This blog contains spoilers for Barbie and Oppenheimer.

Barbenheimer is - dare I say it - the cinematic event of the year. Two films: one, a dramatic biopic following the creation of the atomic bomb by Robert Oppenheimer, the other a light-hearted family comedy about an iconic children's toy, both littered with notable actors and directed by critically acclaimed filmmakers. Some have compared it to the simultaneous 2008 release of The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia, but I'm not sure that quite compares to the cultural behemoth that has become Barbenheimer. My friend pointed out during our double feature fun yesterday that the release date of the two films was announced this time last year. We had been anticipating this day for an entire cycle around the sun. From the looks of the crowd at the cinema yesterday, many other people had followed through on this excitement just as we had - or, at least, they were going to see one of the two aforementioned films. In fact, there appeared to be some gendered division happening before our very eyes.

We sat down in our seats for the 3:30 IMAX showing of Oppenheimer. The theatre was almost full; us three girls were sat between a couple and two guy friends, with me sat next to the men. When we sat, I heard the guy next to me acknowledge our pink outfits with a comment to his friend of, "they're here to see Barbie." For anyone who isn't chronically online like the majority of the population, it was agreed amongst those planning to see Barbie that it would be fitting to wear something pink to the screening. Fun, right? But I kept hearing and seeing judgement (from mostly men) the day of. Sure, it felt a little silly to walk out of the car upon arriving at the cinema in matching outfits to go and see a film of all things, and yes, it did cross my mind when I saw a sea of pink whilst trying to find a restaurant that wasn't fully booked that we were part of a common breed that day, but who is it hurting? The scoffing from the men next to me at the Oppenheimer showing is part of just as common a phenomenon as the choice to wear pink that day. On one hand, you have a conscious, physical performance of solidarity, and on the other you have an unself-aware show of film snobbery.

It was oddly fitting considering the content of Barbie. Greta Gerwig has made no secret of her feminist sympathies and her interpretation of the lore surrounding the doll touched upon the stubborn existence of the patriarchy and its pushback against women's liberation. A piece of discourse that has been swirling around in the online realm for several years now is that on microaggressions. A microaggression is an unintentionally discriminatory statement made towards a marginalised group; the attitude towards pink on Barbenheimer day was very much giving microaggressive vibes.

I saw a few men wearing pink, but most were in standard clothes. I saw a few women that weren't wearing pink. But the hostility from those women was non-existent. It was only from men sneering at women enjoying themselves. When we got into our seats for Barbie, almost everyone there was dressed on-theme, and whilst the audience was talking during the adverts, once the film started there was respectful silence. This is where my own biases had come into play: I said to my friends beforehand that I thought the audience for Barbie would be insufferable and I was concerned this might tarnish the viewing experience. I was wrong and the opposite happened: the men sat next to me during Oppenheimer were the ones tittering away. At some points, the guy next to me was leaning forwards with his fingers pressed together against his lips in a thinking position. This made it clear to me that he was an intellectual and a bigger Christopher Nolan fan than I could ever be in my pink t-shirt. At Barbie, there was a brief issue in the theatre where a member of staff had left a very bright light on that was shining directly onto the screen. A girl got up from her seat and sacrificed her first 30 seconds of the film so she could go and ask someone to turn it off - when it was, there was a little applause from some members of the audience (myself in included) with a hushed, "thank you!" I did not witness this same level of thoughtfulness from the men talking next to me during Oppenheimer (although the woman in the couple sat next to my friend did lean over to her boyfriend at one point in the film to let him know that Florence Pugh's character had killed herself when the scene showed her in the bath, clearly dead, with Cillian Murphy explaining the suicide in his dialogue. That, I suppose, was quite thoughtful in its own little way).

During Barbie, the titular character is sexually harassed in the street, demeaned by her boyfriend so he can assert his dominance in their relationship, and made to feel ashamed of her appearance when it begins to show imperfections. Herself and the other Barbies learn to live in harmony with the Kens in a post-patriarchal Barbieland, but she isn't satisfied with this; she has learned what it is to be human and wants to live in the imperfect Real World where she can fully explore and express her sense of self. America Ferrera's character does this long monologue that explains what it's like to be in a woman in a society that is often misrepresented as post-feminist - there is contradiction after contradiction in an attempt to find this perfect balance between assertive and kind so we can still be palatable to the men in our lives, but it is impossible to strike. And that, she concludes, is exhausting.  

And it was darkly comical to see the men around us on Barbenheimer day act out the microaggressions criticised in Barbie. There were a lot of memes of The Sopranos, American Psycho and other sigma male characters asking for "tickets to Barbie please", and maybe some of the men there were enacting that in their normal clothes, but I couldn't see any in my theatre. If they did go to see it, I wonder if the film resonated with them, or if it was an act of performative male feminism to do so and then nod along with female friends afterwards. Maybe I'm being judgemental of them, but by this point I've realised that giving the benefit of the doubt is a naïve thing to do for people who go out of their way to mock feminine activities at every possible opportunity.

I actually enjoyed Oppenheimer more than I did Barbie. I thought the script was more cohesive and offered a more original societal critique. It was surprising, because I was looking forward to Barbie more since the prospect of sitting through a three-hour long film filled me with dread, but all three hours were utilised to their full extent, whereas the more concise two hours of Barbie felt rushed for the depth of the message it was conveying. In a way, I think this aligns me with the film snobs; I initially held the same contempt towards Barbie fans as they did in my concern over their behaviour in the cinema. It shows how powerful misogyny is that I still have those microaggressive attitudes ingrained into my perception of other women, even when I have the same interests that they do. Barbenheimer was not just a fun outing with friends; it was a significant day in our cultural history that revealed a lot about our own internal biases towards women.