Barbenheimer Musings

Anyone who is not aware that the biggest event of our age was the release this summer of the movies “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” probably should be checked for a pulse.

Trump indictments? Global climate catastrophe? Famine? War? Pardon me while I yawn. The burning question in most minds is where is the closest double feature screening of these two cinematic “masterpieces?”

Readers will not be surprised to learn that my Date and I will not be plunking down close to our weekly budgeted allotment for groceries to risk Covid in a crowded theater in which the actual show is the audience, not what’s on the screen. In fact, the last time we set foot in a movie theater was almost a decade ago. If we never again do, it will be too soon.

In a bygone age when the only way to see a movie was in a theater, I put up grudgingly with the rudeness of fellow viewers. Since the advent of Netflix and large screen TVs, there is absolutely no reason to suffer the indignities of the latest generation of moviegoers. They make the once extremely annoying behavior of those of my era seem quaint. Back then we had only to put up with in-theater smoking, until that was banned, noisy chomping and food container rattlings, crying babies who were smuggled in and the blathering of folks around us who couldn’t keep their mouths shut for a couple of hours.

By way of comparison, reports of audience behavior at Barbenheimer screenings make Bedlam seem like a relaxing entertainment venue. Given the endemic rudeness and self-centeredness of today’s world this, sadly, is not difficult to believe.

Miss Manners, roll over. As I have repeatedly tweeted back to you in the ignored yet strangely satisfying snark I type into the comments box after reading your columns, you are, to put it in an unmannerly manner, pissin’ in the wind. “Me first and the devil take the hindmost” is the enduring ethic of our society. Exhibitionism rules the day. As the once beloved, now long forgotten entertainer, Jimmy Durante, used to say, “Everybody wants to get into the act.”

From what I’ve read, people go to “Barbie” screenings in outrageous Barbie inspired costumes, including some in their birthday suits. They are often drunk or high, reciting the dialog along with the actors, standing up and cheering or booing everything that is happening on the screen and brawling among themselves. Others pay no attention to the screen as they scroll through their phones or take endless selfies lighting up the theater with flashes throughout the performance.

Selfies. The abomination that more than anything else characterizes the malignant narcism, the perpetual onanistic pursuit of image, of our age. We can take all the photos of ourselves we want, but like these films, we and our unremarkable countenances will soon fade into oblivion.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

I have no idea what the plot of “Barbie” is even though friends of ours saw it and tried to describe it to us. What I gather from a few internet clips I’ve seen is that it is a pastel pink plasticine piece of fluff that glorifies an impossibly proportioned plastic doll and the materialistic age that spawned her. Some view it as a parable for manmade global annihilation through climate change created by the petroleum industry and the rise of the consumer driven culture of disposable goods. Twenty years ago, Al Gore made a serious but mostly ignored movie that conveyed that directly. We all know how much good that did. On the positive side, “Barbie” is less than two hours long.

“Oppenheimer,” yet another biopic on the father of the atom bomb, runs for three hours and has no intermission. It is probably worth seeing, but I would require a catheter to view it uninterrupted. In the event I don’t have the opportunity to stream it some day (no not that kind of stream, I mean the movie on TV), no biggie. I am more than familiar with the story of how, as usual, the genius of the human mind transformed a scientific silk purse into a catastrophic sow’s ear. In this case, one of the secrets of creation was employed to build a device that may yet spell the annihilation of our race, (apologies to T.S. Elliot) not with the whimper of global climactic transformation, but with a bang. In light of the state of the world, given the choice of ending it by one or the other of these method, I must admit the latter option has its appeal.

Why anyone would plunk down a king’s ransom to put themselves through the misery of viewing these films, is beyond me. The cost of two tickets covers several months of enjoyable streaming in the comfort of my home where I can pause at any time should the need arise. Will I miss some of the big hits? Yes. But as one approaches the end of their brief stay on the planet, they become increasingly aware that time is too short for anyone to experience everything. Fortunately, ignorance is bliss. We do not miss what we have not experienced any more than we miss what happened before our birth or will miss what will happen after our passing.

Should I ever experience a burning desire to see these films, I guess I could access the pay- per-view option of my cable provider. I’ve never bothered with that either, nor do I have a DVR, having learned long ago that I rarely get around to watching anything I record. But you never know.

Meanwhile, in the case of “Barbie” at least, I take comfort in the knowledge that what I don’t know won’t hurt me.