ideas from Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, focusing especially on Nietzche's historical critique of morality, his perspectivalism, and his notion of the will to power. They situate Nietzsche's breakthrough in relation to Freud's.

Beyond Good and Evil

Ryan and Todd analyze the recently concluded television series Succession. They discuss it in terms of capitalist subjectivity, tragedy, the death drive, and the ideology of the family. There are spoilers at every point in this discussion.

Succession

Ryan and Todd attempt to show why the term "poststructuralism" is inapt for describing any of the thinkers that it usually is thought to indicate. They go through the major theorists known under this moniker and reveal why poststructuralism doesn't exist.

Poststructuralism

Ryan and Todd interpret the film Barbie while responding to both leftist and rightist critiques of the film. They discuss the film's exploration of fantasy, its highlighting of contradiction, and its emphasis on the role of desire in politics.

Barbie

Ryan and Todd offer their interpretation of Christopher Nolan's most recent film Oppenheimer. They focus on the relationship between the form of the film and its content, while considering the political implications of its depiction of the hero. They think about the film in relationship to the rest of Nolan's filmography.

Oppenheimer

Ryan and Todd unpack Marx's concept of surplus value and explore its fundamental role in the interpretation of capitalist society. They discuss the relationship between surplus value and profit, while considering how we should think about the drive to amass surplus value.

Surplus Value

Ryan and Todd explore the idea of surplus enjoyment as the basis for a theory of capitalism. They consider the psychic hold that capitalism has in terms of the surplus enjoyment that it both promises and provides.

Surplus Enjoyment

Ryan and Todd present the philosophy of Leibniz as articulated in his late work the Monadology. They link this text to the breakthroughs of later thinkers such as Kant and Hegel, as well as discussing how Leibniz anticipates the contemporary situation.

Monadology

Why Theory brings continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine cultural phenomena.

Barbie

Why Theory

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Ryley Alger-hempstead

Ryley Alger-hempstead

Ryley Alger-hempstead

Sonorized

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