Mark Ronson has sent up Bill Maher for calling Barbie “preachy” and “man-hating”.
On Monday (7 August), US commentator Maher saw Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster and, in a bizarre tweet about the film, said that he didn’t like the way the film depicted Barbie as “fighting the patriarchy”.
Maher called out the fact that the film features “the Mattel board who created her, consisting of 12 white men”.
He acknowleged that while he “enjoyed” the “fun” film, this detail frustrated him as “there’s a Mattel board in real life, and it’s seven men and five women”.
Maher wrote: “OK, not perfect even-steven, but not the way the board IN THE MOVIE – which takes place in 2023 – is portrayed. The real Mattel board is a pretty close mirror of the country, where 45 per cent of the 449 board seats filled last year in Fortune 500 companies were women. Truth is, I’m not the one who’s out of step. I’m living in the year we’re living in.”
Music producer Ronson, who worked on the film’s music, reshared Maher’s lengthy tweet, writing: “We come to this place for magic. We come to AMC theatres to laugh, to cry, to care... and to furiously Google ‘Mattel board configuration’ while others are trying to enjoy a f***ing magnificent comedy.”
Save for a joke branded too “self-aware” by film fans, Barbie, which stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, has been a critical hit.
It’s also been a box office smash for Warner Bros, crossing $1bn at the box office. It’ll soon make $300m more to become the highest-grossing film of the year, surpassing The Super Mario Bros Movie.
The Independent gave the film five stars, calling it “a near-miraculous achievement”.
Ronson scored and wrote new songs for the film alongside Andrew Wyatt, with the former additionally curating the soundtrack, which featured artists including Dua Lipa, who also appears in the film, Charli XCX, Haim, Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj and Tame Impala.
Barbie is in cinema snow.
