*This post is mostly about the phenomena of “Barbenheimer” and moviegoing as a whole. While I do make a reference to a line from Oppenheimer, you don’t need to have seen it to understand, nor does it really spoil anything.*
This past weekend, I spent all my time dressing up for Barbie and Oppenheimer, watching Barbie and Oppenheimer, and reading and talking about Barbie and Oppenheimer to the point that my life almost completely consisted of, what has been deemed, “Barbenheimer”, making me, officially, feel like that one Mean Girls meme.
What started out as a silly meme encapsulating the absurdity of the double release of the bright, bubbly Barbie alongside the dark, brooding Oppenheimer quickly cascaded into what felt like a once in a lifetime, cultural and historical event.
As the greatly anticipated day approached, the memes tripled in number, double-feature schedules began cropping up as people argued over which movie should be seen first, merch and outfit ideas poured out, flooding my “for you” page and practically all my recommended videos on Instagram. It was inescapable. The collective preparation for “Barbenheimer” had begun, and it stirred an excitement in me akin to a child being in on a joke. And I felt giddy, lucky even, to be included.
On the other hand, I wondered whether or not the real thing would live up to the hype. I worried about whether or not all our plans, much like the vacations we attempt to take with friends, would make it out of the group chat. Or if they would simply die upon execution, discarded with the rest of the clutter on the internet that has passed through, occupying our minds for mere moments, only to be replaced with something new.
But, on the first night at least, everyone followed through. Moms wore bright pink tutus and matching hats with their kids, boyfriends wore pink t-shirts while walking hand-in-hand with their stunning girlfriends in all pink attire and even pink wigs. One of my favorites was a girl in a 60s inspired dress with baby pink go-go boots.
On the other side, representing Oppenheimer, were guys in suits and groups of friends in black, baggy pants and oversized zip-ups covering their pink shirts from hours earlier.
While I didn’t participate in the Barbenheimer double-feature—meaning I didn’t see them back to back, though I did see them within the same weekend—I still dressed up for both, making the whole thing feel like a special event rather than just another outing.
But with theaters completely packed, even at showings earlier in the day, my friend and I couldn’t help but remark on the nostalgia of it all, and it seems others couldn’t help noticing it as well. There are articles all over the internet proving we were all reminded of the days of moviegoing past with the long lines at the concession stand and bustling lobby, images of a time we thought were gone for good, leaving us to wonder: Have we done it? Have we finally revived the moviegoing experience?
Coincidentally, this reminds me of the question posed to Oppenheimer by Danish physicist Niels Bohr:
Is it big enough?
***
While sitting in the theater, twice in one weekend, I couldn’t help feeling a little “homesick” for my own couch and TV. I longed for the quiet of my living room as an obnoxious group of boys behind me burst out laughing at the tiniest jokes and the most inappropriate moments during Barbie, and to be able to turn on the subtitles on Oppenheimer as I strained to hear the mumbled bits of dialogue over the couple next to me carrying out full-on conversations.
I’ve always loved going to the theater and I always will. These little annoyances, the dirty, sticky floors, and the smell of popcorn in the air are part of what make the moviegoing experience an actual experience, one that you endure two hours of crossing your legs and trying not to think about how badly you need to pee so as to not miss anything for. But, an outing to the movies wasn’t always seen this way.
The guest column for The Hollywood Reporter by Thomas Doherty “When Moviegoers Started Watching Films From the Beginning” explains the old filmgoer ritual of “this is where we came in” in which couples would
“… go to the movies, enter midway into the feature film, sit through to the end of the movie, watch the newsreel, cartoon, and comedy short at the top of the program, and then sit through the feature film until they recognize the scene they walked in on. At this point, one moviegoer whispers to their partner, “This is where we came in,” and they exit the theater.”
Back then—up until the 60s—movies were less of an experience and more of just a way to pass the time. But when we think of this time period, of old Hollywood and all it’s glitz and glamour, we’re blinded by our romanticization of times past to see something that wasn’t entirely there.
As Doherty explains, people didn’t actually start sitting through movies from beginning to end, making them the experience we now know and pine over, until the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). In order to get audiences to cooperate, Hitchcock had ads released explaining that this movie must be seen from the beginning. This was a moviegoing experience that was so big it really did change things, or at least it did for those that still went to the movies.
(Is it big enough?)
However, as I was constantly reminded throughout my time at school, World War II changed everything, even movies, because, as Erin Blakemore explains in her article “How TV Killed Hollywood’s Golden Age”, by the end of WWII
“Americans had scrimped and saved since the Great Depression, and when men returned home from war, many families were ready to start spending. Often, their first purchase—with assistance from federal home loans—was a house in the suburbs… Since these newly built areas weren’t close to downtown movie palaces and often lacked mass transportation options, people began to seek entertainment inside their homes… By the 1960s, more than half of all American homes contained television sets…”
While Hitchcock ushered in a new era for moviegoers, the end of WWII ushered in a new era for entertainment as a whole. It was no longer convenient for people—especially families—to go out to the movies, but they still wanted to be able to use it to pass the time. Because of this, movie studios struggled to stay afloat. They couldn’t compete with the convenience of television sets, so they started selling their movies to be shown on TV, but with less money, they started taking less chances with their movies—too afraid to make something audiences wouldn’t like—and simply relied on previously released films to continue to make money for them.
As human beings, we tend to like the familiar and be skeptical of/fear the unfamiliar. It seems weird to say that in relation to movies, but as I’ve said before, even ideas can be perceived as a threat, especially now when we get practically all of our information online.
This shift to the digital has made it easier for misinformation to spread, but it also makes it harder for us to challenge ourselves. Oftentimes, we only pay attention to information that confirms what we already believe to be true, which is made even easier by personalized ads and recommendations. It comforts us to have everything we believe backed-up by others, and can be distressing to discover something new or that we might be wrong, so we seek information that simply confirms the ideas and views we already have. And we do the same with entertainment. Not only in the kind of information we choose to consume within entertainment, but also in our desire to rewatch our favorite movies and TV shows.
I’m just as bad about this as anyone else. I’ve spent many nights rewatching Seinfeld, The Office, and Gilmore Girls. In high school, I used to watch Harry Potter to the point that I almost had lines of dialogue memorized in certain scenes. I even just rewatched the movie 10 Things I Hate About You this week. Why? Because it’s comforting.
As I’m sure we can all agree, there’s a certain nostalgia to rewatching your favorite pieces of media. When we rewatch a favorite movie or TV show, we can almost capture the happiness we felt the first time we watched it. It’s not quite the same, but almost. It still triggers the release of serotonin in our brains, relaxing our minds and sending us into a state of blissful numbness. When we watch something we already know we’ll love, we don’t even have to think. We go into the theater excitedly predicting everything that might happen, and come out in a satisfied haze like children placated with their favorite treat.
Why watch something new when you can rewatch something you already know you love?
Because it’s easy. It was easy for studios to continually release superhero movies, adding one sequel, spinoff, and TV series after another, but it was our desire for an escape that kept them going. In the article “The Only Way to Stop the Superhero Movie Craze Is to Fix The World” Ben Gibbons explains
“Superhero films, and equally their source material, have long been seen as a form of escapism. The “golden age of comic books” started towards the end of the Great Depression and it's no coincidence that comic books experienced their height of popularity when the world was also going through turmoil between 1938 and the mid-1940s, concurrent with the events of World War II.”
This reversion to childhood in order to deal with everything going on in the world isn’t new. We often use content consumption as a form of escape, and often, we want to escape into pieces of media that hold some kind of nostalgic importance. We don’t have to wonder whether or not we’ll like them or if they’ll bring us that sense of safety we’re desperately looking for because they already hold memories of happiness, and the studios know this.
Some even say this was part of the driving force that got everyone out to see Barbie and Oppenheimer. That our nostalgia for the past depicted in the these movies is what got us off our couches and into theaters.
(Is it big enough?)
But they were also something new. Barbie was especially risky, and Barbenheimer was truly one-of-a-kind. Now we’re all sitting around wondering if Barbenheimer may have “saved cinema”, while also collectively acknowledging that it didn’t. It doesn’t signal a new cinematic age because it’s not something that can be duplicated, and any attempt to do so will be a complete flop. If anything, it simply shows us how desperately we want to experience something new.
It’s easy to fall into the comforting, nostalgic embrace of our favorite pieces of media, and there’s nothing wrong with doing so from time to time. But it can be addicting to constantly fill ourselves with nothingness, numbing our minds with never-ending happiness.
I think we forget that we don’t have to experience happiness on a daily basis in order to lead joyful lives. We need to experience the bad in order to appreciate the good.
Obviously, we all know this. I’m not relaying some new piece of information that no one’s ever heard before, but it’s different to know something and actually implement it in our lives. It doesn’t make the bad days any less hard because we know we’ll be especially appreciative when the good days finally come around. But by constantly feeding ourselves these recycled bits of happiness, are we not running the risk of allowing them to grow stale and leave a bad taste in our mouth that ruins them forever?
Studios will try to recreate Barbenheimer. They’ll try to manufacture similar movies thinking that, now that they have something new to prey on, they can use it to drain every last bit of color from it’s cheeks. They think they can just make it happen again and again when it was the creativity of artists, actors, writers, and real people on the internet that made it what it was. Not mass produced pieces of nothing injected with artificial happiness meant for us to mindlessly feed on until we’ve had so much our eyes glaze over. Or at least enough to sustain us until our next fix.
Will it ever be enough?
Comments, Thoughts, Feelings
Have you seen Barbie or Oppenheimer yet? Have you seen both? What did you think?
Did you dress up for either or both of these movies? Was your theater packed with people dressed in fun outfits?
Did any one do the Barbenheimer double-feature? (meaning watching both in one day)
What’s your fav nostalgic movie/TV show/book that you’ve watched/read over and over?
I love learning a little about the history of cinema as a leisure activity from this piece, it was so interesting!
Love that La La Land meme (it feels right on). Loved this post, too - reading a firsthand account of dressing up and experiencing this was not only more fun to read than a lot of these overthinky think pieces, I think it got to the bigger social issues in a more interesting/elegant way.