Films and Feelings

    While Hollywood has never truly been unencumbered by the demands of capitalist processes, the modern filmscape is perhaps in an unprecedented age of opportunities for vertical integration. Enter: Warner Bros.'  Barbie , another film which sells itself on its cutting edge subversion but is ultimately designed to soothe the masses into a state of blameless consumerism.      To be clear,   Barbie is hardly unique in this regard. This is the same basic affliction that arises in movies like Pokemon: Detective Pikachu and The Lego Movie . Yet the dissonance in Barbie is somehow larger because the movie isn't just selling "Barbie" as a valid Christmas gift, but as the battlefield on which feminism itself is being fought.      The conceit of this movie is the amusing hypothetical of what Barbie would think if she stepped out of her dreamhouse to live within the market to which she is sold, to see what the people who play with Barbie dolls (or used to) actually think of