Barbie not only broke box office records, she destroyed the GOP’s Barbie Boycott

The GOP loses again.

How a movie inspired by a toy that has been a staple of American culture since 1959 does at the box office should not be relevant to politics. But today everything is political thanks to a GOP that seeks to move America backwards on just about every front—from reproductive rights to academic freedom to even what is permitted to be part of our nation’s entertainment. We are truly confronted with a GOP that seeks to control just about every aspect of our lives—including what should be allowed in a fun movie like Barbie.

That is why for more than a month voices on the right have been urging a boycott of the new Barbie film because to them it’s everything from “woke” to somehow “brainwashing” young girls with 'Chinese propaganda” --as GOP Senator Ted Cruz put it. But as the right just learned, they are no match for Barbie.  In fact, Barbie --metaphorically speaking--drove her pink Dreamcamper right over these GOP critics—backed up, and drove over them again--given how the film is breaking box office records.

The Hollywood Reporter reported Sunday that the Greta Gerwig directed film –starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling—saw as they put it a “staggering” $155 million dollar opening weekend. Barbie will rake in the biggest box office opening weekend for 2023, beating out the likes of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The film also marks the biggest opening for a movie based on a toy, eclipsing Transformers: Dark of the Moon ($115.9 million).

Given these results, movie studios might want to beg GOP members of Congress, Fox News and others on the right to call for a boycott of its new film!

So what triggered the right about Barbie? (At this point, the more accurate question would be: what doesn’t anger them?!) We saw a multi-pronged attack on the film starting weeks before it opened.

In early July, GOP members of Congress declared a “war on Barbie”—as Politico put it-over a child-like crayon drawing of a world map that they claimed was designed to appease China. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), who heads a House panel focused on countering the influence of China, claimed the map-which he even described “as a cartoonish, crayon-scribbled map”— appeared to support China’s territorial claims to a contested portion of the China Sea. This is what led Cruz to make his laughable comments that the goal of Barbie was “brainwashing” Americans with Chinese propaganda.

Warner Bros, the studio behind the film, responded that the claims by these Republicans were categorically false. By way of a statement, the studio explained, “The doodles depict Barbie’s make-believe journey from Barbie Land to the ‘real world.’ It was not intended to make any type of statement.”

Then there was Fox News repeated attacks on the film over everything from “wokeness” to inclusivity. One such segment amplified the call to boycott Barbie coming from Movieguide, a Christian movie review site, that read, "Warning: Don't take your daughter to Barbie." The segment slammed the film for the inclusion of a transgender performer (Transgender actor Hari Nef  plays a "Doctor Barbie") and for presenting, “LGBTQ stories.”  (We are increasingly seeing the GOP seeking to erase all things LGBTQ from the public sphere.)

While Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy--in a segment that included a chyron that read “Barbie gets woke makeover”—complained that “the left has given Barbie a complete feminist makeover,” dubbing the film as “another indoctrination vehicle.”  And in yet another Fox News segment attacking the film, the guests claimed the film’s depiction of “Ken” somehow emasculated men. (How the treatment of a human Ken doll applies to all men is beyond me—but it triggered the right.)

But the right-wing Barbie outrage was not close to being done. Charlie Kirk—the head of Turning Point USA which recently welcomed the twice indicted Donald Trump to speak—on his June 30 show called the film, “trans propaganda” “the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” as he pushed for boycott of the film.

Not to be outdone, conservative pundit and co-founder of The Daily Wire Ben Shapiro not only repeatedly slammed the film as “woke” –along with many other expletives—he then burned a Barbie doll in effigy. I’m not kidding—he literally lit a doll on fire. No word if the Barbie was from Shapiro’s personal collection or he went shopping for a Barbie doll simply to torch it.

Could there be something else angering these voices on the right beyond what they are telling us? Well, New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez believes so, explaining  in her Friday post on Meta’s Threads: “Love how Republican Congressmen are just now hating on Barbie because she’s “too woke” …like hello this was a doll made for little girls who was a DOCTOR and an ASTRONAUT before women in the US were even allowed to have credit cards without their husband’s permission.” AOC added, “Of course they’re mad! They want the old days back.”

AOC is 100% correct. This is all part of the GOP’s goal of taking America back to a time where rich white men ran everything.

The GOP’s call for a boycott and their onslaught of criticism obviously failed given the Barbie box office bonanza. It appears these people have an inflated sense of their ability to successfully cause a consumer boycott given the right’s apparent success in targeting Bud Light a few months ago. That controversy was sparked after Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer, was paid by the beer company to promote a contest. After that occurred, right wing commentators and celebrities began to protest the beer. Since then, Bud Light sales dropped and it’s now no longer the top selling beer in the country. (Although in reality some of the sales loss can be tracked to people on the left being also upset with Bud Light for so quickly backpedaling on supporting Mulvaney.)

In fact, a Fox News segment two weeks ago that slammed the Barbie movie was titled, “How 'Barbie' the movie got the 'Bud Light treatment.” However, in reality, Barbie didn’t get the “Bud Light treatment,” instead the film broke box office records while emasculating its right-wing critics. 

True, there are products that if conservatives call for a boycott of they could see some success, but generally only if the consumer bases skews right. But as the right is learning, Barbie is not one of them.

I don’t want to oversell the importance of Barbie breaking records over the GOP’s calls for boycotts. But it is a reminder that there are far more Americans who want our nation to move forward instead of going backwards to the GOP’s dream of a nation once again solely controlled by white, right-wing Christian, straight men. Those days are over—and they are never coming back. Just ask Barbie!

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