Last night I had a look at the Curzon Cinema website to check out tickets for Oppenheimer. And before passing out in a weakness to find that adult, undiscounted tickets are £18.50 each, I was offered a jolly binary option. A little double box popped up: on the black side, Oppenheimer, on the pink, Barbie. And the caption chirruped, “which mood are you in today?”
So… is it to be fun feminism courtesy of Mattel merchandising, or a biopic of the man whose invention allowed the near-destruction of humanity? You choose! The annihilation of two cities, or the problematic issue about Barbie always going about on tippy-toes?
That’s the thing about the pantomime horse that is ‘Barbenheimer’ – the whimsical phenomenon of having two blockbuster movies on at the same time, thereby dividing couples going to the cinema and giving us all (who can afford the ticket) a moment of agonising consumer choice.
But they’re not the same, are they, the pink and black options? Call me a prig – don’t care – but it is not merely in bad taste to conflate popcorn feminism and a war crime to end all war crimes, but an error of principle.
It is not merely in bad taste to conflate popcorn feminism and a war crime to end all war crimes, but an error of principle
I have been to Hiroshima and I have not been to Oppenheimer, but I can say confidently that humanity crossed a Rubicon when an American president authorised the use of a weapon that obliterated combatant and non-combatant at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; it did not do so when little girls gave up baby dolls to play with Barbie. I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have done the same thing with Schindler’s List.
Actually, it’s a matter of continuing astonishment to me that younger people are so not worked up about nuclear weapons. It’s as if the environmental issue has consumed all the moral energy of a generation. In all the agonised discussion about the war in Ukraine, the possibility of a nuclear engagement really doesn’t feature. Yet in the decades succeeding the use of the atom bomb the perpetual possibility that mankind could annihilate itself really did overshadow a generation.
To refresh all our memories perhaps we should revisit Stanley Kubrick’s work of genius, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb – btw, there’s to be a stage adaptation next year by Armando Iannucci. When it came to the reissue of the film in 2019, the discussion at the launch centred around how close it came to reality.
So, let’s drop the Barbenheimer joke, shall we? It’s not really very funny.
