Podcaster Joe Rogan marveled Tuesday at the political outrage that resulted from the new “Barbie” film that he described simply as a “fun movie” about “dolls who come to life.”
“A lot of people are upset about the Barbie movie, and I left perplexed,” Rogan said to his guest, Post Malone, describing it as merely a “fun, silly movie about dolls who come to life.”
“But a lot of it is about the patriarchy, and it’s a comedy, it’s a comedy about dolls,” he said. “People are upset that it’s this progressive metaphor for life that they’re pushing progressive politics in this, and I’m like, ‘It’s a f—— doll movie!’ It’s a doll movie. It’s a fun movie about dolls who come to life and try to interact with the real world,” he argued.
“No one’s ever done a movie like this before. This is not like anything else you could say. It was a bizarre movie, but it was a fun, silly movie, I laughed,” he said. “But at the end of it I was like, ‘How did people get outraged at that?’ I know some people personally who said it’s anti-men. I’m like, ‘No, it’s making fun of dorks.’”
Rogan balked at the idea of some people getting offended on behalf of some male characters in the film and saw them as representing men as a group, “Are we going to do this thing where we put all men as men, it’s one category, we’re not going to judge people as individuals?”
He argued further that the dichotomy between Barbies and their Ken counterparts is simply a reflection of how people bought the toys in reality.
“They think it’s a super woke movie,” he said. “But it’s also a movie about how Barbies are the dolls that everyone cares about, and Ken is just a f—— accessory, which is real. So when you bring these things into a movie, you make them real life Barbieland, that’s how they have to be, because that’s how it is in the real world.”
He then noted that in the film, some characters journey out of Barbieland and into the “real world” which “sucks and it’s run by men,” adding, “so this is what people are saying makes this an anti-man movie.”
He added that he was “appalled” at how “outraged” some people are about the film, but suggested they were not the target audience in the first place.
“Why would you go see AC/DC if you hate AC/DC? If you’re into classical music?” Rogan asked jokingly.