The ‘Real Time’ host ran down his issues with the Greta Gerwig film, while insisting “I’m not the one who’s out of step.”
Anone who thinks it’s man hating hasn’t actually seen the movie. It has as much to say about the state of modern men as it does women.
At the start of the film it plainly states, out loud, in actual dialog, that for Barbie, every day is the best day ever, but for Ken, it’s only a good day if Barbie looks at him.
Ken’s adrift. He’s the ultimate representation of a friendzoned incel. He has no purpose in life other than as a Barbie accessory with as much agency as her swimming pool or Dream Car.
When he finds that purpose, it’s toxic. But saying the film is “man hating” is denying Ken’s search for meaning in a Barbie world.
I agree with you and I think there is even more to evaluate in Ken’s search for meaning.
Remember that he’s ultimately lost even in the real (“mans”) world.
There are two things here:
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Feminism left men behind. “Maybe every night didn’t have to be a girls night.” And we have a lot of catching up to do on both sides to bring parity to the situation.
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Ken expresses his exhaustion at having to be in control of everything. Much of his anxiety is rooted in a patriarchal worldview that makes him responsible for everything due to the lie that men must control the world.
As a man, husband and father myself I can so identify with that journey. I was abused in my career by managers that wanted me to fight my friends for promotions and I’ve burned out several times due to unrealistic expectations that I had of myself which were ingrained in me by a patriarchal culture. It’s very tiring to be ‘the boss’ and I’ve learned that sharing the load does not weaken me, it makes me stronger,
I think that the film is actually very kind to men. It’s saying: ‘You don’t have to do everything alone.’
I honestly wonder if women are ready though. Like I said and like the movie illustrates: there is a lot to do on both sides. Equity has a cost and I know many women who still find sanctuary in the slipstream of the men in their lives because taking that step out of the shadow takes as much bravery as admitting that you can’t be in control of everything all the time.
I honestly wonder if women are ready though.
Aw thanks so much for your concern. 🙄
The fact that that’s what you took from my post kind of illustrates my point. Albeit ironically.
Your post took an entirely feminist issue and made it about men again.
“Did feminism leave men behind” is something that only men would ponder about.
“I wonder if women are ready” is another can of condescending mess. Women are put in this box of patriarchy BY MEN, so instead of taking away the box and recognizing that it shouldn’t be there in the first place, you ask if women are ready to come out of it. We’re not children that you put in a timeout corner.
You ARE Ken. In a sanctuary for Barbies, you find some rhetoric to latch onto and try to make it about your plight too.
The message of the film is that everyone is worse off due to patriarchy. Not just women.
Men need to learn that meeting halfway is not a loss.
Women need to stand ground and also invite men into a changed world.
You’re still trying to make every night a girls night.
The film is about feminism reaching a state of maturity and your anger here is proving to us all that my concerns are on point. I think that there are many men and yes, many women too who are not ready.
Are you also one of those “all lives matter” people? Women just can’t have this one thing to ourselves without you coming in mansplaining feminism to me eh?
I did not know that I was not ready for feminism but you sure showed me. How can I ever repay you?
You’re still trying to make every night a girls night.
Frankly I’m okay with that right now, especially after talking to you.
For fuck’s sake. The average man is so exhausting, and if you take this comment as “men hating” then so be it.
I don’t understand why you need this to be a women only issue when clearly it has to do with all of society? That’s literally a direct example of feminism leaving men behind!
Despite your needlessly angry tone I’m still trying to understand you ok?
WRT mansplaining: did you actually watch the film? Because I’m just commenting on what was presented there. If the movie presented feminism as a women only issue then there would be no Ken arc, the film explicitly positions these issues as shared. It’s literally the point of the whole thing. Are you just flying off the handle assuming you know what the film is about without seeing it?
IMO asserting that men cannot comment on or take part in feminism is the antithesis of the message of the film and also just bloody minded sexism.
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Feminism left men behind
I’m sorry, but WTF? I don’t know how you look at feminism with any kind of understanding and walk away with that impression.
The fact that, as men, we’ve collectively ignored feminism’s every attempt to help us, while whining that women are helping themselves and each other, doesn’t mean that feminism has left us behind. It means we’ve refused help and to help ourselves.
I guess that’s one way to see it. It’s not the message of the movie though. The film chooses, like I do, to take a view that men have some catching up to do and that feminism itself can play a role in this by helping to carve out equitable roles.
I don’t claim to know everything about feminism. I’m just pointing out (as the film has too) that this is new territory for a lot of men. You can sit there and shout “Why haven’t you helped yourselves??!” …or you can help and try to build a progressive society together.
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I agree. I think the film does a great job peeling back the bias of sexism and making it, not a problem with men, but with humanity. Something we can all commiserate with and all benefit from working at making things better.
All of this. I’m not pro third wave feminism but I absolutely loved the messaging about the toxic state of Ken.
The movie posters that I’ve seen literally say that in two sentences. Even the song says she’s a Barbie girl in a Barbie world.
I think you’re going a bit deep for this kind of person. And it’s no surprise that this sort is so whiny.
He’s really turned into one of his catch phrases: A Whiny Little Bitch. Sixty some years of white men controlling everything and the second it’s not overwhelmingly male you can’t make a movie about how it was the vast majority of the time? Get the fuck out of here with your insecure bullshit. You have no reason to whine about people blaming the patriarchy. Don’t be a tone-deaf asshole and you can go through life as a straight white man with little to no pushback for being so. Way less than women continue to get for just being women.
I haven’t watched it yet, but knowing his past work I can already say: his profit motive may suggest otherwise. Engagement culture works for an extremely wide audience, and his base seems to be people that get pissed off by the things that he says, to some large measure potentially purely b/c it pisses them off? That is to say that it is hard to convince someone of something when their job depends on them not understanding it. Okay, now I am ready to go watch it!:-D
Correction, it’s a billion dollar preachy, man-hating zombie lie.
Who the fuck cares what Bill Maher whines?
I watched him 10 years ago when he was slightly more middle just edgy. Goddamn is he gasping to stay relevant, who the hell watches him anymore? Just an annoying douche now.
The one person I know that still watches Bill Maher is a guy that says he’s a libertarian. But he’s a libertarian in the way that a college freshman in 2005 was a libertarian.
He’s really the same as he’s always been, just the more you watch and listen the more you find out about his questionable views.
I disagree with him on most things, but I respect him as a pundit because you can really tell that he’s providing opinions that are truly his own. He’s a conservative democrat that everybody hates, and he ignores the pressure to fall in line with either side. He’s pro-military, pro-gun, pro-surveillance, but also all for drug legalization, medicare for all, and vehemently supports separation of church and state. It’s a weird mix and even inconsistent at times (he loves individual freedom but hates women so abortion is tricky for him!) but you at least have to admit he’s one of the last remaining pundits that isn’t a mouthpiece for politicians.
I disagree about him not changing. He’s always had 1 or 2 topics that were a bit crazy (anti medicine, over the top islamaphobe, etc), but generally he had people on from both sides (mostly) and played a biased moderator. Now he’s a panelist as well and he has to be right. More than that he’s old man yells at cloud and gets super butthurt when anyone points it out.
I think it’s that the world has changed and left him behind. He was a racist misogynist 30 years ago, but back then the system enforced those things to his satisfaction. The systemic oppression of people he doesn’t like has been challenged more and more over the past few decades, and he takes issue with that.
It makes sense for him to be the angriest “progressive” in the world if you think about it. All the progress we’ve made has been the things he DOESN’T want (metoo, BLM, etc) and none of the things he does want (healthcare, secularism)
This is why a lot of old people “become more conservative.” No they don’t. They just stew in their shitty comfort zones while the world around them moves forward.
I gave up on political punditry in 2016 but his show is unique in that it’s love and unedited. He’s been criticized for having conservatives on, but it really did give me a feel for which struggled to respond to challenges on the panel and which were able to think on their feet. By comparison, every other show felt like rehearsed propaganda.
It’s certainly patriarchy-hating. If men find that personally offensive and “man-hating”, they should check themselves
Right? Patriarchy is male supremacism. It should be hated.
I see this as an endorsement!
Remember that this fuckwit said that woke was horrible because RDJ couldn’t release a movie where he plays a Mexican and that woke controlled everything. When someone replied that women just lost the right to get an abortion in the supreme Court to put into perspective who really has control here his reply was an emphatic: “I don’t care because the movie would have been awesome!!”
Maher completely lost focus after T**** was kicked out of the White House. Last I checked, he was obsessed with GOP culture war nonsense (woke, gen z, etc). Spends valuable time on show whining about personal problems (like his mansion’s solar panels). Increasingly out of touch, or unable to care about important issues. Needs to be liked more than ever (esp. certain celebs, see Musk interview). Extremely sensitive about his age. He’ll be off HBO soon, unless daddy CEO loves him.
That’s how most of these guys are. Zero perspective. They weight things poorly. It’s why a simple scenario showing what’s actually happening vs the vague and hard to define thing they’re all angry about gets them dismissive as soon as you point that out.
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Talk about fragile masculinity. Girls have a movie that they like and is empowering and fragile idiots like this melt down. You know what manly men do? They let people enjoy things. Hell, they dress up in pink and go with their friends and enjoy it, and don’t get triggered so easily.
Interesting how Maher shows how much closer he is to being Ben Shapiro than being someone worth paying attention to.
He’s always been an asshole. He’s liberal, but he’s in his 60s and it shows.
Amen. I got sick of him back when he and I were both a lot fucking younger. Just because our politics aren’t super far apart doesn’t mean he isn’t a snide, arrogant little fuck.
Hell, the way he pushes identity politics snidely and arrogantly is part of why I can’t stand him. Like, I wouldn’t wish him harm, but I would be very glad if he retired.
And because we aren’t in an authoritarian cult, we can tell another liberal to go fuck themselves. Crazy isn’t it?
His flexible quickness of wit was incredibly impressive in the ‘80s and early-‘90s.
But, he’s become brittle. You can see it in his interviews and conversations now, where he often makes interlocutors repeat something before understanding it and responding to it, even though it was said clearly.
I suspect he’s lost a few steps and is running mostly on muscle-memory these days. He has lost the flexibility of thinking to make truly insightful jokes; he relies instead of stereotypes and is irritated that those stereotypes are increasingly being rejected by the left.
The interesting part of his shows back then wasn’t him, but the group that was put together to talk about issues of the time. When he wouldn’t butt in with his own thoughts. Terrible host, better hosts spark conversation and let the guests talk.
The movie also isn’t even Boyz Drool, it’s a critique of radicalization that can occur to aimless men, and ends with the message that equality is preferred over a matriarchy or patriarchy.
You might as well go right back to Gilgamesh, literally the earliest written saga ever discovered, predating the Iliad by at least 1200 years.
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…while insisting “I’m not the one who’s out of step.”
That’s the funniest thing I’ve read all day.
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Figures Bill doesn’t get the movie. He’s an out of touch douche-canoe who attempts to stay relevant by mentioning pot every once in a while in his opening monolog.
Says the guy who used to fuck an actual preachy, man-hating zombie, Ann Coulter.
Dude, I’m eating.
Must have been like fucking a dead fish filled with ice and hatred.
Wait, what?
Bill Maher hooked up with Ann Coulter?
This dude is totally content with 300,000 years of subjugation of women by men, but has problems when a single feminist movie comes out. Comedy can only make fun of the other, apparently. Soon as you (men) get made fun of, they’re all up in arms.
Get with the program or get out of the fucking way.
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Maher has entirely missed the entire point of the movie if that’s what he’s getting out of it.
I haven’t watched it yet, but it sounds interesting, so I will.
But if women have had to put up with decades of movies with a “men big, hard, and clever/women stupid” theme, I’m sure men can tolerate one film where they’re the important ones.
It’s funny as hell too, I was cracking up all movie. Really fun ride.
I’ll make an effort to watch it then.
I ended up watching it, and I’d have to agree. I ain’t a third wave feminist and didn’t like a lot of the messaging about the war of the sexes, but I don’t think that kept it from being a hilarious film. The feminist messaging wasn’t even that heavy-handed until the end.
And while MGTOW-adjacent (I find the movement a bit harmful TBH), I do think their messaging about being a simp was pretty good. I approve of anti-simp messaging.
Hard agree, honestly it was some of the most fun I’ve had in any movie this year, so worth seeing
The audience watching Bill Maher now must be complete idiots. He tells stupid stories now. He’s on that stupid all the time. The man’s lost it, but clearly has enough stupid eyes and ears on him to keep going.
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